Short Term Mission to Ukraine: Report

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so welcome to Sunday school thank you for being here really good is good to be back Emma and I are here and as you know we recently been on an STM trip through Grace Community Church to Ukraine to Kiev Ukraine so it was a wonderful time the lord thank you for praying thank you for supporting us the Lord I believe is use that and as has answered your prayers and our prayers has begun to answer your prayers because many of the effects of what we did they are not yet fully realized but we’ve begun to see that and that’s been a great encouragement and we want to share some of that encouragement with you as we actually talk about our trip so I’m kind of giving a report on Ukraine and the other thing I want to say is why did we go why were we moved why did we feel like we wanted to go to Ukraine and there are a number of factors that go into that but it all started after one of the chapel messages that I listened to at the Masters seminary and the speaker said he was talking about missions and he said you don’t really understand missions until you’ve actually done missions and that kind of stuck in my mind and I’m like I’ve never been on a missions trip not even a short-term missions trip and I do I do love missionaries but I feel like I don’t have as much of a heart as I could and even as I should so it made me thinking about made me think about a little bit and now around the same time Grace Community Church you know that’s the church in California that we’re part of they were letting people in the church know about their STM trips they had had begun a new initiative to get more people in the church involved with short-term missions or what they call short-term ministries and they were looking for people to sign up and they have teams going to various countries in the world to missionaries that the church supports and partners with and one of the places that we learned that they were sending a team was Ukraine and we have a connection to Ukraine because my wife emma is part Ukrainian her family her dad is fully Ukrainian his her she has relatives in Ukraine Ukraine speaks a good portion of Ukraine speaks Russian and Emma knows Russian or knows a good amount of Russian so we have a connection to this country and we also thought about in terms of people who could go on this trip we would be a great asset to the team emma has a great emma has the connection and she has the language ability and though I don’t speak Russian I can pick up languages somewhat well and I’ve learned a little bit of Russian in the past and I’ve the Lord has given me some ability in teaching and this particular STM mission was looking for those who could teach children and share the gospel so we’re thinking well the Lord has given us this opportunity this seems like something that we’re equipped to do let’s apply and of course this is all a part of what really is the calling for each one of us which is to fulfill the Great Commission this was one way that we saw that we could advance that Commission in a way that the Lord has uniquely equipped us so we signed up and we were accepted and we became part of the team and so that’s why we went to Ukraine now some background of the country another kind of like thing that I’d like to get out of the way right in the beginning is that you might be inclined to call Ukraine not Ukraine but the Ukraine oh you just came back from the Ukraine that’s okay but I would suggest you not to use that phrase it’s kind of an older phrase that people use when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and it just meant that it was one part of the Soviet Union but now it’s an independent country so they would rather that you just say Ukraine we’re not just a part of the Soviet Union anymore we’re our own country so Ukraine not that Ukraine but if you say that Ukraine of course will be understanding anyway it’s what what is this country you see a picture of it on the map we’re talking the eastern part of Europe it’s actually the biggest country in Europe or was the biggest country until Crimea seized or until Russia seized part of its land I think it’s still a biggest country in terms of land and it has a fair amount of people in it 43 million people in the country and where we were Kiev the capital of Ukraine which you can kind of see on the map north central Ukraine about 2.8 million people so a lot of people in this city Ukraine is a former Soviet Union country but it’s not exactly third world no it’s it’s modern it has a lot of vestiges of the Soviet times but its economy has never quite reached up to its potential I mentioned that it is very agriculturally rich in fact when Germany invaded eastward moving towards Russia and going through ukrane they actually carted part they’re carted train-car loads of Ukrainian soil back to Germany because they figured this is the greatest soil we want it in our own land so there’s a great potential in Ukraine and not only in agricultural products but in other things but it’s never quite lived up to that potential because of its domination by the Soviet Union and then because even after becoming independent which it did in 1991 when the Soviet Union basically broke up even when it became independent there were many holdovers from the communist regime and there was a lot of corruption in the government and that has been a problem in Ukraine ever since its independence I should also say that Ukraine did exist before it was dominated by the Soviets it’s actually one of the most ancient states you go back to the Middle Ages I think around 800 and there was Kiev in ruse which was the largest Kingdom principality in Eastern Europe in those days it was quite something but eventually it was dominated by other powers and basically has been under control of various other nations up until about 1991 but after becoming independent and trying to install something like a democratic government corruption has been a problem in Ukraine and in 2005 there was the Horan’s revolution which is basically the people rising up because they they saw that the election the particular election for the president was not fair it was fixed it was not a true vote and they basically boycotted it and they forced that president to concede to the other person and to do a recount and that other president was elected but in 2014 and this might be more in your recent memory there was another kind of revolution because since becoming independent Ukraine it has been thinking about should we look towards the West should we embrace the other countries in Europe and Ally with them and make economic ties with them or should we look towards the east back to Russia there are traditional friend we’re no longer under communism together but hey there democratic now we’re democratic now maybe we should still continue to look towards Russia and in 2014 they were about to sign some sort of major treaty with the West I forget if it was coming into the EU or something like that but all of a sudden when the whole country and the whole world was expecting to heaven de about-face they made a new agreement with Russia and people are like something’s fishy here and they began to protest some students began to protest against the president at that time but he was not having any of the protests he violently cracked down on them and that just caused them to protest more and that caused him to crack down on them more and the the unrest kept building and building and building and building until eventually this president just ran away he left the country fled to Russia and Ukraine is basically leaderless and it was in a state of like what’s about to