-- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! --

We had a wonderful western Christmas in Kyiv.  Sunday, we had a joint worship assembly with about 50 present, a surprise since many have left for the holidays.  We also celebrated the baptism of Ira Gnatenko, a second-year university student.  We have known her for about two years.  She was in a BIble class I taught, visited the UEC for the first time to receive a free Bible, came to student nights, and Soup Group.  Vitaly Samodin reached out to her as did many in the church.  She finally decided to give her life to Christ.  The even was a great witness to many and Dima Zhyvov's first time to baptize someone. 

We also had a great Christmas party on Saturday.  About 20 friends gathered for a wonderful meal, carol singing, and a general good time.  It was a great blessing for me. Ukraine doesn't celebrate Christmas until January 6, so I was especially glad to be with friends on Christmas Eve since I was away from my family in the USA. 

We finally finished out the year with the UEC and have put together a budget and tried to tie up all the loose ends though it seems once one gets tied, another pops up. 

Earlier in the month we hosted a C. S. Lewis Seminar in conjunction with the release of the Narnia film.  We were mostly interested in promoting Lewis's writings and hoped the film would generate interest in Lewis works. We wrote a brochure and gave it to all our patrons and ran a contest where we gave away Lewis books and a few tickets to the film (it opens Dec. 29 here). The seminar was a three-hour audio-visual presentation on the life of C. S. Lewis, his conversion, how his faith informed his writing, and a lecture on The Chronicles of Narnia. At the break, I pulled out a silver box with green, silk ribbon with several pounds of Turksih delight, not unlike how the White Witch tempted Edmund! It was so much fun with such a large and enthusiastic crowd--more than 55 came. The UEC's meeting hall was packed. Thanks to Vitya Yevpak borrowing a video projector and Sergiy's work with the internet, the presentation turned out to be very appealing. Many unbelievers were there and so I was just delighted to be able to be a witness for Christ as we discussed Lewis's faith.

And the Lewis books have just flown off the shelves. We have a pretty large collection of Lewis books and many have been checked out since we began promoting Lewis. It gave me the idea to have a Great Writers Series in which we would create interesting presentations on Christian writers.  The Communists really stole something from Ukrainians when they were not allowed to read freely and only certain writers were printed. Jack London and Ray Bradbury are two minor literary figures that everyone here has read! I guess I want to do my part to change that--to introduce good writers who write from a Christian perspective and in doing that, not only will we enrich people's lives but hopefully help unbelievers find the Lord. I doubt many of those people would have shown up for a Bible study but they did come to hear about Lewis. May God help us to figure out how to be a witness in a very secular place!

I finished my English outreach for the year and gave Bibles to all the students.  They seemed delighted.  I look forward to continuing with them next year. 

Lena and I leave for the USA Tuesday morning.  I have to renew my passport and then get a new Ukrainian visa.  My five-year Ukrainian visa expires Dec. 31 and can't be renewed in Ukraine.  At the minimum, the process will take four weeks.  So, we will be in the US for a while.  We plan to be in Nashville and Knoxville and of course, in Athens, with my family. 

As always, we are thankful for the work God does through our faithful team of supporters.  They are spread from Wisconsin to Indiana to D. C. to Huntsville to Louisiana to Nashville to Knoxville to Athens and a few other places.  Thank you for sticking with us, when there is much good news to report, when there is nothing much to say, and when there seems to only be bad news.  Thank you for showing interest in our spiritual and financial well being.  We will provide a more full report in January concerning how the year went and how our finances went.

Enjoy the holidays.