It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, so I’ll fly over some of what’s been going on.
During July, the CMO team headed to Eastern Ukraine to the Dnipropetrosk area. We were there for 10 days and distributed a lot of literature. We are still receiving responses back from the area we blitz! Speaking of, today we just added our 500th student to CBC! We also had a Missions training Conference last week at the Beals. I returned to the USA Monday night, so that’s the reason I will use to excuse the randomness of this post.
To keep up with what’s going on with CMO, check out Euro Team Outreach’s website: http://www.euroteamoutreach.org/
Wanted to fill y’all in about what’s been going on over here. Last week was great, and this week should be as well! If you haven’t signed up to get the CMO E-report, you’ll want to click here and sign up so you can keep up with all the awesomeness going on over here! It’s in the upper right hand corner (It’s called the ETO E-report there) Week 2′s E-report should be up either right before or right after I post this (depends on who’s faster, Josh or me )
ETO (Euro Team Outreach) also has a Twitter account, Facebook page and Youtube channel. If you’re on any of these, feel free to follow, like, or favorite! I’m hoping that we can get the FB page up to 400 supporters by next week! (We’re currently at 379).
Last week was just hot. We hit highs in the upper 80′s and low 90′s with sunny days. Now, I know all you Texas people are saying, “Quit complaining, it’s in the 100′s here!” Allow me to explain a few things about the heat here. We don’t have air conditioning. Period. Whatever temperature it’s outside, that’s probably close to what your apartment is. Now, if you’re in public transportation, the temperature is probably at least 15 degrees higher then outside (Most Ukrainians don’t like a draft as some believe it will make them sick, so rarely are the windows open, and if they are, they’re usually only cracked). If you want to imagine what it’s like being on a bus here, think about going into a sauna, fully clothed, and add direct sunshine. Then you start to get the idea . Also, during ministry, we are wearing collared shirts and pants. We’re usually outside from 9am – 4pm (includes the hottest part of the day) in this outfit, then we get home (after sweating to near death on the bus) to take a cold shower to cool down (that is if the water is running, which praise God it has been for the last few weeks!). So, when I say it’s hot here, I mean that Now that I’ve explained part of living in Ukraine, I’ll go back to CMO update…
Here’s a brief run down of what we did last week. Tuesday, we were in some villages just outside of L’viv. We ‘passed out’ in about 3 of them. Wednesday, we went back to Chervonograd to finish what we couldn’t last week. Thursday, was back to the villages outside L’viv. Friday, Benjamin and I had language lessons, and we had Team Church in the afternoon. Afterwards, The Beal’s, Day’s and Denise stuck around for a team meal that Benjamin and I cooked. Teresa got a bit nervous before we finished, but once everyone started eating, they said it was good Saturday, Jessie, Nathan, Benjamin, Josh, Abby and I went up to Bookoovets to hand out invites for a second showing. Next Sunday we will be showing ‘Light of the World’ there. After passing out the invites, we went to this awesome campsite with a nice swimming hole next to it. It was good to cool down in! I even was able to give Abby a little swim lesson! It’s been a while and I forgot how fun it is to teach kids to swim! Sunday we showed in 2 villages and the latter one we have a second showing set up for 2 weeks.
Sunday was a really good day! ~20 people coming for the first showing (Not many were interested in it). The reception was nice but not really excited. When we went to the next village, the mood was very different! Before we started we had almost as many people as the first showing! By the time it ended over 40 people were watching and stuck around to hear Josh’s Gospel presentation! One guy even asked a question at the end. At the end of all of our showings we have a table with a CBC starter packet on it, Gospel of John’s (Yura Popchenko’s version), Good & Evil shorts, and 2 different types of tracts people can take with them when they leave. Sunday night God blessed me by allowing me to see one gentleman sitting outside the hall reading the Gospel of John he had picked up! Sometimes we get so caught up with what we’re doing we don’t see what goes on after we leave. It was a blessing to see that glimpse! I’m looking forward to going back there in 2 weeks!
Time has run by me again, and I’ve got to stop writing and post this. God bless, and remember to share His Light!