happen we don’t know who’s in control what’s going on and then Russia said hey look things are unstable in your country we have some Russian citizens there especially in Crimea we’re afraid for them we’re gonna come and invade and that’s what they did they seized the bottom portion of Ukraine you see that kind of peninsula Island looking thing that’s the Crimean Peninsula the base they took all of that over and said we’re doing this to protect our own citizens Ukraine too decided not to fight back so they didn’t wonder they didn’t first of all they had a problem in leadership who was supposed to be in control this was an opportunity for Russia to hit Ukraine while it was down but also did they really want to get to a full-blown war with Russia they decided not to but after after Russia seized Crimea they had a little referendum there and they said do you really want to be part of Ukraine and you only part of Russia and what do you know the people in the occupied territory of Crimea decided we were to be part of Russia and so it has remained in Russian hands since that time Ukraine does not recognize that most of the world does not recognize that but that is the situation and of course there was also a an uprising in the eastern part of Ukraine towards Russia where some pro-russia rebels decided that they also wanted to secede enjoyed Russia but that that was not totally successful it’s actually still ongoing there’s still violence there’s still clashes and that part of Ukraine between what are supposedly pro-russian rebels but who seemed to have some very sophisticated Russian military equipment and personnel but Russia has disavowed any official support for these rebels but it’s very sympathetic towards them and would welcome more parts of Ukraine so if you wondering what relations are like between Ukraine and Russia they are not good and that’s because of the recent happenings and even when the Ukrainians we were talking to this sometimes came up on conversation like this is still something that they’re dealing with and that as a big deal to them so that’s some of the political history and economic history of Ukraine but also important for you to know is the religious history this is an orthodox country we’re talking Eastern Orthodox there are some Catholics in the country but mostly its Eastern Orthodox you see the statistic there about 62 percent unlike America which is becoming more and more secular Ukraine is very much religious most people you talk to you they will say yes I am a Christian and I go to the Orthodox Church when you ask about the gospel they don’t really understand and they’re much there they will fall back onto rituals and good works because that’s the way they’ve been raised sixty-two percent Orthodox about 10 percent Catholic 4 percent of people identify as Protestant of course we don’t know how many Protestants are actually Christians but you can get the idea that though there are a number of Christians in Ukrainian I think I heard somewhere that it is the greatest number of Baptists in the former Soviet Union are in Ukraine but it is still a land that is mostly the people still do not understand the gospel and have not embraced the gospel and also many cults in Ukraine even while we were there we saw I think so was it Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons they are welcome or they are allowed into the country and they are they have a sizable presence there but we went because we want to want to share the true gospel so that’s a little bit about the country how about the church and the missionary that we’re part of are that we partnered with so this is Greg and foo Shawn and they are missionaries from Grace Community Church they left Grace Community Church in 1992 Greg is a TMS graduate when he arrived in Ukraine and this is basic right after they came out of the Soviet Union so everything is new like lots of uncertainty in that country he helped newly founded open biblical seminary which is just right outside of Kiev and this is one of the seminaries that is part of TMA I you know our church has been supporting the Masters Academy International this can add this this group of seminaries all throughout the world that are connected with Grace Community Church and the Masters seminary and the idea is train up the leaders to be able to train up their own people and give the gospel so he became a part of that seminary he also worked with one of the churches their Redeemer you know a revival church but eventually he helped establish a new church and that’s the church that we partnered with Grace Bible Church of Kiev founded in 2000 it’s been in Kiev for eighteen years now but has just moved to a new location they have a new building and they it’s not totally finished yet they’re actually still finishing the construction of that building this picture at the bottom is of their church when it was still in the library so you can see about 25 2014 it is still relatively small and young but we that was the the group that we wanted to come visit encourage and be a part of say something about Greg just to give you a little bit about him actually interacting with him and spending time with him he rides reminds me a lot of pastor Bobby actually he’s a very just someone that you can have confidence in who knows the word who loves the people has a not has an understanding of what the church needs in that particular area the people of Ukraine and and how to work with them and how to interact with them felt very secure is not the right word but I had had a great amount of confidence in him and in his wife was Sean very generous very hospitable very loving but very hard-working both of them you can see how much they how how much they labor for the Lord and for the people of Ukraine and that’s true of missionaries in general right the short term missions teams we we do only a fraction of what the real missionaries do and Greg and Sean have shown themselves to be faithful so we wanted to come what was our goal to come alongside this church 17 members from Grace Community Church including M and myself we went to Kiev under the leadership of Mark Smith he was actually someone who’s part of our same fellowship group at Grace Community Church he’ll come up on one of the slides and I’ll show you who he is more specifically to go there for two weeks about June 15th to June 30th and we had a couple goals one is to encourage the church and the missionaries I’ve come to understand that the the most important focus of an STM trip is the missionary helped him encourage him refresh him refresh his church come alongside them in the work don’t try and do something independent from that church because they’re the ones who are really established they’re the ones who know what’s going on and they’re the ones who can continue the work once you leave because if you just show up do a little bit and then leave and there’s no sports structure around that then you may end up doing more harm than good so our goal was to encourage the church and the missionaries help them equip them bless them assist them and the outreaches that they actually want to do and I’ll mention what those are in just a second and also very practically help establish the churches presence they’ve just moved to a new part of Kyiv most people in that area don’t even know about this church it’s kind of you have to go around a certain certain number of exactly back roads but kind of like that if you didn’t know that church was there you probably would never even find it we wanted to let the community know that there is an evangelical church there not only for the unbelievers who are looking for a place with the truth but for believers too we’re looking for