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Pause

IMG-1674Happy New Year?

I was talking with someone yesterday who said that the older they got, the more complex life seemed to get and the more painful situations they were forced to face. I read this morning Psalm 84 and encountered again God’s heart: “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

I read verses like this and even though my trust and faith in God is total and absolute, I pause.

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

“He fulfills the desire of those who fear him”

“…if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

I’ve been labeled “Charismatic” more than once in my life. (There aren’t too many Charismatics who are cessationists, but I always let the intended insult go undefended.) I’m most definitely not in the camp which seems to want to force God to “honor His promises” – as if He was a “tame lion”. What these verses do, (when the pressures and sadnesses in life come), is push me in the direction of calling out to the Holy God, “Father, have mercy!” That, and nothing more. He is loving and holy. God is powerful and all-wise. Trust-able!

So back to the pause… I quickly flit through the worn logic again – coming to the same conclusion as always: “I am your contented worshipper, God.” Sadness and trials of differing potency are a guarantee in this life. But as a worshipper of God, all is well – no matter the heartache, no matter the lack of understanding; for God is all-powerful and loves His children.

Coming off that subject: We are so happy to have all of our children here with us! (A grandchild is plainly “bonus”.) It has been pure joy! God has shown both us and our children great grace in giving them the same strong desire as we have to glorify Him with our lives. I’ll forever be so thankful for that!

Another “joy”:  Yesterday, I met with a man who wants to marry one of the ladies who went through rehab with us. Vika has hoped for something like this for a couple of years… and it looks as if God is blessing her with this godly man from Dnipro, a city in the south. Vika has faithfully been working in a carton factory for the past couple of years and serving in a ladies rehab centre we have close ties with in Kiev once or twice a week. God has done beautiful things for Vika – things she could never have imagined 4 years ago!  May His perfect will be done!

Some of the men and women who have left us after finishing rehab have gone back to drugs and alcohol. To God be the glory, many, (if not most), are in churches around the country and, (to one degree or another), “operating” as God’s servants in this world.  I met with three former drug addicts this morning who I probably won’t get to see in heaven… for they will be given positions way up close to Jesus while I’ll be way in the back of everyone.  Their love and humility and faith is just so encouraging.

pigs and sheepThe rehab centres acquired a few new heads last month.  One lamb and a couple of young pigs.  The church got to revel in the taste of last year’s sllooow cooked pig on New Years Eve.  It was possibly up there amongst the most delicious tasting meat I’ve ever tasted! 

The lads gleaned the corn fields and gathered enough corn to keep the piglets pretty well fed all year, we think.  They are voracious eaters though, (about 5% of their body weight is consumed in a day), so if we run out of corn… we may have to have an Easter pig.  Surely every church should have a church pig or lamb!! 

If you prayed about the hard situation I wrote about in our last blog, thank you. God, for perfect reasons, has allowed this man to believe and spread abroad that we have bad doctrine in our church, bad preaching, and to top it off, he and his wife have not grown spiritually during their last five years with us.  I genuinely feel sadness for this young family. A few of the leading men here have talked with this brother with the same outcome each time. Following a firm rebuke where we removed him from official ministry roles for a period of time, his heart has been hard and his mind seemingly intent on washing his hands of us. If we correctly understand the character of God, putting this behind them without resolving relationships and submitting to authorities and God’s Word is way easier said than done.

If there has been an encouraging thing about this sad situation, it has been that several people have come to us with concerns for this couple, (after they tried to tell them about the bad doctrine/bad preaching), and these people shared with us that they felt the opposite. I am reminded of Satan firing off fiery darts at the Christian only for them to hit a “shield of faith” and fall to the ground, spent and useless. “Good.”

IMG-1729Covid quarantine bumped our planned parenting mini-conference… as well as a youth conference our youth were keen to attend. (Musing: does all this quarantining and cancelling benefit the church so that she is more or less mature and godly? I sincerely wonder…?  It might be good!!!) We are aiming now for March for the parenting conference and the youth will hold their own two-day affair next week.