So, every time I plan on blogging something comes up, plans change, and most of the time it doesn’t happen. So, I’ve got 30 minutes before I have to get ready for my language class, and I am going to post this come what may
CMO (Carpathian Mountain Outreach) officially began last Tuesday when Benjamin Anna arrived from the States. But, since I last posted in the middle of May, I’ll overview what happened in those few weeks leading up to June. Here goes
The Beal’s and Steele’s successfully crossed the Polish border and returned (extending their 90 days), we had 550 copies of Lesson 1 of CBC (Chronological [or Correspondence, not sure which ] Bible Course) and 100,000 copies of the new Genesis tract delivered (meaning filing for me ), and I had several language lessons focused on relearning Ukrainian, plus helping out with the maintenance of the current CBC students and generally living in Ukraine
Since Last Monday was Memorial Day, I want to take a minute and thank all of you who have, are, or will be serving in the US military. The USA is a free country because of your sacrifice. Thank you for your willingness to lay down your life for my freedom!!
Now for CMO
Tuesday afternoon, Benjamin Anna arrived safely with all his luggage in tact. The rest of the afternoon was set aside for getting settled in and getting ready for the next week. On Tuesday evening, English Club was great! We had 8 Ukrainians come, which is more then we’ve had in a while! Part of that is due to the schools and universities wrapping up studies either last week or this week. It was good to see several friends that hadn’t been able to come for a while!
Wednesday morning came way to early for some of us . When the alarm went off, the air was really heavy! But God is good and gives us help in times of need! We had team meeting, after which Josh headed off for the Beal’s with Kelsie to work on CBC development, and Nathan, Benjamin, and I headed to Bus Station 2 to wait for a bus to Chervonograd. The team had passed out Good & Evil invites here last year, but had only finished about 2/3rds of the city. After about a 2 hours bus ride, we arrived, split up the remaining area, and started ‘passing out.’ Allow me to explain. Most of the cities we go to have large Soviet style apartment buildings. Here’s a picture from my window of apartments in L’viv.
Ukrainian Apartment Buildings
Each building has several entrances with PO boxes for each apartment accessible through that entry. We go through and insert 1 invite into every PO box we find. Sometimes that can be very difficult and takes a lot of work because the slot is very small and you have to work the invite into the box. Other times, God blesses you with wide slotted PO’s that are really easy, which is Heaven to any CMO Stallion
When we see these, you can almost hear the angels singing and see light shining down from Heaven
This is the way God says, "Boy, I really love you!"
The 3 of us were able to pass out all the invites brought (~7,000). I have to insert here that I was the first to run out of my stacks, so I had to get some from Nathan and Benjamin. During CMO, we have the “Tractmaster” status anyone can achieve by passing out over 2,000 tracts in 1 day. I was massively excited to have hit “Tractmaster” on the first day of CMO, and I have plans to break the all time CMO 1 man/1 day record set by Matthias back in 2007 of 4,400 tracts sometime this summer! Look out, that record is going to be broken! Plans are already in the works!
Once all of us ran out of invites, it was time to head back to the bus station for the bus back to L’viv. Throughout the day there had been intermittent little showers, but as soon as we started heading back to the station, the rains came!!! We stopped under a store overhang to wait out the storm, but it wasn’t stopping. Once it died down, we decided to book it to the station, and, of course, that’s what the clouds were waiting for. ”Where are those CMO guys?” ”I lost them, do you see them?” ”Not over here” ”THERE they are! Dump everything you’ve got!!!” And it poured. On us. Yep, we got soaked!
Yes, that is called soaked!
Soaked, but the Gospel was spread!
All in all, it was a good day of spread the Word! We posted a video recapping the day on ETO’s new Youtube channel.
Thursday, we headed out to the Carpathians to hand out ‘Fireproof’ invites for the film showing on Sunday. Normally we had these out the weekend before the film showing, but since this was the first week of CMO, we hadn’t done it yet. We got up to the 2 villages, and wouldn’t you know, it was raining. This time we were prepared, and didn’t get that wet Here’s the video from that day -
Friday was a half day of Ministry for the team. They handed out Genesis Invites (these are the new invites for this year that talk about our CBC Course). I went to my Ukrainian lesson (I have them twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, throughout June), taught Katelin how to do Reminder letters for CBC, and prepped for my sermon. At 3pm we had team church, Josh led in some hymns, I preached on the temptations of Christ, and we had a good time of fellowship.
