It will be exiting to watch our girls see the places where they spent the first few years of their lives!

We are also very exited to be able see some of you, our good friends. We have not seen some of you for over 10 years.

Since the beginning of summer we already did English Club, three camps, and are getting ready for our next outreach camp this coming weekend.

Every Nation London church has sent two great teams to help with the ministry in Carpathian Mountains. First team came to do construction/repair work on our mountain mission base. As the result, now we have a well, inside toilet and shower, new electric wiring, three new outhouses, and a walkway paved with river stones. What a great job they did! They also helped a church to buy a trailer. Please follow this link to see some pictures with the stories: www.everynation.co.uk/media/photo-galleries/ukraine-2010-builders

Second team came to help with the kids camps we did in the mountain villages. This time we reached a new village in a very remote place. We shared the love of Jesus with local kids through skits, games, and crafts.
Please follow this link to see some pictures with the stories: www.everynation.co.uk/media/photo-galleries/ukraine-2010-kids-camps/

We keep using English for reaching students for Christ. Our strategy for the summer 2010 was to run English club in one of the public schools for a month. Through it we met many new students who have signed up for the English Camp that will start in just few days. The Gospel was shared at the club and it will be shared with the students every night at camp. Please pray for a plentiful harvest. We are very grateful to all JV English speaking students who came to serve as teachers.

We also used the Street Games to meet new young people. I am proud to say that they were designed and run by students whom we met through such games just over a year ago. Not only that, they will be helping to lead small groups in English Camp next week.

Last week we had outreach rafting camp. It was a very adventurous trip. Every day we would go down the river, find a camp site for the night, set up our tents, cook dinner, and pack everything on the boats again the next morning. There was one day when we just rested in one place. The highlight of each day was late evening gathering around a camp fire for the Biblical discussions/testimonies. Please pray for unbelievers that were on that trip with us. This is the link to the photos from this camp on my Facebook: http://ru-ru.facebook.com/album.php?id=1559506932&aid=2064015

Artem, Nadya, and Sophia

Nadya is pregnant and today she is to go to the hospital to have a baby. She called me yesterday and asked if I had a theme for Thursday meting for her to match the activities/games. I told her I did not have the theme ready and Nadya said she would take all the materials with her to the hospital and I was to let her know he theme so that she could work on activities from the hospital. Wow!! It is difficult to get some people simply to come to a meeting, but Nadya keeps working on preparing for the meeting even while she is in the hospital delivering a baby. What a commitment!! I call it a sacrifice, but Nadya thinks it is a privilege to serve.

P.S. By now their new baby boy has been born. His name is Mark.

This trip has become a perfect discipleship moment. There were 8 of us traveling in a van and a family in a car behind us. All of them are key people in the church. It brought us very close to each other.

We thank God for the opportunity to see such a beautiful country. Every time I looked out in the window, I had hard time believing that the mountains are real and not just a picture!

See all photos here…

To follow up after summer camps and keep the momentum, we planned our Big Fall Outreach Project - the Date Talk weekend conference for youth. We rented a nice facility in Carpathian Mountains for three days.

Conference preparation was no lesser job then the conference itself. We hanged many posters and handed out thousands of flyers. We went on campus of Lviv’s largest university (31 000 students) and were personally inviting students. On the photo above you see Britney and Max doing a skit incinerating a fight between husband and wife to draw a crowd of students so that we can hand out conference invitations.

The project was a success. There were 38 people total, few of them were new. By the tears on the eyes of some, I saw God was working in their hearts. Listening to students’ feedback and reports of their parents, I could tell, the conference has deeply impacted the souls of students.

We divided our conference into five sessions, each followed by small group discussion. We also had a lot of fun together, games, dramas, prises, making and shooting the potato canon, hikes, and hotdogs on fire at night. After the conference we took the students on a tour of near by Mukachevo Castle.

This high quality project has increased the level o respect and prestige of our ministry in the eyes of the students.

Besides achieving the main goal – reaching the lost with the Biblical principles about the relationships and dating, there was another blessing. Making a conference like this has caused a huge growth and built-up of our Youth Ministry Team. Half of them are young believers. Responsibilities for leading groups, games, dramas were very beneficial for their maturity.

See all photos here…

This is the second time Elina and I attend this great conference. This time we were able to bring two more people from our church. Tanya and Vasya have a real burden for the lost youth and they are part of our Youth Ministry Team.

I believe God sent Jay (top picture) and his wife, Cameron, as an answer to my prayers. Jay has become a great source of wisdom and inspiration in reaching youth of Lviv for Christ. He is mentoring me in leading a Youth Ministry. Why me in Youth Ministry? Because in addition to pastoring a church, I am playing that role now until we have a permanent Youth Worker. And when it happens, Jay said he is willing to mentor him also.

