November saw a continuation of our ministry and outreach from earlier in the fall. I continued the English classes for unbelievers where we discuss infinitives and gerunds and where the Bible came from and how God has made agreements with people since the creation of humanity.

November 9th, we celebrated my 34th birthday in Ukrainian style with a big party and lots of food. As always, these kinds of celebrations are important for church leaders as we spend time together fellowshipping and sharing in life.

The third Saturday of November we had a long planning meeting with church leaders. It took several hours to talk through church activities for next year. Though everything wasn’t settled the first meeting, we made several good decisions and will have to meet again in December to finalize everything. I was mostly an observer in this meeting; it was great to see people expressing their opinions, discussing the spiritual needs of the church and many being willing to serve and lead. God is really strengthening the church even though this past year hasn’t seen as much numerical growth as in the past. I think we are becoming stronger and hope that this is preparation for future numerical growth.

The fourth Thursday of November was a big day in the USA but in Ukraine, it was just another day. After we finished working, Lena and I decided to go to the only restaurant in Kyiv that serves Thanksgiving dinner. We trudged there through some of the most horrible weather--several inches of icy rain had fallen during the day, had partly melted and were partly frozen. Then we realized their prices had gone up about 40% since the last time we were there about two years ago (Arizona Barbecue for those of you in the know). I had some turkey. Lena had cheesecake.

We had had our Soup Group outreach earlier in the day, as we do every Thursday afternoon, and Lena was still full from the soup. We had spent much of the Soup Group discussing the differences between Christianity and eastern religions. We finally had to leave because someone had the room reserved. About four students come regularly and we ask you to pray for them: Yuri, Ira, Zhanna, and Lyonya. All are growing in their faith, at different paces. Ira is now studying the Bible with two church members and is thinking about being baptized. Please pray for them.

The Saturday following US Thanksgiving, our Monday night spiritual training group organized a Day of Thanksgiving for the church. People gave money to help fund the food and activities. Many people invited friends. I showed up about 3 o’clock to open the door and start cooking. Lyuda then brought a huge Napoleon cake. Lyuba brought in some pyeroshki (with meat and cabbage). Others brought in drinks, salads were made, Egyptian rice was cooked at the UEC and brought to the church building. What a feast was prepared. We had close to 50 people with many guests. We had several different activities besides eating. We wrote thank you notes to people for good things they have done in our lives, we played games, had a special worship session, and saw an 18-minute "show" of images from this past year's church life. Bogdan Andriychenko and his fiance Cassandra showed up and brought some American goodies. While they were setting up the projector, I gave a speech in Russian about where the American holiday of Thanksgiving came from since several had asked where the idea came from to have such a holiday.

I preached quite a bit in November, much more than I have been. Following our Day of Thanks, I preached about being thankful, and how thankfulness is not simply done once a year but a spiritual habit that must be nurtured--during good times and during bad times. I have also been preaching through Colossians and Vitaly Samodin has helped in that series. It’s great to see his growth.

Galya (pictured above with Vitaly who baptized her) a university student that Vitaly has known for a while, was baptized one Sunday morning in late November. We praise God for her faith and ask you to pray for her growth in Christ.

Ukrainian Education Center

Our work at the UEC is a vital part of our ministry and it always brings surprises. I never imagined that I would end up dealing with so many bureaucrats and other matters related to keeping an organization going. To help overcome some of these hassles and to strengthen our staff and grow as a ministry, we instituted a weekly prayer meeting. Our staff meets together once a week just to pray about all the problems we face and how we can be used by God to reach our patrons. The staff has appreciated the time to pray together and not just talk about the problems. We are already starting to see answers to some of our prayers.

One prayer that we have been praying for a long time relates to a small problem with the blueprints of the Center. It was a minor problem but it kept us from getting a government-approved version of the “technical passport” of the UEC. After three years of negotiating and trying to figure out how to fix this mistake (that was actually made by a government agency and was not our fault—but we had to fix it!!), we are only one office away from being finished with it. Sergiy Lyakh has done most of the work but I’ve gotten to stand in line with him a few times and have listened and advised as best as I could. This past month we produced our 13th newsletter. I will never take a newsletter I receive in the mail for granted. What work they are sometimes!

Unfortunately, this month we learned that there is a thief at the UEC, someone (or several) have been stealing CDs and we have had to temporarily suspend CD check out until we can figure out. Things like this are disheartening but we hope that God will help us somehow figure out how to protect the library and still serve patrons. This month, we served almost 600 different people at the UEC with more than 4,000 patron visits. We checked into the costs of an anti-theft system: $5,000!! Anybody out there with a rich uncle, let us know!!

Lena’s Perspective

My first MBA class is over. It was Business Ethics. Our intensive on-line course ran for 6 weeks. I wrote about 20 single-spaced pages in answers to our weekly discussion questions and to my classmates’ entries. We also had to write a 15 page paper. It was a lot of work, but I hope I have learned some lessons which will be translated into good ethical behavior. I hope the next 11 classes I have to take to graduate will be even more interesting.

Trip to … 4 days and so many experiences… Almost 2 full days were spent on the train leaving us with another 2 days to enjoy Krakow – one of the oldest cities in Europe. Why did we go? Ukrainian law demands that foreigners renew their registration every 3 months. This rule was conveniently changed last year (it was every 6 months before) and now requires Chris to cross the border every 3 months. Last time we crossed the border an inquisitive Polish passport-control office was giving us problems on the border about Chris’s old passport, but this time Ukrainian passport control scared us. On the way back, we got 2 very diligent officers who were checking Chris’ passport for extra long time and even sat down to see if it was really him on the picture. The whole ordeal of crossing the boarder happened at 4 am and at some point I started to think that they would take us off the train.

Another highlight of the trip was the absence of the lady that was supposed to give us a key from the apartment we booked on-line. After waiting for some time we decided to call her, and with horror I realized I had no idea how to call someone’s cell phone in Poland. Thankfully, a girl from the next-door newspaper stand was very helpful. Waiting for some of her customers to leave, I was earnestly praying that she would understand any one of the three languages I can communicate in or that I could understand her Polish. She spoke English, AND there was a computer with Internet access, so she could send a text message to our landlady. The presence of the Internet in a little newspaper shop completely threw me off for the rest of that night. Other not-so-dramatic events included us walking in the wrong direction for 15 minutes, thinking we got lost a couple of times, having to sleep in my coat the first night because of so little heat in the building, figuring out how to turn on the hot water, a very steep staircase leading to our apartment on the third floor, and me by chance getting my first pair of glasses (I had no idea things could be so clear). On the brighter side, we visited several big grocery plus clothing stores in the city in search for clothes and other items for my niece Polina. I was constantly addicted to the smell of kilbasa, meat, and sauerkraut which filled the Central Square. They cooked it in big tents right there on the Square. I’m one-fourth Polish and my Polish blood demanded I eat as much as I could. It was delicious.