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!