Created for a Mission

A typical Sunday in the life of the Baptist church in Dubrovitsia. There are four services in three locations. Two services are held in the church building, one is held in Zarichne, a village about 40 minutes away and the last one of the day is held in the village of Celets. It reminds me of being at home at First Baptist Church of Glenarden when I have served at church all day. It is great because the service in Zarichne is held outside. Today it rained and the service was cut short. The last service of the day was held at 7:00pm in the House of Culture in Celets. After going for two weeks straight, I could not hang today, so I did not attend to final service of the day.

I also wanted to catch you up on where we are and what we are doing. Last week was great, on Monday we were supposed to go to the Bee House, a family style setting for orphans who chose to live in the house. The house is really quite unique because one of the requirements is that the kids must attend church. We were not able to go because the power was knocked out by a storm, so we went to the church and spent the day planning. On Tuesday we went to an orphanage for special needs boys. We did not know before we arrived that we would be ministering to only boys and that they would be special needs, but praise God we had a great time together. After leaving the orphanage, we went to the Bee House where we spent a few hours just hanging out and talking to some of the residents who were home. When we arrived the power still was not on but some of the older teens were home. We did a small craft project with a couple of the young ladies. On Wednesday we visit two women. One has been cripple her entire life and is confined to a bed but she is spirit-filled. The other young lady is 28 and I think she has cerebral palsy. She reads a lot, watches educational movies and was very knowledgeable about a lot of things. It was great spending time with and praying with these women.

Please pray for us as we head to Rivne on Wednesday for the translators camp and return to Dubrovitsia for the children’s camp, the youth events and evangelism. Also, Pastor Covington will be traveling on Wednesday to join Natasha and me for the remainder of our time in ministry here. Please pray for his safe flight.   Thank you for praying for us!

I will post some pictures once I am able to post from my computer.

This week has been quite eventful!  We had our planning meeting on last Tuesday where we received our marching orders for the next two weeks from Pastor Michael.  After our meeting we started immediately and visited a family who had 14 children and they lost one last year to a tragic accident.  The next day, Wednesday, we spent the morning shopping for supplies and then visited with the women and a few men at Zaborol, a facility for mentally challenged individuals.    On Thursday we had a unique opportunity to spend the day at a youth festival that was being held for youth from all over the Rivne region.  The youth spent the week in tents, hearing the word of God, playing camp games, and fellowshipping together.  There were about 700 young people in attendance and it is estimated that 200 of them were unbelievers.  The day we attended the festival was the day for the evangelism program.  We spent the afternoon talking with different young people and then attended the service in the evening where all the youth were in attendance.  On Friday, we went to Novastav, a TB clinic where children of all ages come to receive treatment for 2 months because they tested positive on the TB test they received in school or they were exposed to TB at home.  Don’t worry they are not contagious it is preventative treatment.    We closed off our week of servce visiting a family with 7 children.  Four of the children are their natural children and three were adopted from an orphanage.  This family was amazing because even though they did not have a lot they opened up their home to three children who had even less.   While visiting this family in addition to exchanging testimonies and meeting some practical needs, we had the unique opportunity to try authentic Ukrainian “salo” and thus the title of this post.   Salo is a traditional Ukrainian food.  It is similar to fat back.  We were told by Uri, the father, that workers would take salo with them to work in the fields because it does not spoil and because it gives you energy.   Finally we attended Grace church on Sunday.  It is a large church here in Rivne and the Pastor Andrei is a young guy. 

Literally! We arrived pretty much on time on July 3rd. We were met at the airport by Pastor Peter and his daughter Inna. We drive through the heavy traffic in Kyiv and stop for lunch about 2 hours later. We arrived in Rivne (the major city in the region where we will be serving). We dropped our bags of at Inna’s flat, took what we needed and were off to Dubrovitsa for the weekend. We were told before we arrived that the main road between Rivne and Dubrovitsa was closed for repairs but no one talked about the options for the other roads. As we were leaving Rivne we learned that we would have to go through the woods and over a river. Okay, so I turned it around in the title, it just sounded better for a title the way I have it. Anyway, at some point we turned off the main road and rode on a dirt road through the woods for over 30 minutes. The road ended at a river where there were cars waiting the cross the river. In order to cross the river cars had to go two by two on a manually operated ferry. While we waited for our turn, we got out the car, went close to the river and watched as cars boarded the ferry on one side and drove off on the other side. Pedestrians and horse drawn carts where also allowed to cross. It was an exciting and new experience.   We are leaving for Rivne tomorrow.

