Christmas 2009

Thank you so much for praying for our first worship service. Even though Christmas isn't really celebrated here until January 7 - and the 25th of December is a work and school day, we had 20 people come out to celebrate the birth of our Savior on that day. It was a really special service. It was especially fulfilling to see our new believers excited about the work they had done passing out brochures - and seeing the fruit from that labor. Please continue to pray for Emil, Luba, Tonya and Sasha as they grow in their faith and allow the Lord to change and restore their lives.

We are having another Christmas service on January 7th - the official Christmas day in the Orthodox world. We are praying that the Lord would use our personal testimonies, brochures and prayers to draw more unsaved to our services. We covet your prayers as well!

Christmas card evangelism 2009

We have been praying for effective ways to get the word out about Holy Trinity Baptist Church. The Lord impressed upon Oleg's heart the need to emphasis Christmas in our evangelistic efforts. He worked and prayed over these Christmas cards for a long time and the Lord really blessed his efforts. We just got them back from the printers, all 5,000 of them :). Our goal is to put one in the door or every apartment and home surrounding our church building before December 24. For those of you who don't read Ukrainian :), these Christmas brochures wish the reader a Merry Christmas, invite the reader to our special Christmas services (both on Dec. 25th - called Hungarian/Catholic Christmas here and on Jan. 7th - Orthodox Christmas,) give a brief synopsis of what we believe and a short run down on how our church is "different" from what the typical idea of what a "church" is.

Please pray that the Lord would use these Christmas cards for His glory and that they might tweek the interest of non-believers who are inclined to go to church on Christmas to come and visit us! After Christmas, we will also be meeting for Sunday worship services in our rented facilities.

From wintery, snowy Ukraine, we wish you a very Merry and Christ-centered Christmas Season!!!

Wii Bible Club at Holy Trinity Baptist Church

Tuesdays and Saturdays are Wii Bible Club days at our church. The Lord has given us some wonderful kids from our neighborhood to work with. They are from 11-16 years old and very open to the Word of God. They are memorizing scripture, learning Christian songs, playing the hand chimes (getting ready for Christmas) and of course, playing Wii. Abigail loves to go to church now b/c there are children there! Please pray for this ministry.

food closet ministry

last tuesday at our youth meeting, a new little girl came to visit. her name is albina. she is 12. during game time after bible study, she and i got to talking. she told me that she hadn't eaten in 2 days - that her father was out of work and her mother wasn't around. i couldn't sleep that night thinking about that little girl trying to go to bed hungry. it has been quite cold and rainy here lately. oleg found this little girl's address and phone number in our contact list and we called her father. he said that he wouldn't object to our church helping their family during this down and out time in their lives. we were able to minister to their family thru the food closet ministry that the lord helped us start several years ago. we were able to give her father the gospel as well as provide staples (potatos, onions, eggs) for their family to eat. he seemed open to coming to friday night bible study. please pray for him, his name is anatoli. unfortunately in our part of the world, this story is not uncommon. we thank those who faithfully give to the food closet ministry and pray that the lord will continue to burden the hearts of his people to help us with this ministry. it really helps us to get out there and show the love of jesus as well as telling about it.

meeting kristina

our wonderful friends and babysitters natasha and marianna now have a little niece - her name is kristina. we often go out to the village to visit with them. abigail is trying to get used to mama holding another baby. for now, she tolerates it. we are praying that she will love her new baby brother and that we will have the wisdom and energy to show her the love and attention that she needs after the baby is born.

Sliding fun

Our favorite outside cafe just put in a slide for kids. Abigail's new goal in life is to see how many times she can go up and down the slide in a 2 minute period.

Abigail's new friends

Myrna Gregory and Sabrina Lewis, UPWARD representatives and good friends of ours from the States, were in Ukraine for an UPWARD camp in another region and were able to get to Mukachevo for our end of season celebration. They were a tremendous help to us as they took great pictures of the celebration and made sure that Abigail didn't get into the cake that she so desperately wanted to have! They also allowed me to participate in the service by watching our precious girl. We praise the Lord that they were able to come!

