The beginning of the month found us in Egypt on summer holiday.  With an incredibly cheap deal, Lena and I made our way to the Sinai Peninsula for a week of relaxation, reading, and being together.

Upon our return to Kyiv, we found the hot water had returned to our apartment.  The summer outages were much longer this year.  We also found a good group assembled for our Friday night church gathering. The Friday group is studying through the book of Joshua and I gave a talk on the relationship between faith and the archaeologist's pick and shovel.

July 9 we found ourselves at a graduation ceremony.  This summer, many church members finished their university studies.  Vitya Yevpak finished a pre-law degree and will begin work on a master's degree in Budapest, Hungary.  Galya Yarmanova will begin a master's degree in social work in Kyiv.  Others who graduated with business degrees, Olya, Yulia, Sergiy, and Liza have already found jobs and have begun building careers.  Oksana, who finished a degree in French and English, is still debating her future but works as a translator now.  Vanya also completed his service in the army this month and has returned to civilian life.  The Lord protected him in so many ways.  Pray blessings for these recent graduates.

Lena and I also began participating in the Saturday prayer ministry of the church.  For many months now, church members have been gathering every Saturday morning to pray.  For various reasons, we had decided to let this group be on its own and now that it does have a life of its own, we decided to participate and have hosted it three times.  Twice we blessed everyone with fruit-filled pancakes.

In mid month, Scott and Katherine Broadway and their daughter Abbie came to Kyiv under the sponsorship of Highland Street Church of Christ.  They are here to explore possible opportunities for service.  We have helped them a great deal and actually let them stay in our apartment. Lena and I are at the UEC.  They have been visiting local churches, orphanages, and helping out at the UEC as well.

In UEC news, we continue our transition to a part-time manager which has meant more work for Lena and me. Vitaly is doing a great job but it will be a few more weeks before he feels completely settled in his new position.  We also finished our 15th UEC newsletter.  One day was recently spent at a superstore buying the Center's supplies for the rest of the year.

The last week of July was a very busy one.  For the 8th time, we welcomed Paul Prill from the Acklen Avenue church to Kyiv.  We were preparing intensely for Cherkassy Conference and we added a shelving unit to the UEC's library which meant all the books had to be moved! We want to guarantee growth space for our theological collection. Since the library is now over 9,000 items, we are being a bit more selective with what we catalog and in how we use the space since it seems the addition of this one shelving unit will be the last addition for a while. The Broadways also joined us as well as Olya (from one of my English classes) who came to volunteer for a while. For lunch, we ordered Kyiv's famous Vesuvios Pizza to celebrate making it through the summer and to treat our volunteers.

The last day of July we made our way to Cherkassy for our ninth conference/retreat.  More on that next month!

That's the main news from July.  Other struggles and cultural adventures can be found at www.kyivmission.blogspot.com.  There we have posted pics from Cherkassy Conference, my views on Ukrainian politics, and adventures with trying to buy new glasses.

Thank you for your continued support.