Family and friends, the time is at hand for my 5 week journey to Ukraine.  This is the longest amount of time that I have spent outside the US since I was 7 years old.  I am ready.  My bags are lined up and ready to go.  Our flight departs at 1:00pm today.  Please pray for travelling mercies and for God to use Natasha and me in the powerful way. 

I got back from Minnesota yesterday.  It was truly a glorious and intense time.  In addition to the training, we got to play and bond with each other.  One of the fun things we did was attend a Twins baseball game.  We also stayed up to talk most nights.  On this past Thursday night I was commissioned by the Baptist General Conference along with 13 other missionaries.  All together there were four single women and five families. 

So, I am back in the DC area for a few days where I will be feverishly preparing for my five week adventure in Ukraine.  Natasha and I depart on Wednesday.  Please pray for our preparation before we go to Ukraine and for our ministry in Ukraine for the five weeks.  We will be serving in orphanages, a women’s sanitarium and with our sister church.  I am looking forward to seeing my Ukrainian family.   

We will arrive in Kyiv on Thursday morning (about 2:00am in the morning EST) and then drive to Rivne and on to Dubrovytsa.  Thus the title of the post - Two Countries (USA & Ukraine), Three Cities (St. Paul, Hyattsville, & Kyiv), & One Town (Dubrovytsa).

Life is such an adventure when you follow after God!

Over the past week I have gotten to know numerous missionaries from all over the world who are in the US from home assignment.  Folks are here from Brazil, Argentina, Japan and the Philippines.   We have laughed together, eaten together and just fellowshipped together.  Yesterday we went on a bus trip about an hour away where we had a picnic lunch at a park by a lake, visited Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little house in the Big Woods home (i.e., Little House on the Prairie), a cheese factory and ice cream store with some yummy ice cream, and an eagle sanctuary.  Our trip took us across into Wisconsin, so I hit another state on this trip.  How exciting! 

I’ve been wanting to share with you since I arrived but we’ve had limited access to the internet.  It is beautiful here in the summer time.  I’ll qualify that statement because I’m not sure what it is like the rest of the year.  The Bethel University campus is great.  It is very peaceful.  There’s a wonderful lake with a path that goes all the way around it.  For the past two nights I have walked to the lake at sunset.  On Monday, Natasha, Katherine, and I walked to the lake.  Last night all appointees went for a walk together. Here’s a couple of pictures of the lake at sunset and some of the appointees.

It has been awesome to reconnect with old friends from the Denver Mac in October and with new friends from the past two MACs.  It is also very inspiring to meet the missionaries who are back in the US on home assignment.  They started arriving yesterday.  There’s a couple here from the Philippines who are retiring after over 30 years of service. 

Please pray for the rest of our time here in Minnesota.

I woke up early this morning to make final preparations for my next adventure to Minnesota.  I will be taking off today at 2:30pm.  I am going for additional training ministry partner development and the BGC/Converge Worldwide bi-annual meeting.  While in Minnesota we will work hard, play some and all the new missionary appointees (including myself) will be commissioned.  I’ll post highlights from the trip as I go. 

I found out this morning that I am at 68.8% of my funding support.  Yeah!!!!  I just want to celebrate the greatness of God.  I am continually amazed at the faithfulness of God in my life.  Thank you to all of you who pray for me on a regular basis.  I truly appreciate you!

Matthew 14:24-29 talks of Peter’s bold step of faith that allowed him to walk on water with Jesus.  I can relate to Peter in that, I am all the way out of the boat and walking on water myself.  It least that’s how I feel.  It’s been a week since my last day working on staff at First Baptist Church of Glenarden.  I am now officially a fulltime missionary appointee engaging in Ministry Partner Discovery.  I know that in the coming days, I will be able to relate more to Peter as he looked at the wind and begun to sink, but I know that Jesus has bid me to come!  I want to be a water walker for the rest of my life.