End of season UPWARD celebration

Tonight we had our end of the season UPWARD celebration for our soccer outreach. We had been praying that the boys parents would attend. We had 5 parents come out - a huge answer to prayer. Parents aren't that active in the lives of their children here in Ukraine and we were so excited to have these folks come to our church. Oleg was able to clearly present the gospel, we had an excellent book on Christian child raising to give to them - that also clearly presents the gospel, and then we just had a good ole time playing games and enjoying each other's company. The boys really enjoyed the Wii game and will be coming back to our church this fall for a youth club that will meet on Tuesday nights. Please continue to keep our children's outreaches in your prayers as this seems to be the most effective inroad to getting to know the people of our community.

Jesus Film Evangelism

Thank you for praying for the showing of the "Jesus" film in the courtyards surrounding our building. We had about a total 300 people come out to see the film the 4 nights that we showed it this week. We had invitations to Holy Trinity's Friday night Bible study to give to each person who came. We had many opportunities to witness and interact with the people who attended. We didn't have a great turn out at Bible study this week but we are praying that next week's evangelisms will draw more people to our services. Please keep us in your prayers as we try to start a new work with people from our community.

Abigail singing the ABC's - 2 yrs 4 months

Holy Trinity Baptist Church

The Lord gave us a wonderful rental property to begin work on Holy Trinity Baptist Church! It is in a great location with parking - surrounded by thousands of apartments. We even have a cleaning lady! Please pray for us this coming week as we show the "Jesus" film in the courtyards surrounding our building - inviting people to our Friday night Bible study - beginning at this site on Friday, August 28th at 6pm.

Mukachevo - Dubna What an adventure!

Saturday after soccer club (we had 12 boys come and one of them actually prayed in front of his friends in our closing prayer!) we decided it was time to accept Oleg's cousin's invitation to come and visit. We have been planning to go to Dubna, where Oleg accepted Christ, for years. Oleg said, if we don't go now, we won't go. So we packed up our van, our girl and headed for Dubna about 350 miles to the north east of Mukachevo. It was a rather eventful trip as we got stopped 2x in speed traps along the way (our van with American plates is a eye catcher). Praise the Lord the fines weren't too terrible! We had a really good time with Oleg's family. We haven't seen them for 5 years. 12 years ago, Oleg visited them and the Lord used a friend he met there to lead him to a Baptist church there in that city. The Holy Spirit got a hold of him and Oleg repented of his sins and became a believer. We were able to go to that church on Sunday morning and evening. It was a really neat time as that church was able to rejoice in fruit that it didn't even know it had. Oleg preached in both services - it was almost like he had a glow about him. It was a really neat experience. This church belongs to an Independent Baptist Fellowship and Oleg was able to make some valuable contacts, as well as new friends.
Oleg's cousin Ira has 2 little girls - Vlada and Dasha. Abigail enjoyed herself to no end as she had "children to play with" all day long. She went to bed saying, "I want to play with the children" and woke up with the same phrase. It was a good trip but we are glad to be home. Traveling with a 2 year is always an adventure!

Upward League 2009

As follow-up to our summer camp, we started a summer Upward soccer league. We have 10 boys 11-13 who come each week. They are learning their Bible verses, collecting their stars and enjoying the good fellowship. They even have a really cute little water girl to take care of them during these hot summer days :). Please pray for the end of the season celebration, that these boys parents will come and be able to hear the Gospel. Also, that we will be able to work with these boys during the school year as well. They are very open to the things of the Lord, even though they are all from non-Christian homes.

Abigail at camp 2009

As always, Abigail did great during camp week. Her easy going personality and love of people makes it a pleasure to take her along most everywhere we go. During most of the actual camp, Abigail stayed with her babysitter Natasha, but in the evenings when we were doing evangelistic meetings (we were able to go to the Mukachevo orphanage, a camp for invalids and outdoor meetings) or going site seeing she went with us and did great. She especially made friends with Madison and is still looking for her!