We met with Terry, who leads Fusion, a successful ministry in reaching teens with arts. The picture above is very memorable, because it captured, what I believe, a moment of a birth of a vision. I believe God wants us to do the same in Lviv and Terry is willing to come with his team and help our church start this wonderful ministry.

See all the photos here…

We invited several unchurched guests to the celebration and teens from our Change-The-World Outreach. They liked the spirit of family that was present there and all the fun they had with us. Events like this is a great opportunity to show to the world how we live, how we love and fellowship. This is exiting!

There were 25 kids among us. Some of them already made their own Varenyky. See all photos here…

After Summer we decided to begin a new School Year with a party to give us a nice start. It was great to see all the students again. Some of them did not go to our camps during the Summer. Plus there were some new students. We had fun! Now we are looking forward to working with them in 2009-2010. See other photos here…

Youth Church, Bible Studies, and Sports…

We are exited to make some major changes in our weekly routine in our work with the students. Up until now we had two major weekly events: English Club and Student Caffe, plus occasional movie nights, picnics, or games. All of it were non-Christian events, designed to build relationships, bless and help students.

We introduced a new meeting. From now every other Thursday we are having a “Youth Church” called The Rock. Other Thursday nights are still for Student Caffe.

We also started three weekly Bible Study groups, one for boys, one for girls, and one mixed.

We add a Sports Night on Saturdays. We rent a gym at a local school to play sports with the students.

Our Ministry Team…

God blessed us with a great Youth Ministry Team. Without them all this would have been impossible. I meet with them for prayer and planning every other week. But we continue to pray for a full time Youth Worker, because everyone on our present Youth Ministry team has jobs and volunteers in their free time.

Vision to reach teens trough Art…

We believe God wants us to do four camps next Summer. Three of them we wave had before: Kids Camp in Carpathians, English Camp and Boat Camp. But the new would be the Arts Camp. We will do it in partnership with Fusion, a ministry based in Czech Republic. As  result of this new camp we dream to begin a new outreach program. It would be designed to reach teenagers with the Gospel through a Rock Choir. As we move farther toward this goal I will explain it later in more details.

We had a Bible talk around a camp fire each night followed by a discussion in small groups. The most exiting thing was that two of the small group leaders were the guys whom we were reaching out to during our Boat Camp 2008!!

During the last camp fire meeting several of us shared about the difference Christ has made in our lives. There in nothing like a personal testimony. A someone may say he does not believe in God but he can not say that my transformed life does not exist!

A friend of mine, Carl, gave me this chain saw last summer. He thought it would become helpful in making firewood for my village house.  But if unexpectedly became a central attraction for all the boys during this camp. They all lined up to use it every night. We alway had more firewood than we actually needed

This time we had no bus following us. We had to carry all our tents, backpacks, food, water and other supplies with us on boats. They were heavy to move with all the load. Every night and morning we took turns to prepare a meal for everybody. The camp was a lot of physical work. It was real bounding and character testing time.

We made near 100 kilometers (60 miles) on our boats. It took a lot of pedaling. But we also had time for some real fun.

We also celebrated few people’s birthdays with balloons and fireworks at night.

Nothing connects people better than emergency. We had one, as one of our boats got a large hole. It is a good thing we had a repair kit and boys who can save the boat

Click here to see more photos from this camp.

Vasyl

Vasyl came to our church through the Rafting Camp we did in 2008. God has been working in his heart even prior to meting us and he felt that he found a spiritual family right away. By now Vasyl has become a very fruitful in ministry, even fulfilling some leadership roles in our youth outreach.

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Dema

Dema is 18. He is an orphan. He has had a difficult life. His criminal “friends” were his only family for quite a while. Dema told me that he got him a new phone number, and threw the old one away because now he has a new family. But knowing Dema, it will not be long before he will start contacting his old friends himself, to hare his new hope he has found in Jesus.

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By the way, he is the same Dema, I was writing about in “A 30 km Hike in the Mountains”

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Nastya

As we finished baptizing Vasyl and Dema, one of those who hesitated, Nastya, said that she can not wait to another baptismal service and wants to be baptized right now. As we found out later the reason for her hesitancy was the fear of going under the water. It was brave of her to step over her fear in order to fulfill Christ’s command.

Galya

Out of sudden, Galya, a guest that came with one of our church members, asked us to baptize her as well. After a short interview to make sure she wanted to do it out of right reasons, we baptized Galya. Our regular encouragement for people to bring their friends to church events gave its fruit. Praise God for continuing building His Church!!!