And lastly, (for this blog), the floor of the church building is tiled. It is incredible how much difference it makes to the cleanliness of the place… not to mention the heat this big slab gives off when hot water is pumped through the pipes underneath! We are grateful!  This photo is of the revelers who chose to join us for our New Years Eve celebration.  I’m thankful God has given us a close and precious spiritual family… even if they are a little bit too much like me - slightly weird - for comfort sometimes.

 

 

Quintus

Family

IMG-1512 (1)It has been a “more-than-interesting” time since I last posted. This is my third attempt at putting something down in text… and this time I will keep on going until I’m satisfied and post it where it belongs.

Jesse and Daniella with Quintus have joined us. God blessed their travels and they have now been with us for a really special week. Their plans are to stay for a year.

In two days, Angie arrives… just to add to the joy! She plans to stay for a couple of months. Aghhh!!! I feel as if I can hardly wait!

Then in a month, Marie will fly in, just in time for Christmas – something that is way too far away!

Feelings, dampened feelings, feelings allowed full rein, and feelings expressed are interesting subjects for the psychologists to flaunt their knowledge of. All I know is that I have this sense of great expectation, deep thankfulness and a desire to hug all of our kids, (and one special little grandson), tightly in one big hug.

The contrast to the joy has been a big challenge we have faced over the past month with one of the more senior members of our church. I’ll keep my comments to a minimum here, but we recently pulled him up again because of some serious character flaws that were out of control. We told him that he was being removed from ministry for six months to work on his character with a counselor we know in Kiev. His reaction to that was not exactly Christ-like humility. In fact, he informed us that if that was the case, he was leaving the church. We are still working through the situation and are yet to see the end of the tunnel. I have compared it for myself to what a divorce must be like where there is much confusion and pain. Because of the friendship aspect to this, it has been one of the most difficult periods of the last several years.

As always though, when I step back out of the emotions and look at this situation from a more distant viewpoint, I can see that oh-so-desirable silver lining to the cloud. God perfectly shows grace to His children, and I can count several blessings that are occurring because He has allowed this situation to develop.  To quote a pretty famous Roman-Jew:  “God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”  After many years of believing that, why stop now?  … especially seeing as though it is impossible for it to not be true!

Anyway, if you pray for this little ministry in Rzhyshchiv, Ukraine, this is one topic for which we’d sure appreciate prayer.

imageA couple of parents of guys in rehab gave money towards us getting a mini-tractor! It is very “mini”, but it has already been getting a great workout in the village. Strictly speaking, before winter sets in, it is great for the soil to get turned over to aerate it before the next sowing season. So we’ve been going great guns with it during this last week.  We also have a few other fixtures to it – a snow plough and potato harvester being the most interesting. It’s Mitya’s baby and the fact that he’s looked forward to getting something like this for a couple of years makes it even more special for him.

We continue to lay tiles in the church building. A weird thing happened with that… there was a mix up in the order and we ended up getting two slightly different colors of tiles. We decided to go ahead and lay them anyway rather than go through the process of seeing if the company would swap them out for us. So now, we have a line down the middle of the hall… one that I decided would remind me not to be overly concerned about how things look. Long-term usefulness or faithfulness is way more important than how a thing or person looks.  The work crew normally consists of about 15-20 people and I can confidently say that they are definitely skilled at eating!

IMG-1523Tomorrow morning, we have our weekly “Bratskaya”. The four men who are more heavily involved in rehab ministry will come and we’ll do breakfast together as we discuss many of the issues to do with rehab and a few to do with the general running of the church. I think of it as a time of maintenance and discipleship. And many times, I’m the one who is learning. For the first time this last week, the thought occurred to me that Mitya, who finds great fulfillment in serving the guys in rehab could do with a break. I then wondered if I was thinking this thought because I was feeling as if I could do with a break! It isn’t an easy ministry to be involved in. Betrayal of love/friendship is a regular occurrence. Disagreements needing attention between the men keep on cropping up. Big decisions regarding whether or not to send someone away get thrashed out a few times a year.  There are the logistics of running two homes that require constant attention. In summary: this is something that prayer is definitely not wasted on! Thanks.