good teaching so we wanted to do those things and the outreach is that the church specifically asked us to assist with our was a softball camp kids home visits and an English cafe now if you remember our STM support letters we talked about things slightly different than this but we were told right at the beginning hey with this STM trip be flexible because they’re trying to assess the situation the best they can they want to know who’s really interested in doing a VBS who’s really interested in an English cafe what’s the point of holding one of these things if nobody’s going to come and so even up to the last minute they were trying to figure out what is actually gonna be the best thing for the STM trip to assist with and in the end they decided it would be these three ministries and I’ll talk a little bit more about what each of these involved and what were the outcome of each so now you’ve got a little bit of background of the country the church the missionaries and what our team was meant to do this by the way is after we arrived in Kiev in the airport there took a little picture there praise the Lord nobody got lost there were no major delays we didn’t lose any luggage God provided in that way let me introduce you to some of the people in the Kiev Church that we got to know first is Kolya or we also called Nick so he’s that he’s the guy in each one of these pictures he’s kind of like the guy who was overseeing the outreaches he’s part of the staff of the church at Kiev Bible Church or grace bible church he is not a pastor but he’s a preacher there he helps with a number of things he also is trained as a professional translator in fact it if I remember correctly Hema at the Shepherd’s conference he’s the one translating MacArthur into Russian very very skilled in language totally fluent in English totally fluent in Russian and Ukrainian and really great guy true heart for the Lord true zeal for the gospel and really funny he has a very very witty sense of humor he actually was saved and you may have heard us tell you this before he was saved through an STM trip through a softball camp I can’t remember how many years ago it was but Americans came to Grace Bible Church he was just somebody who lived in the community some Americans got to know him in one particular talking with him and eventually told him hey you need to repent and the Lord moved his heart so that he would and now he’s been raised up as someone to bring others in so he has a true heart for this outreach some others to introduce you to Slava and Oksana so Slava is the one on the left in that left picture and that that’s mark Smith next to him he’s our team leader and then you can see his wife Oksana in this southern picture and it’s other picture and his daughter Leda my Slava is one of the pastors at the church at Grace Bible grace bible church he’s the russian pastor or I guess Ukrainian pastor and he’s another person who’s just totally solid and knows the word zealous for the Lord explaining the gospel continually and he also has an interesting testimony he was actually saved he’s one of those people who tried to disprove the Bible but in doing so actually became to believe the Bible and I heard part of his testimony he he ended up being saved at a pastors conference he wasn’t a pastor but somehow he had gotten invited and like people didn’t understand why he was there but the Lord was actually using that to draw him and so at one point at a conference would of like do any of you pastors need to like repent before the Lord and rededicate yourself to him he went forward and he wasn’t actually he wasn’t a pastor but that was when he actually was moved to repentance oh by the way I think you may have heard this before when people say they got saved in Ukraine and in Russia they don’t say oh this is when I got saved they say this is when I repent it which I think it’s kind of cool anyways that Slava and his wife Oksana wonderful Christians but probably the two who are most dear to us are these two Misha and Yulia those are two of our team members next to them Nathan and Psalm but Misha the man there in the white shirt and Yulia Thea the woman all the way on the right of that picture they were our hosts each each of the people each of our team members were distributed in two different houses and apartments when we arrived in Kiev and Emma and I were placed with this couple and we’re so glad to the Lord for that they are I think probably in their 40s now and they live in a one-bedroom apartment and no children but so full of the Lord’s love within two weeks we just felt like we became family with them every day just showing great hospitality to us wonderful breakfast and Misha would make and we would just talk about the Lord we talked about Ukraine or talk about America or talk about English and Russian they actually gave me a number of lessons in Russian trying to learn more and more and sometimes it was comical the outcome of my trying to learn but I did learn some things but Misha is the worship leader the music leader at the church his wife is also musically skilled and you can see Misha actually in one of our one of our times leading us in song and in music he in terms of a job he’s an uber driver and an interior decorator who works with plaster but he is beyond those things he’s most concerned about the Lord’s Kingdom and he has a heart for the church and just a really sweet man and his wife EULA or Yulia just a wonderful person also she would be so encouraging to me when everybody learned some new Russian word or Russian phrase she’d be like oh wow you know super wow you did that good job they didn’t know they don’t speak full English they know some English and I was learning a little bit of Russian but thankfully Emma was able to because she knows much more Russian she was able to help us work through any particular terms that one side or the other didn’t understand and that was a great blessing but our we felt our souls knit to these two and Lord willing we will be able to see them again sometime soon because we miss them very much Yulia by the way she works as a house cleaner so those are two other people we met some others from the church I’ll just briefly mention this man all the way in the top left that’s some bulk Don he’s another person who was saved through softball outreach this fellow in the middle not the one who is resting on his shoulder that’s a one of our team members Gabriel but the fellow in the same picture that is Vitaly he’s another person saved through softball ministry this is Anton next to him another another member of the church someone who hosted our people in fact I think almost all these people were host to our team the the two ladies in this top right picture one of them on her left that’s Linda our team member but the lady to her right is Naja she didn’t speak any English but she was willing to host two of our team members and was a very gracious host to them these other three volk Don Vitale and on tone they all they all spoke a good amount of English particularly Bogdanov Batali they could speak pretty fluently this family in the bottom left two of our team members that are the ones in the black shirts that’s Sara and Psalm but the other three that’s another family from the church the man and the woman next to him that’s etic and Yulia headaches is an elder at the church he also does help lead the music and that is their niece young lady in between our two main team members that is Lea and she came from Siberia actually and she was with us there in Ukraine they knew some English but not as much as some of the other people but we still got to see their great heart for the Lord and etic and particularly he was part of