Snow
How did that happen? Two months since an update?
Well, those two months have seen changes in temperature and the landscape. As I type, snowflakes are gently falling from a grey sky onto a yellowed carpet of leaves and grass. Winter’s a’ comin’! Ouch.
We are fine. We’ve been dragging around a pretty nasty virus that just wouldn’t let go for the longest time. It’s only been during the last couple of days that we’ve seen some let-up on that.
Pris and I loved out Israel trip. We stayed in Jerusalem the whole time, but took a couple of day trips out to the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. The two things we came across that made us sense a connectedness with the words or places or characters in the Bible were 1. the Golden Gate in Jerusalem – (on the Muslim cemetery side), and 2. the synagogue in Capernaum in which Jesus undoubtedly spent quite a lot of time. ’We also appreciated the sense of morality which somehow pervaded the culture/atmosphere on the Jewish side of Jerusalem.
We managed to attend two services of the Messianic Jews while we were there and were encouraged by the thought that a lot of Jews will become followers of Christ before His Second Coming. What will be the catalyst?
Thanks to those who gave so that this dream became a reality for us. We’ll value it for the rest of our lives!
The church goes well. We are still working our way through the book of Acts on a Sunday. We just covered Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey – a stimulant to being more active in witnessing about Jesus the Savior for us all.
We are in the peak season for student attendance of our Friday and Sunday nights. Generally, we have from between 10 and 20 young people in attendance. Each week as we urge these kids to repent or seek truth in God’s Word or believe in Jesus for forgiveness of sins… I find myself praying that God would open their hearts and give them minds to comprehend and respond. From the Sunday night group, please pray specifically for Alec. This is his last year. He seems to eagerly take in each week the message of the devotional time… but hasn’t professed faith in Jesus yet.
The rehab centre we are running is struggling financially, but by God’s grace managing to stay “solvent”. We have a web-page dedicated to that ministry which you might be interested in looking at. “Freedatarmageddon.com” will bring up the site for you to browse. It is still under development, but mostly completed. Six of the seven guys out there are doing real well. They so much want to be free from their addiction and live cleanly before God – it’s wonderful! The new guy, Oleg, is still pretty quiet. Generally, whenever someone new arrives, it’s expected that he will spend extra time sleeping and getting his head together again. Oleg is no exception. (Since typing that last week, Oleg repented of his sins and put his faith in Jesus. In the picture below, he isn’t amongst us as he is suffering a fair bit from anemia and was lying down when I took Abe Bible out to visit, but he was able to come to church yesterday.)
Pasha is visiting a jail and government drug treatment hospital each week and sharing the gospel and building relationships with those who work there as well as with those who are getting treatment. He’s encouraged at the way God uses him and effervescently recounts his adventures each time he comes back.
Shane and Jemi leave us in less than two weeks for slightly over six months. They are a great blessing to many in the church and their absence will definitely be noticed – not least by me! I feel that this opportunity of being able to serve God’s church with them has been a special gift.
Thanks for your interest in what God is doing here in this little town of Rzhyshchiv, Ukraine. He is to be praised!