I can’t finish this without acknowledging the 50. With little fanfare, I reached the milestone and had a nice celebration of it with the church. God deemed it the way of things that I get to the 50 with lots of people in my life to love and serve in His Name and for His glory. What a privilege!IMG-1519  Jesse called a few people who loved me enough to pool in towards buying me a new computer –  hence the look of shell-shocked delight on my face.

May God bless you as He has us!

God keeps on saving souls

Allo…

sergei Fed baptism“Some of the most distinguished theologians of the last 200 years served in small churches and never saw a lot of fruit for their labour.” This was something that was said during the sermon today. We know that a big church is not necessarily a healthy church. But it is also worth noting that God delights in using the weak things of this world to confound the wise. When He uses the weak to achieve impressive things, it brings Him even more glory. Easy, eh? Good logic. Scriptural. Visible. And it gives us normal people who like to see fruit, (and who recognize that we aren’t particularly gifted), more hope.

Last week, we had a couple of baptisms – a special Sunday. Two guys, who are both nice and easy to love, have for several months now been enjoying the freedom in Christ that comes from true belief. I’ve written about Zheka before. He’s in his late 30’s and was born into a violent family. As a pre-teen, he was so glad to go into government care. He’s felt all his life as if God had His hand on him and was calling him. He’s been over 18 months without drugs or alcohol now… and is unique in that he’s continually thanking and praising God. I like it… and love upbeat Zhenya!

Sergei’s father is a Pentecostal pastor. Sergei never really clicked into the faith of His parents. He rejected Jesus and never really cottoned on to speaking in tongues and the prophecy that went on. He found drugs though and in his mind, they became a worthy god for him to serve for many years. He came to us a couple of years ago and in the first week of being in the adaptation stage, went back to drugs. We decided to take him back at his bequest, and this time we noticed a fascinating change in him. He had a reverence for God and over time, developed a unique love for people. God gave him the gift of realizing that he’s wasted far too many years of his life in self-indulgent living. I found myself tearing up as he shared his testimony. May God use this nigh-on-toothless 35 year-old for His glory.

Elle is loving serving in the ministry to kids from troubled families. Here’s a bit from her:

Hey, everybody! Ellie here. Wow, the last month has been so much fun. As you may have heard we have started what we call the ‘Day Center’ for kids from unhappy homes. We eat lunch together, wash all our dishes from lunch (the kids really love that), play outside, and imagehelp them with their homework or tutor them in the subjects that they struggle with. There are five kids that attend, and it has come to feel like we are a little family. I especially work with Natasha, who is ten years old. Each day we write or draw in a notebook about her favorite part of the day. When we came to this moment in the day, the last three times she has said that it was when we read the Bible all together. There are so many moments like that where I just wish each of you could see their progress in learning or love of being in an environment where God’s love is so freely shared.