one of our outreach groups I got to see how the Lord has really taught him and how he knows the word so well and is passionate about sharing it with other people this young lady in the bottom center that’s spatha and she has also saved through softball outreach and she’s a zealous gospel proclaimer and then this fellow on the bottom right that is Joseph and he’s actually the son of Greg and fou Shaun and he was there with us he’s also I don’t know if you could tell from the picture but he’s a bit of a jokester there’s always always making things quite humorous there but someone who can speak English and Russian and who was we were working together with each of these people as part of reaching out to the people of Ukraine so that’s all the background let’s actually talk about what we did what happened but first we arrived in Kiev and Kiev is one of the bigger and more modern cities in Ukraine and in some ways it’s not that different from some of the cities that we have here though there’s an obvious Soviet influence you can see a number of apartment buildings and this this picture here on the left those are the Soviet style apartments basically made out of concrete concrete little sections is stacked on top of each other and there they’re a holdover from that previous era but where we were there’s tons of those little apartment buildings and the roads and cars all that kind of thing we arrived in Kiev on Friday the 15th feeling pretty jet-lagged thankfully they didn’t put us to work right away they helped us adjust after we arrived we had dinner with them they served us some delicious food almost all the food we had in Ukraine was delicious I think pretty much all of it maybe there’s one or two things I’m like mm-hmm but I resolved that whatever the whatever our host put before us I was not going to complain about it I was just going to eat it and thankfully the the lorda made it so that I could get through even some particularly hard for me to imagine eating dishes but they actually we’re pretty good so they served us food after we arrived and then the next day that Saturday the 16th they took us out to one of the members of the church to her country cottage what they call a dacha it’s very common for people in Ukraine and in Russia and that part of the world to have place in the city and then a country cottage and the cottage doesn’t have electricity or plumbing but it’s often where you would go for the weekend and so they brought us out over there we got to enjoy some good food got to know the church the people the church a little bit more got to sing together got to do some various outdoor games like volleyball and it was a good time but also lots of mosquitoes oh man we were getting bit up so that was the first two days survival and adjustment and then we had our first Sunday together and wow what a great great time of fellowship worship and hearing the word we just I think both Sundays we just really didn’t want the services to end because you just really felt the bond of Christ I think that’s particularly true of small churches because everybody knows everybody or you’re just with each other in kind of smaller spaces and you talk more and you really feel yes we are one in Christ doesn’t matter for Rick Rehn Ian or American doesn’t matter what language we speak but we love the Lord and we love one another I think we felt that in both of our services but what did we do in particular in in these services we had some things that we wanted to do to encourage the the church there so we prepared some special music for them we had prepared English him you may know all glory be to Christ it’s like the song that’s set to auto ensign it’s all same tune but instead of just talking about how you know life goes on it’s more about how in the end the only thing that matters is Jesus Christ everything else just fades away so we sang that song for them in English and they had a Russian translation and I also did a special piece of music for them I sang blessed assurance in English I did that as a solo and had our team member Daniel he’s there with the guitar and on the left picture he did the accompaniment and again that was they had a slide translating that into Russian a lot of the English hymns that we sing they also sing but they sing it with Russian words which are mostly the same believe the service was in Russian even though we are in Ukraine and that’s because they want to be as inclusive as possible as to who might show up if they speak only in Ukrainian and there happens to be someone who’s passing through who doesn’t know Ukrainian that well then they’re not going to be able to benefit as much but pretty much everybody in that area speaks Russian in terms of the languages in Ukraine as you go further east it’s much more Russian as you go further west it’s more Ukrainian and we are in the middle and it’s kind of a mixture of both but the services were in Russian and so a lot of things would be translated into Russian so we sang special music and then we sang hymns together and those would include some of the hymns that we would recognize and also some that we’re just particular Russian or Ukrainian hymns and really enjoyed hearing and singing some of those we did our best to sing it some of us can’t read Cyrillic or even if we can we’re like that’s struggling to keep up with the rest that’s really could be the alphabet that they used to write Russian but the sound oh you even if you don’t know the words you you hear the the way the music is written and you feel your heart moved if you’ve ever heard Russian music or that kind of music Ukrainian music it almost sounds a little bit melancholy but it’s not actually sad as some of the people were there saying it’s actually just from the heart very heartfelt and sincere music and really beautiful lyrics whenever we would actually get the translation or hear what hear what it said I found myself very moved by it so we sang together Daniel gave his testimony as part of this first service one of our one of our members how the Lord brought him to salvation what brought him to repentance and then mark not pictured actually on the next slide mark there on the left he preached he did the first sermon or he did the sermon that Sunday and Kolya standing there next to him was translating into Russian for the rest of the group oh I should also say they did special music for us too they and they did a song I think in Russian so we pre he preached and we sang and then too we had lunch afterwards more fellowship time and then in the evening we went out to the softball field so they are you but what we ended up doing softball was kind of like a clearing a field in between a number of apartment buildings not really designed for softball but we made it work just you know a square square area and though our outreach officially began the Monday the church wants to I don’t know if they already did I think they did they have this habit of doing softball on Sunday evenings as a way to let the community know about them to make make friends with some of the kids in the community and tell them about the gospel and so we went with them that first Sunday evening we went out to the field so all the kids around to say hey you won’t play softball and a whole bunch of people just joined in now softball is kind of a novelty there they’re not really they don’t really know about baseball softball that’s not their big sports they’re much more into soccer and basketball but it’s kind of cool to like oh what’s this softball oh you know these Americans baseball what’s all this about and so they want to play they want to learn and the tons of tons of young people join us at first in the evening and so we played