October and November were filled with wonderful news, and not so wonderful news.  We’ll start with the good.  Please visit our website www.kyivmission.org for many updates, including galleries of recent events and even our wedding photos!  Our print newsletter will be mailed later in December and then will be posted on-line.  Also, check out Jonathan Shaub’s website http://www.uecenter.org/internship/jonathan/index.htm for his perspective and many interesting galleries.

 

Nivki Church of Christ Update

Dima Kalinin, who read with several LST teams and had been coming to the small group in our home, was baptized into Christ in late October.  On November 8, Valya Dubina (sophomore at ICU-Kyiv) and Oksana Potapova (sophomore French major at Kyiv State Univ.) were baptized into Christ with a huge crowd on hand to watch.  Praise God for these faith decisions and pray for their growth in the Lord.

 

Our Student Nights continue with good crowds.  To try to spend more time with those who are interested, we invited everyone who had questions to the UEC, Fridays at 1:30.  As a surprise, we decided to cook a big pot of soup each week.  We have about 7 who attend.  Jonathan, Lena, and I help cook and answer questions.  We made a long list of their questions—everything from “What would have happened if the Pharisees hadn’t killed Jesus?” to “How can God be one and three?” to “Should we pray for the dead (an Orthodox practice)?” It’s one of the most fun things we do each week.

 

The first Sunday of October Nivki Church launched two Sunday assemblies.  We had discussed it for two years, and the time finally came.  Lena and I work with the evening assembly.  We have made some small changes in our evening assembly and that has forced us to think more about how we as a church will make decisions—all good signs of spiritual growth.  I also decided to devote more effort to training Ukrainians to preach.  Oleg Skutsenya and I preached a 3-part series on Galatians together.  We met every week, sometimes twice, to plan the sermons and email and phone calls helped to complete the process.  Oleg did a great job.  I look forward to Oleg growing in this ministry and in working with others. 

 

All of our Study Center courses—two Old Testament classes and the Ministry of Teaching course—as well as the courses taught by others continue.  We’ll provide more details when the semester closes. 

 

UEC

The UEC celebrated its second year of service in early November (our actually anniversary is October 6).  David Ralston, our board president, and a group from Memphis joined us.  At the anniversary party, seven members of Nivki church (who earlier had formed an informal ensemble) performed for about 20 minutes and impressed us all.  They are also planning a Christmas concert.  I am very proud of Lera, Tanya, Lena, Anya, Vanya, Dima, Oleg, and Jonathan (our intern). 

 

Jonathan is also leading a UEC effort to expand our library holdings.  His website http://www.uecenter.org/harvestofbooks/index.htm about our “Harvest of Books” contains all the details. If you have some books you would like to send our way, let us know and visit his website.  We’ll add you to our map.  We are hoping 25 groups will participate this year.

 

Our UEC work seems to grow constantly.  October was a record-breaking month--over 4,000 patron visits.  We’ve also made several trips to the post office since Eastern European Mission sent 250 Russian Bibles and 250 Russian-language A Newcomer’s Guide to the Bible to us.  It’s been a joy distributing those.  It’s so exciting to see that our dream is alive and well and serving hundreds of people every week. 

 

Lena’s News

Lena has been hard at work on several fronts: working with the Old Testament course; weekly training of several adult leaders from the Tuesday night small group; translating handouts, our leadership handbook, and an essay I wrote on pain and suffering; and improving the website. More details about her work in our print newsletter.    

 

Personal Woes

Our personal news is mostly woes, unfortunately.  Our Russian tutor, Zhanna Serafimovna, of many missionaries and of many years died in late October.  She was a wonderful woman and will be missed by many.  Besides that bad news, I have had a series of urological problems.  After paying $600 for a seemingly endless series of tests, I was eventually diagnosed with chronic prostatitis, a relatively difficult-to-cure malady.  Then, after one doctor proposed a formidable treatment regime (which also cost $2500 and involved leeches), we sought a second opinion.  This Soviet doctor claimed I don’t have prostatitis but may have a problem with my back.  Now, I am symptom free but who knows what may happen tomorrow.  Lena has also had numerous health problems but is much better now.  To say the very least, it was an extremely difficult month emotionally and physically. 

 

As for the aquarium, more woes.  Two fish have died recently.  We finally figured out why two of the angelfish “skelari” were so combative and territorial.  They were hoping to be parents!  But their eggs soon became caviar.  That was the end of that dream.  On the good side, Lena bought two small sucker fish that help keep the glass clean.  We’ll keep you posted.  

 

Although we thought about not coming to the USA for Christmas, we changed our minds, but the only available tickets were Dec. 24.  We will be in the USA Dec. 24-Jan. 15.  We hope to see many of you and thank you for your partnership in the gospel.