I woke up at about 1:00 a couple of mornings ago to a strange noise coming from outside. Not being able to understand what it was bothered me enough that I got up to look out the window… a dark night. I put on my dressing gown and tried another window in the house… nothing there. Something was nagging at my mind though, and I had to go outside and stood there for a few confusing seconds before it hit me. Fire! I ran back inside and grabbed the car keys and took off up the hill.  I found the source and stopped the car. A neighbour on a parallel street had already futilely thrown a few buckets of water on his flaming sheds near his house. There was no stopping this beastie though. The plastic siding on the house was melting like ice, but the wood underneath hadn’t caught fire yet. I yelled out, asking him if there was anything of value in the sheds. He exclaimed and took off into the house for the car keys… and managed to get the car out pretty much unscathed. I proceeded to make a number of runs into the sheds dragging out his tools and other things of value. The neighbour was in his underpants, but I wasn’t much better off. I was barefoot and in my dressing gown, (not a view of me that the neighbours have ever seen before)! On one of the runs, I managed to kick my toe on something and opened it up right properly. Unsurprisingly, the adrenalin looked after that… and we kept on going until the firetruck arrived. By the time the fire was out, roughly 10 neighbours had come out to check what was happening – including, (to my surprise), Ellie, who had heard the commotion. Sleep proved elusive after the excitement and I’ll be limping around for a couple of weeks, but as neighbours, we know each other better than ever before! I’m also interested to see if God will use this moment in saving the soul of anyone… or will I discover that it simply brings Him glory somehow in eternity.

Often when we go through an unusual experience, (especially one involving “loss”), the question gets asked, “What is God’s reason for this?” I put to you that it should really be rephrased thus: “Does God have a reason which requires a sacrifice from me?” When anything happens on earth or in heaven, God has a myriad of reasons for its occurrence. It’s very human to think that He only has one reason - perhaps even naive. I am confident that He is so mighty, this God of ours, who “works all things according to the counsel of his will,” that He has millions of reasons for the different things that occur. But my question, when I encounter an unusual experience should be, “What does God want from me?”

imageThis last Wednesday, we got a call early in the morning from Irina, a dear friend in the church, to let us know that her mother, a lady who loved the Lord beautifully, had just died. We whipped on our clothes and went over, walking in on two policemen – one filling out documents while the other cradled his French-manufactured machine gun on his lap, (a discordant sight, considering an 85-year old grandma had just died). We had the funeral after lunch and all in all, it was a day in which God was glorified. I was definitely encouraged by Irina’s faith and trust in God and His promises. And Pris and I have been blessed to be loved by dear Nadia Petrovna over the past six years.  (She won my heart before she started complimenting me on my eyebrows… but that’s something I’ll remember forever.)

Our ladies are getting excited about the ladies-retreat they have organized for mid-October. At last count, about 40 ladies will be attending and will be having a good look at our Father’s heart on the subject of “love”. How well do we love? I reckon I stand with the group in the “pretty average” category far too often. Climbing out of that group is a life-long challenge that I’d love to achieve… may God give grace, eh? I’m sure our ladies will benefit from the retreat.

imageWe finally have a van for the rehab center. A few generous “fellow-ministers” contributed to its purchase and we are so thankful to have it. It’s an older model (2004) but was restored by the former owner in hopes that he would be able to make good money for all the times public transport closed down during quarantine periods. That restriction only really bit us hard back in the early days when panic regarding Covid was still flowing in the synapses. So we get to use a nicely restored LT Volkswagen van for ministry purposes – mainly rehab. “Lovely, Lord! Thanks.”

Care to celebrate with us?  The lads found water!  Smile  They dug a well at the house eight of them are living in during adaptation.  First time to dig for all of them and God blessed them with water at the 20m mark.  Thankful lads!

And there we have it. An end to a long post! May God bless you.

Fulfilling our Roles

I wrote to my cousin, Chris, recently . image_40041759

I also wrote to my second cousin, Gordon – not something that happens too often.

Following that, the thought occurred to me that surely very few people write to a second cousin of theirs during their life!  I feel as if I’m pretty lousy at keeping in touch with people generally. I justify it by telling myself that I am “living in the moment with the people who are rubbing elbows with me”. The more likely reason can probably be found somewhere in my pride and self-centeredness. But whatever the reason, it’s good “hearing from” and “getting off” a letter to people you love and appreciate, yes?  Here’s another installment of what is, (truth be told), a far cry from a personal email, and yet surely better than… nothing?  Smile

 

IMG-0684We are well. In August, things slow down in Ukraine as people go on holidays. July/August are always the hottest months in our year… and August has done itself proud this year.