with them taught them a little bit how to play and then we told them hey we’re doing this all week we’re doing this all week and all next week and you should come and I think some of the people even we met that first day they would indeed come back for the rest of our time so let’s talk about the softball outreach now so every morning from about 10:00 to 12:00 we did this softball camp and what well I’ll say this first before we began we had a little devotional time about maybe 9:45 to about 10:00 we’ve just encouraged I want to encourage our team with the word so sometimes it was pastor Greg who led that sometimes I led that sometimes it was on another one of our team members who led that but then we’d gather together with Ukrainian kids who came and some of them were very young probably like oh four or five and someone they’re a little bit older I think we had somebody who was up to 17 but they came to play softball with us and so first we would warm up and then we would throw and catch for a little bit we’d have to teach them how to catch that teach them how to throw it because like they’re not watching baseball on television they say oh you know just do what they do on TV then they never seen that sometimes a little bit comical how they would line up with the bat or you know what what they try to do to catch and like no no this is how you do it so we we throw and catch from them a little bit and then we’d actually start the game and the younger kids because we actually end up having a lot of kids who came we split it up into two games younger kids played softball in one area of the field and then the older kids played softball in another area of the field now a lot of these kids did not speak English so we our goal was to make friends with these kids and tell them about the gospel but we had to go about in a certain way if they didn’t speak English we would say to them certain things in Russian that we had learned or that we could we would do some pretty easy language neutral affirmations like you know when somebody does a good play you know yes you know a good job or saint-malo jets you know that’s the Russian for a good job watch on how to show very good do lots of you know high fives all that kind of thing to affirm that hey we’re your friends and we we appreciate you and we like we like doing this with you but some kids did know a little bit more English and for those we could we could get to talk to even more I’ll say more about one of those kids that I got to talk to you because he knew a lot of English a little bit later on but also we used the translators that we had available many people from the church as I mentioned they speak both English and Russian and so what we would have we would maybe stand with one of those people and a kid or two and just talk to the kid through the translator it’s a little bit awkward but it does work and we’re able to get to know them a little bit ask them some questions about them ask some questions about their lives and even talk to them about the gospel so we would play softball for about an hour and 45 minutes we could finish at 11:45 we’d come back so you see the two pictures there I was playing softball at the top let me come back and have a time of testimony one of the Americans would share how the Lord saved him and give a gospel appeal and I was really encouraged and amazed at how attentive the kids were to these these gospel testimonies and we did that each day and after the testimony was finished we would then just talk to the kids afterwards why as we all enjoyed some I that’s pretty much the softball camp and next slide show you the groups this is the last day we took a group shot of each softball group the older kids on the top left with our team and with the Ukrainian cranium church members and then the younger kids in the bottom right so we had a bunch of people I think goes maybe like maybe 40 overall about 40 kids who came out to softball with us I’ll talk a little bit more about the results in some of the kids that we met specifically in a moment so that was the one of the things that was one of our main outreaches another one was the kids home visits now I don’t have any pictures of this because we actually weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the kids house the idea of the kids home is it’s kind of like a mixture between an orphanage and a halfway house and an asylum because there are a lot of troubled kids and orphans and just troubled family situations in Ukraine you know there’s the stereotype with Russians and in people from Eastern Europe is that they’re just all drunks well that’s true in a lot of cases drinking is a huge problem in that part of the world and alcoholics or others who make the family situation very difficult the kids will the kids will run away or the kids will be taken out from that family and I’ll end up here and I’ve been in one of the kids homes kids might remain in this home for a couple of weeks a couple months or even longer but a lot of them are just really not in a good place but the church and our team along with the church we wanted to reach out to these kids and become their friends and tell them about the gospel so I actually wasn’t part of the kids home team because it took place at the same time a softball but Emma was and so she went with them and kind of like with softball we split into an older group I think older and younger kids and also was split between guys and girls and at the kids home we tried to do a couple different things we do like some activities and crafts and games that we would do a presentation about life in America kind of like a PowerPoint presentation but it was really an opportunity for us to share our testimonies and then just talk with the kids and so we did that the goal was to do that every Tuesday and Thursday so we did that the Tuesday did that the Thursday the boys group the older boys group was not enthused with us and like I think we had seven at the beginning I’m like five left immediately but we did get to speak to two of these other boys and they showed some interest and Slava who was with our group he forgot to share the whole gospel that you know talk about what the Bible says from the beginning to the end and they were attentive to hear and the older girls group was a little bit more willing to engage and so Hema and the other girls got to have to spend more time with them so we were only going to be there Tuesday and Thursday each week but actually after the first week we couldn’t go back because it had been placed under quarantine we didn’t realize this but when we went back the Thursday we actually weren’t supposed to be there nobody told us that their kids home had been placed under quarantine for chickenpox and staph infection nobody told us so that’s kind of like Oh what were we exposed to but in a way we thank the Lord for that because they gave us more time to follow up with what we said about the gospel that first day and to spend more time with the kids the second day and then I think Emma told me that some of the girls were pretty pretty hard to talk to and kind of hostile the first day but they were much more amiable the second day so even though our health was put at risk the Lord used it for good and though we couldn’t go back the second week we we made sure that we can make some care packages for the people at the kids home and include explanations of the gospel so that whenever the home was opened up again we could we could send that and so that’s one of the things the church will do they haven’t already done since we’ve left so that was the second outreach the kids home and the third was the English cafe so softballs like from 10 to 12 kids home would