On Thursday 20th May 2010 I flew out to Simferopol, a city located on the Ukrainian penninsular of The Crimea. This flight from Gatwick, with a breif stop and plane change in Kiev, was with Ukraine International Airlines. My first photo is a beuatiful view taken from the air on the flight from Kiev into Simferopol.

This journey to The Crimea was with Gareth Benton, Senior Pastor of my church (The King’s Church in Portsmouth), and Greg Swinamer the Church Planting Director of Next Level International http://www.nlieurope.com/

The King’s Church has committed to a 3 year partnership with a church planted in the city of Simferopol. This trip was to visit the church plant, get to know the church pastor there, gather information about the church and region to feedback to The King’s Church and to assist in planning a future mission trip.

Once we arrived in Simferopol we met Pastor Vladimir and our interpreter for the trip Katya. We joined up with Dave Hawkins (who had travelled a day earlier) and went into the city for dinner. It was quite a daunting experience at first. Despite being with 3 English speaking friends and a Russian interpreter, i would say being in a country where a language very different to English is spoken and written makes things challenging. I did not have a clue what any road signs or adverts or even menu boards said or meant. There were backwards N’s and shapes that didn’t even look like letters. The digit 3 appeared in so many Russian words I was not sure if i was in fact reading words or numbers!? Anyway dinner was pizza, not a traditional Ukrainian dish, but delicious none the less and a great way to get to know Greg, Katya and Vladimir (using Katya’s interpreting of course).

After dinner we took Greg and Dave to their hotel, dropped Katya off and then myself and Gareth went with Pastor Vova (short for Vladimir) to his house as this is where we were staying. The streets of Simferopol were very different to the UK. Methods of driving also differ greatly – no-one drives in straight lines and there appeared to be no road markings a lot of the time. It would appear you can overtake wherever and however you want to and the only road signage and traffic control people obey are the traffic lights. The lights have countdowns on them so you know how long they are green for, or how long they will be red for. Once arriving at Pastor Vova’s house it was very dark and difficult to take in the surroundings. It was a house inside a large locked gate and wall. The house was all on one level and very long, rather than wide. We were invited in, met Irena (Vova’s wife) although with no interpreter and neither of us speaking the others language this was no more than a smile wave and a “Hello”. Vova then showed us his house using some entertaining pigeon English. We met their 2 beautiful children – who were both asleep in bed but their proud dad wanted to stir them so we could meet them. Nastia, his daughter, woke up gave us a big smile and then hugged her dad and went back to sleep. Dennis, his son, refused to wake up.

We were then shown to our room. I think Vova and Irena had given up their room to sleep in their living room, but it was difficult to know for sure. Gareth and I chose our beds and set about trying to sleep on our first night in The Crimea. Here are some photographs of the bedroom we stayed in.

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And here is a picture of Pastor Vladimir, his wife Irena and their 2 recently adopted children Dennis and Nastia.

More to follow soon with photographs and my blog for the remainder of the trip.