July seems to slow everything down in Ukraine. August stops everything. 

That was true for us in many ways too. With people coming and going on vacations or going home, there are simply less people in the city.  The English outreach did continue and one of the students asked to meet with me individually to study the Bible. We met several times before the month ended. 

We were also very busy at the UEC. With a long list to accomplish before the Center closed for its summer holiday, the staff was very busy.  One of Nivki church’s small groups even planned a meeting to help volunteer with some projects for several hours one night. 

We also had several meetings related to planning our eighth annual Cherkassy Conference. More to come on that important event. Besides those meetings, we had several teaching sessions at the UEC devoted to sexuality morality and marriage. Oleg, Vitaly, and I led these sessions and those involved in the immorality continue to refuse to change. They have mostly withdrawn themselves from the church fellowship but we won’t really know what is happening until all vacations are over. 

The second Saturday of July we celebrated the university graduation of Vanya and Anton by going to our traditional spot in the Pushe-Voditsa forest just outside Kyiv. I apparently ate a bad sausage while there and suffered a rather severe case of food poisoning which seemed to drag on and on. Seems I still haven’t gotten back to complete normal. 

The last weekend of the month the women of Nivki church helped organize the annual women’s conference sponsored by churches in Georgia and Texas. About 90 women participated in the weekend retreat with representatives from several cities across Ukraine. Darla Johnson, this year’s speaker and a former missionary to Kyiv, ate dinner with us Sunday night after the conference. It was good to reconnect with her and to still see her family’s love for the ministry here. 

Lena’s View

Lena stayed busy working at the Center (she has new responsibilities there, mostly in helping us deal with our accounting and relationship to the government).  She was also preparing for the GMAT which she took at the end of the month. Lena will, by the way, hopefully be enrolling in Harding University’s on-line MBA program this fall. Since Lena’s mom has been doing double time both working and helping care for little Polina (Lena’s niece), Lena has been going to Zhitomir every Wednesday to help out there. She also continues her ministry to older people and has recently met another elderly woman she hopes will allow her to be involved in her life. 

The renovation at Lyuda’s home continues. The kitchen work is finished with a new shower, new tile, a new floor, heating into the toilet, a new toilet. We think there is enough money left to complete all the repairs we had hoped to do. The problem now if finding workers who won’t charge too much for labor. We hope that the roof can be repaired completely, the floor in the rest of the house can be replaced, and some more work can be done to keep the house warmer in the winter.