be around the same time we’d come back for lunch there’d be a little break in the part of the day and then in the afternoon from about 3:00 to 5:00 we had the English cafe for young people for the younger kids and the idea to English cafe is kind of similar to what we were thinking for kids home where we would have a time of English lesson slash activity or crafts or game then there’d be a presentation about life in America slash the gospel in your testimony and then for the older group which I’ll tell you about more in just a second we then have broke up into different conversation groups where we just talk talk about the presentation talk about topics related to the presentation and talk about the gospel that’s the whole point we wanted to get the conversation back towards the gospel but we had so many people the first day the Monday it was like oh no it’s like 40 people or something like that we realized we couldn’t have everybody at the same time so we actually split up the times between the afternoon where the younger kids would come and then the evening where the older kids and adults would come this was something where adults could be part of it too so the younger English cafe English camp ESL lessons that was from three to five and it basically turned into a VBS and the kids loved it we had more and more Ukrainian kids coming each day and the most was actually at the end so we had some great team members who were you know would do their songs and the games the activities teach a little bit of English and talk about the word Gabriel there with Bogdan he would use the Bible and the wordless book as a way to explain the gospel to the children highlighting an aspect of the wordless book each day and you can see in the bottom left someone doing his life in America presentation that’s Nathan there and like I said the Lord caused that to really be successful the kids really enjoyed it some of the parents who came or had kids who came they expressed their appreciation of just the what we were doing in that so I praise the Lord for that again I wasn’t alright I should say I wasn’t part of that group I was part of the adults English cafe this is the one I know a little bit more about but I know that they were doing good work and the other one and the adults group pretty much doing the same thing except it was more English lesson in the beginning than the life in America presentation and then conversation groups less songs and games didn’t quite do that Tyler was our English professor sir Tyler’s there in the in the left slide and and then here are some pictures of Emma and I doing our life in America presentations it seemed to find that interesting each I should have said this also for the kids and for the adults though we were trying to help them learn English we also had a translator with us Kolya usually was the one who was translating into Russian while we were talking about each one of these things so telling about life in America tell them about the gospel and why we have come to give our lives to God and why it’s important for them to do so but I feel like they’re really the most important time of all of this was the conversation groups afterwards I had a picture there some some treats we did put the cafe in cafe yeah we had some team members and long with some Ukrainians you prepared some desserts as part of the discussion time along with some tea and so that was a blessing I think to all but I say the conversation time was really important because you may have come to realize that when you give a message in a large group even a sermon or testimony people can hear it and they can understand it to a certain extent but they just don’t apply it to themselves and like oh that’s good for other people but it’s when you have those one-on-one conversations afterwards or their small group conversations afterwards where people actually realize oh wait this applies to me and that’s what we tried to do in these conversation groups we had like I said we had a bunch of people so we had like four or five groups and the exact people in each group fluctuated a little bit but we over time we got to know the different people in our groups and for our group Emma and my group only a lot of people who profess to be believers but we wanted to make sure that they really understood the gospel so we had everyone share their testimonies and we talked about various topics related to the Bible and we also talked about what is the true gospel what is the essence of the gospel how do good works play a role is it possible to have a one of the presentation someone talked about fruit one of the American presentations talked about the fruit of salvation and good fruit versus bad fruit one thing to talk about is is it possible have good and bad food at the same time how is that possible what what has God called us to and we talked about what is baptism because baptism is a big big deal to people coming from Orthodox background what is the true role of baptism doesn’t have isn’t important for salvation if it’s not what is its purpose how do good works play a role so we talked about each one of those things now again I’ll say a little bit more about some of the specific conversations we have with some people in just a moment so that was that’s basically our schedule so morning softball 10:00 to 12:00 afternoon kids English cafe 3:00 to 5:00 and then in the evening from 7:00 and 9:00 we did the adults English cafe and many people who we met in softball we would invite to the English cafe and so it was cool we would start a conversation or a friendship in softball and continue it in the cafe and a lot of times that’s where we really got to share openly about the gospel before I tell you a little bit more about some of Ukrainians you met should mention the second Sunday second Sunday like the first we had a time of singing time of special music actually got to sing sang a song with Misha our host the one who was in charge of music at the church we did it is well with my soul but we kind of did like a mixture of English and Russian I sang the verse first verse in English and he joined me in the chorus in English and then he sang the second verse in Russian and I joined him in Russian in the course and then we both sang the last verse and chorus together in Russian I was really really cool but the second Sunday was also the time where I got to preach so I preached from Matthew 6 kind of improved and condensed the the sermon that I did previously on worry from Matthew 6 so I thought I’d be edifying to the church and so I shared it in Kolya again was translating so again it was a really wonderful time and we had fellowship afterwards and that got lots of good feedback from the church about the sermon they said that they had really encouraged that they had they had not heard that kind of exposition on that passage before so that was encouraging to me now I’ve given you a lot of generalities but now I want to tell you about some of the people that we met and how even the Lord used me and Emmett to talk to some of them so some of the people that I met a softball and I know that we’re kind of running short on time so I’ll try and be succinct some of the people I met at softball another book Don we saw certain names getting repeated among the people that we met but this is another book Don he spoke a good amount of English and he had a friend who spoke very good English and so we talked together and so I asked him about the gospel I gave him that classic question if you were to die and appear before the Lord and he asked you why should I let you into heaven and not send you to hell what would you say and he said I don’t know mmm that’s an important question