Our kids’ camp was a good’un. We used to do kids’ camp at the local hall. I wondered how it would be having it at the church building – would we have less kids coming? I need not have feared.

This year, Jemi led the kids in singing Scripture at the camp. It was classical! I loved it! The kids loved it. And it was so beneficial! I recommend it to all churches who are either doing children’s evangelism or discipling their own kids.  Sing Scripture.   That was a highlight for me.

The other highlight was giving the kids Samaritan’s Purse boxes. The joy and excitement was intense! Wow! Several of the kids came up to me afterwards and went through their box showing all the “specials” they received. If you’ve ever been involved in the Samaritan’s Purse drive, well done. If you will do it in the future, make sure you include a brief note of blessing and a photo of yourself. That will be icing on the cake.

IMG-0638Pris seems to be doing well pain-wise. It’s a nice gift. She is gearing up to teach a series to ladies with Jemi starting this month and will enjoy that. She keeps busy in a hundred different ways: cooking, visiting, helping plan different ministries, making sure the house keeps running, watching the series “Alone” with Elle and I… and a host of other things.  Considering the plans He had for my life, I regularly have the thought that God prepared the perfect counterpart for me to marry. 

We have been given the privilege of taking in a young mother with her two cute little kiddies. Her husband once again decided he loved drugs more than God and we sent him to another rehab centre. He chose a different course and has dropped off the radar. This young mother has probably less than $100 to her name, has gone through the wringer… but deeply loves God and His ways. Initially, we felt we just “had to” take her in. We quickly realized though that it is actually a real pleasure having them.  A pleasure… but one requiring sacrifice. Ksusha would love stable work and to be able to set up somewhere permanently with her children and we are praying to that end.

On Monday, last week, I took 18 of the men who have gone through rehab out to a spot on the river in a nearby town. They camped the night there and remembered what God has done for them as they fished, sang, swatted at the bugs and enjoyed God’s creation. At one stage, I had 12 men packed into/onto the car, plus the trailer on the back, going up and down winding tracks along the river. Thanks, Lord, for a versatile vehicle! This link will pop up a YouTube video of about 20 seconds duration showing our trip back:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7BSg1hSOksthe boys go

A few days ago, we had plans firm up for the kindergarten in the church building this year. We have no desire to expand this so that it becomes an elite kindergarten for the rich in the town. Rather, for both the kindergarten and the “school, we ARE KEEN to have the focus on teaching and discipleship for the children of Christian families. The Christian parents we know in our area are extremely interested in developments… and we keep on praying, talking and planning.

We are also continuing reaching out to the kids from families in crisis in Rzhyshchiv. Three days a week, people from our church will spend time helping them with homework and teaching them more about the Lord and His Word. These children could have an incredible future if the Lord has mercy on them and they follow Him. That is our prayer.

We are still working on the church building, (I do wonder when I will be able to stop saying that). We had a couple from Sydney give to this project recently and give things a much appreciated boost.  This week, we will be taking the long-awaited step of laying a heated floor. Sergei, a former… soldier, policeman, (and now police guard for some holding cells), is also a pretty handy builder and is heading it up. I’ll called in a “sickie” today, (flu bug), and didn’t go to church, but I’ll be with the lads tomorrow as we get everything ready to lay the cement.

1629902799115911Oh! We are just about finished changing all the lights out to power saving lights so that we can hopefully stop forking out big dollars each month for electricity. I’ll be very interested to see how things go on that head because we are about to start using the church building three or four times more often than in the past.

Thanks for your care and prayers. It’s always a privilege and normally a pleasure serving the Lord and His people in this neck of the woods. The old cliché is ever true: we are all cogs in a machine, fulfilling the roles for which we were designed. God has designed us to help you fulfill your role in reaching people in Ukraine with His wonderful gospel. Nice, eh?