From Lena

June started with Paul Prill’s leaving and the Knoxville team arriving. In the short week between those two events, we tried to make all the final preparations for the arrival of the guests and for our June conference. This year a committee of church people worked with us to organize and plan the conference. We decided to go through a booklet that Chris wrote last year designed to overview the main ideas of Christianity primarily because it was written on the basic level for those who are interested and are not Christians yet, but still contained some stuff suitable for digesting by older believers. Most conferences here are based on listening to rather long lectures. We decided to move away from that introducing short talks and group discussions.  This restructuring and decentralization of the conference paid off as many commented they enjoyed the group discussions and the absence of long lectures. I guess our church has a whole lot more capable people now who are ready to share their knowledge of the Bible and testify to God’s work in their lives.

It was also interesting to observe the older and younger people interact at the conference. I guess I got used to having events for older people and having events for younger people. It has been some time since we did something major together. I have to confess that I was somewhat surprised to see how easy the generation barrier was overcome in most of the cases. Even though younger and older lived on two different schedules, older got up at about 6 a.m. to do their morning exercises right about when younger were coming to their rooms after a night of singing, laughing, swimming, and playing games, everyone had enough strength and desire to participate in the events of the conference. Older people were eager to play games that we worried were “designed for young”, run around, play Frisbee on the beach, chew buble gum, stuff their mouths with cookies, sit on the floor, sing and recite poetry during the talent show. It was a wonderful testimony for me of how God removes the walls of age, race, gender, and social status even in this life.

We were also blessed by the number of people (almost 60) who came to the conference. For many it was the first Christian outing.  Some students went to secular events since then and they said it was a completely different experience. I think our little conference was successful in showing what God’s love and Christian community are. Join me in prayer that both unbelievers and believers will look for this kind of fellowship in their lives more and more.

From Chris

Truly, June was a very busy month. The Laurel team not only helped fund and work with the June conference they also brought a massive donation for the UEC library. Thanks to the Laurel church members who gave generously. We also arranged for the Laurel group to have individual conversation lessons with several; they also volunteered helping out at the UEC. 

My English class outreach continued through the month and quite a large pool of people have participated in the class though all don’t come every meeting. It makes teaching somewhat challenging.  But we are serving a lot of people and it’s teaching me about how to organize a more effective outreach. One of the class participants has asked to study the Bible with me, and for that we praise God. 

The renovation project we are working with continued and hopefully by the end of the summer Lyuda will have a much better house to live in! Thanks again to all those in east Tennessee who gave. 

June also brought to our attention an on-going problem with three marginal church members. We have had to openly address some false teaching related to sexual immorality and are dealing with their influence on several church members. 

The UEC has also kept us busy. Our website is newly updated. Visit www.uecenter.org for lots of UEC news.

Our July newsletter will be coming soon. Thanks for reading and for praying. Hope you are having a great summer.