and so I explained him the gospel now I was encouraged that when I explained the gospel he affirmed everything that I was saying that it is by faith and not by works and that Jesus has to be the one who makes you acceptable to God and not you yourself and he affirmed all that but he seemed hesitant to say that he was going to heaven because as he explained to me he felt like his life was not following the Lord like it should be and I also found out from him that he probably goes to an orthodox church because he mentions that there are icons at the church as I said you need to get into a church where you can hear the word where you can grow where you can understand what the Bible says also in a separate conversation we talked about why is it so important to read the Bible and so he was very attentive and it was it was good to have that conversation with him and Lord willing because I every time we we talked with somebody in the day at the end of the day our whole group along with the Ukrainian church we would talk about what are the conversations we had so Lord willing Lord continue to work in bogden’s heart and the church can follow up with him another guy met deme on the top right he he came to softball also came to the English cafe I asked him via translator because he didn’t speak all that well in English I said do you understand these testimonies that we’ve been sharing and I realized he did not quite understand because he’s like yeah you all had something bad happen in your life and then God made everything better oh my god that’s not really it but at that moment he didn’t seem interested in talking further but he did come back to the English cafe and though he wasn’t in our group that the others were talking about the gospel so Lord willing the Lord continued to work a seed in him another guy I got to talk to was Maxime and he didn’t speak English but again would be a translator I wanted to approach him about the gospel and I I had just given my testimony in a particular day and I went up to Maxime afterwards and I said what about you I was number one in my life and it wasn’t really God even though I said it even though I said it was what about you is God number one in your life or is it you and a first he said family was number one in his life and I was like wait but don’t you know what the Bible says that Jesus says you can’t love father mother or brother sister son or daughter more than him not even your own life but he shared a little bit about his family and he’s definitely one of those kids who comes from kind of broken home his father got addicted to gambling and basically had to be kicked out of the house because he was stealing and doing other things to enable his addiction but then I I went back to that other question why would God let you into heaven what would you tell him and he said something along the lines of good works was kind of interesting he says whatever the standard is for getting into heaven like 80 percent good works I think I would be right below that like 79 percent which I feel like is funny because it’s kind of like a humble answer and a prideful answer at the same time but anyways it was a great opportunity for me and for the Ukrainian translator with me cuz I said oh but do you know what God standard is it tells us in the Bible I brought him to Jesus word in Matthew five you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect the only we can get in heaven is if you’re perfect and he said well then you’re telling me that nobody gets in heaven I’m like you’re thinking the right way because that’s what Paul says Romans 3:23 and then we brought him to Roman’s for all of sinned and fall short of the glory of God I said if that were the end of story that’d be terrible but God has made a way and we talked about the verses around Romans 3:23 that we were justified by faith apart from works and that is why we are saved and then he asked a little bit later but there are plenty of people who say they believe and then they don’t live in a very good way and at that point it was bogged on from the church who was helping me translate he kind of took over the conversation which is good he was able to speak much more quickly than I was and even though I couldn’t understand everything he was saying I could tell that he was clarifying for him what is true belief and I and I caught from their little Russian I couldn’t understood that he went to that passage from Jesus where he Jesus says many will say to me Lord Lord and I will tell them I never knew you and he also used that that wheelbarrow analogy you may have heard the wheelbarrow and the tightrope thing where people watching this man walk across the tightrope and he he says do you think I can do this me like I’m not really sure and then he doesn’t know like wow that’s amazing you’re amazing he’s like think I can do it with a wheelbarrow no like huh yeah probably he doesn’t with a wheelbarrow and like wow that’s great you’re amazing he’s like you think I could do it with a person in the wheelbarrow go across this tightrope over this great chasm you think I could go across and come back and like yeah we think you can he’s like all right then get in the wheelbarrow and when Maxime heard that I could see his face light up because he understood yeah there is a difference between true and false belief we must have spoken with Maxime for more than an hour and though he didn’t fall on his knees and repent afterwards I could tell that he was really taking a heart what we were talking about and he this was one of the last days of softball and we definitely wanted to keep keep up this relationship and so we told him that the church would continue to do the softball outreach even into every Sunday evening even after the Americans left and he showed interest in and coming he also became my friend on Facebook so that’s kind of cool though our conversations are somewhat stilted because he’s big Russian so it’s kind of like it’s a little funny I briefly mentioned a few other people we met Oleg in the top right he actually is a just a awesome example of how the Lord uses different people in the church all to bring about the same same gospel work because Gabriel one of our team members just happen to talk with him when he and his daughter were walking by the softball field and Gabriel’s like hey I don’t even know what he said to him because he was off in the distance but he basically struck up a conversation with this guy Oleg spoke some English they told him about the gospel and then he invited him English camp and winning Oleg came and he was in a different conversation group but they talked about the gospel there and then he came to church the following Sunday when I did my sermon on worry and after the sermon he felt he said he was convicted and he said what you talked about in the sermon is exactly who I am I’m just a person who lives for the things of this world all I do is work I’m consumed by worry I don’t follow God and he repented he expressed repentance and I praise the Lord because every liked it just as he says one person planted the seed another person watered and another person put in the sickle to harvest now we pray that Oleg will persevere in the faith and this won’t simply be oh the Americans are exciting all that’s kind of new great that he would persevere but Slava and the others they continue to talk with him about the gospel so seems like you really understood and they were willing to affirm his repentance Karina was another girl who was part of our conversation group seems to me a believer but doesn’t come from a very good church so it was really important that we talked through some of the gospel topics and Bible topics that we did but