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!