Basketball Camp 2009

We praise the Lord for His working during basketball camp this year. We had a total of 115 children come throughout the week. The team from Broadmoor was well-prepared and did a wonderful job with the children. Many of them returned to Mukachevo for the 2nd time and the children were so excited to see them. At our end of camp evangelism (which we held in the target region for the church plant) a boy who had attended camp all week asked the Lord to become His Savior!! We made lots of good contacts and plan to start our soccer league on June 27th - many of these children said that they would come. It will be a wonderful opportunity for us to continue to share the love and message of Christ with them. Please pray for our follow-up to camp.

The blessings of Ukraine

We have been home in Ukraine for almost a month now. The Lord has been so good to give us a smooth transition back into life here, although not w/o a good bit of homesickness for me. After we finally got off from Greenville, SC (our first plane broke and we were sent home for an unexpected extra day with my parents) we had an easy, uneventful journey home. Abigail did wonderful - she slept, played, ate and slept some more. All 6 of our suitcases and Abigail's car seat were the first bags to come off the plane - that is a first for us - usually we are waiting around till the very end for our bags. The drive home was fast and the border crossing was easy. Our apartment was flood free (we have neighbors who have flooded us frequently in the past) and ready to have it's owners back. After a good cleaning and airing out, it is home again!
Preparations for camp have gone great. We even found a real charter bus to take this team from Budapest to Mukachevo. Large teams have had transportation issues in the past, but the Lord answered our prayers for a "real" bus this year and a reputable driver!!! We are waiting in expectation for what the Lord is going to do -especially as this camp will serve as the kick off to our church planting efforts.
May 27 we got the news that all the documents for our car had arrived and we could go and get it in Poland. So, at 9:30 that night we packed up and hit the road. A brother from our church took us in his car - what a blessing. We got lost about 6 times as none of us had ever driven to Poland and Slovkian and Polish road signs have much to be desired. We had a GPS that continually wanted to send us back in the other direction. We turned it off and stuck to our trusty little map. We finally arrived in Gdynia, Poland at our destination (thank you to numerous English speaking Poles) at 4pm - too late to start the customs procedure. So, we got a room (a blessing as we would have probably tried to return that night) got some good rest and started the customs process at 8am the next morning after a wonderful breakfast at our little hotel. We got our car and all of our many belongings packed in the car and left for home. We started our journey at about 2 b/c someone had stolen the bolts to the liscense plates and we had to find bolts (the local Toyota dealership helped with that). We followed our friend Vasya to Warsaw, a very hard 2 lane road filled with 18 wheelers and lots of passing. We were going to stop and eat in Warsaw but some how got seperated from one another - our cell phones didn't work so we had no way of finding each other. As it turns out, we all got lost in Warsaw - very tricky city. The Lord gave both of us people who explained how to find the road we needed (in rush hour traffic) and placed taxi drivers along the way to confirm our course. We got lost again in the middle of the night in Slovakia trying to find the back roads to the Hungarian-Ukrainian border (we had been told that it was an easier crossing with lots of personal belongings). Well at 3am we ended up in at a village graveyard and decided to pray that if it was the Lord's will, for us to go to the Slovakian-Ukrainian border about 15 miles away. We knew we could find that. So we went there. There was no line, it was very cold - about 40f and raining. The border guard saw that we had a small child and waved us through, stamped all of our papers and didn't even open our car. We crossed into Ukraine praising the Lord for His extreme answer to our prayers! We made it home by 5 and by 5:15 we were all snuggly tucked into bed. Vasya called us at 8 and asked where we were - we said home - he said he had just crossed the Hungarian-Ukrainian border and was glad that we went thru Slovakia. We praise the Lord for His goodness to His children and for answering our prayers in regard to our border crossing.
We now are ready for camp, have all the things we need to do our planned evangelisms and have a blessed new van to use for God's glory.
Thank you for praying for our re-entry into life here in Ukraine. The Lord has answered your prayers!

2 years old

Time flies so quickly. Abigail is now 2. She is such a joy and we praise the Lord for her everyday!