she seemed to really enjoy being with us and talking about the word and would willing she will even become part of grace bible church in Kiev Natalie Marianne Jaeger are all related Marian Jaeger are her children Marian Jaeger came to the softball camp and to the English cafe and they’re not believers I don’t even think they’re Orthodox but they were willing to talk about the gospel Mary showed great interest yang Gor showed an interest too but he had a lot of objections especially related to evolution but our group continued to talk with him and talk with him talk to them and you kept coming back sure praise the Lord that seems to be suggesting something but also his mom came and his mom came one time into our conversation group and that was when we were sharing testimonies and she seemed particularly moved by when one of the persons actually multiple people sharing their testimonies and when I talked with her afterward she said this is also interesting to me and I said why cuz I’m like is it just because we’re talking in English and she spoke a fair amount of English and she said no because or she said I see that other people who have gone really down in their lives I see that I’m not the only one so I see that she must have really been struggling with something feelings of emptiness or just not having any hope and then she’s hearing these testimonies the people who have have come to faith in God and she says I realized that I need I need to find my way to God I was like that’s that’s good didn’t you know the Bible tells us how we do that she’s like yeah that’s why I want to study the Bible like that’s great I’m like do you have a Bible she says I do I said do you read it and she said I want to read it as part of a Bible study I said that’s good but you can read it on your own – in fact I recommend that if you’re gonna start anywhere in the Bible start in the New Testament Gospels I recommended to her specifically the Gospel of Mark and she seemed really earnest and excited about that and I was looking forward to having her back in our conversation groups that we could pursue that more she didn’t come back I’m not really sure why she did say or her kids her kids came back and they said that she’d been struggling with headaches and just wasn’t able to come maybe so but she did hear those testimonies and she did hear our and we did have that conversation and so I pray to the Lord to continue to work on her heart she did seem to show a real earnestness to know the Bible of course now she knows about the church it’s the Lord willing she will come back and Lord willing the Lord continued to work on Mary and yang Gor they know about the church the church is gonna continue to do softball the church is gonna continue to do English cafe type thing on Friday evenings and so we the Lord can continue these things okay we pretty much have only a minute left we did have a little bit of time for excursions in Kiev so did like a little boat ride we walked around the city went to this amazing chocolate place let’s chocolate to your place and we saw some of the some of the older buildings that the big cathedrals and monasteries didn’t go inside but we looked around the outside did a little bit of souvenir shopping some guys went to the Ukrainian sauna and when I decided we did not want to do that because we were so exhausted but they had a good time with that went to a few of their museums the World War two Museum in Kiev has a big statue it’s kind of like their version of the Statue of Liberty but much more medicine built in Soviet times so you can understand we went to their military museum the chernobyl museum Creina suffered a lot and we also went into the main square where the protests were those violent for the protests that were violently crack down they walked along that strip it’s kind of like it’s still pretty happening place in the city and you can see that that um that tall pillar is part of that same square but eventually we had to say goodbye to their kids and to the people the church we met so with the kids there was some certificates given out and lots of pictures being taken together lots of hugs lots of expressions of friendship but it was even more emotional with the church and you can see some of our members just saying goodbye even trying to take a picture in having a hard time doing that we we met one last time to just talk about what the Lord had done and we met to sing together a little bit and I really liked the song that we sang kind of to end our time I’m not going to play for you because we don’t really have time now but the song says in the chorus and this is a Russian song he talking about God he has made us family or he has made us relatives he has made us friends he has given us a new name we are called Christians I felt the words of that song we’re just so so true about Ukrainians and American believers just coming together living together and serving together even for these two weeks but we had to say our goodbyes and then we had to go so in summary what was accomplished what was accomplished by the Lord by our team by your prayers and your support well we believe the church was encouraged Kiev church was encouraged instructed via the sermons our fellowship with them the songs our testimonies we have new bonds of fellowship not only between the members of the church but also between the Ukrainians that we met new friendships there we got to share the gospel we got to give the gospel to at least 60 kids and adults and for many of them we had a personal follow-up but we got to say well what about you maybe 10 to 20 Ukrainian children adults got a personal gospel follow up in many many conversations about Jesus Christ we got to see Oleg’s profession of repentance and we know that many other gospel seeds were planted and watered and clearly Grace Bible church’s presence via these outreaches and via the visit of the Americans was made known in the community so we trust that the Lord will continue to work in that but this is something that is not simply what we did but it’s what you did those of you who have prayed for us and supported us SEC Corinthians 4:15 talks about how those who partner in the gospel they they produce Thanksgiving in a multiplied way around the world and that’s what you did by partnering with us and partnering with our team you caused Thanksgiving to be multiplied in Ukraine and you know that verse I kept quoting in some of my letters or some of our letters from first John 3rd John talks about when you support the work of the gospel you are yourself a worker in the gospel you are a partner in the work and alongside the spirit okay that’s all we have time for I have a sum like observations that the things that stuck out to me about being in Ukraine but we can talk about that afterwards as we have our own fellowship have our own conversation of course there’s much more we could say about Ukraine and Kiev and the believers there but I have to do that in conversation let me get close in prayer well guys thank you so much for this church and for the church and Kiev we pray that you would continue to bless and use those believers there and grow the church and Load I also pray that for many of those Ukrainians that we met that the kids and the adults or that you would continue to work in their hearts and bring them to salvation god we know that you are the one with the ultimate power you use us as means but you’re the one who must save so for your own name’s sake because you are a great merciful God please save these people in Ukraine and for Oleg and for the others who have professed repentance we pray God that they would continue in that and they would not fall away in Jesus name absolutely