Saturday found us getting heading to the train station to start our weekend in the Carpathians. Nathan, benjamin, Josh, Abby, and I left the station at 8:47 (trains are the only transportion in L’viv that run on time) headed for Morshen (not sure of the transliteration). The original plan was to meet Jessie in the village we would be passing out film invites in (this helps reduce the wear and tear on the van, which is already on it’s last leg), but we both ended up in Morshen at the same time, so we went with Jessie instead of waiting for the bus out to the villages.
We were able to pass out invites for both showings next week in beautiful weather! The sun was shining, no rain at all, it was awesome Here’s a pic from our campsite:
Beautiful Day!
We found a great campsite, had dinner, tossed the frisbee, and turned in for the night.
Sunday morning found us with some free time on our hands, so Jessie led us in a devotional, and we were able to relax for a bit. At 1 we headed toward our first film showing, waiting to see what the reaction of the people would be… Would they come?
By the time the film was supposed to start, only the club owner’s father there. We found out that the church had a flexible schedule as to when it started, as the priest of that village is over 3 different villages. Thankfully we had enough time before our next showing, so we delayed the film starting till the church ended. We had a good number of people stop in to see what was going on and about 46 people stopped in to see the film. The priest even stopped by to talk to Josh to see who we were and what we were about. After Josh talked with him about our goals of encouraging and equipping people to study their Bibles, as well as some other things, the priest said we we’re a sect (which most people are afraid of getting sucked into here), and several people stuck around to see the film and hear Josh’s Gospel presentation at the end. The priest wasn’t able to stay for that showing, but he said he would come to one of next week’s showings! That was a blessing for us! He even said he would let people know we aren’t a sect! I’m looking forward to next week. We were able to pass out a lot of Good & Evil short, CBC starter packets, and Gospel of Johns. It was a good showing. In fact, we’ll be heading back to that village in 2 weeks to show another film!
Our second showing ended up getting cancelled. The club we were going to show the film in was run down and rumor had spread that we were a sect, so people were afraid to come. We talked with the club operator, and after telling him about our goals and letting him know we are not a sect, he wanted us to come back. We have his contact info and are working on rescheduling the showing and having it in the school, which is a much better building. Word is now spreading in that area that we are not a sect and that we are ok, so I’m looking forward to having a lot less resistance when we go to that area in the future, Praise the LORD!
Well, I ended up going to language lessons and back before I could post this, but I wanted to let you know that when I stopped by the Post Office, I found 3 requests from where we passed out G/E invites on Wed, and 1 request from where the Genesis invites that were passed out on Friday! This is great news, normally we don’t hear back from people so quickly! We’re going to continue receiving requests till Sept or Oct. It awesome to see the process already starting!
Here’s a few prayer requests to keep in mind:
1. Team Health
2. For the tracts we have and are going to pass out to reach those who are searching for the Truth
3. Spiritual strength
4. CBC students
5. Good weather – we can reach more people when it’s NOT raining
6. Jessie’s van
Looking at the calendar this morning, I realized that 2 weeks ago, the Steele Family and I arrived back in L’viv. Simultaneously, I realized that I haven’t updated my blog either. Whoops :-/ Sorry about that…
When I arrived at DFW International Airport Tuesday, April 27th, I was exhausted. With minimal sleep in the days leading up to that day and the 2 hours I was able to grab that night in between my frantic packing of suitcases, I was ready to sit for a while. After saying goodbye to my mom and sister (they dropped me off at the airport), getting through security, and meeting up with the Steele Family at our departure gate, I realize that I hadn’t noticed my first blessing of the trip. I wasn’t charged for my second checked suitcase that I was taking to Ukraine! I had to use a self check in system to get my tickets, and with the confusion of having to use those for the first time, I didn’t realize that God paid for my second bag. That was a real blessing, saved me $50.
We arrived in Charlotte, grabbed the last meal of good ol’ American fast food for a while, and found our departure gate for Munich, Germany. The Steele’s were able to board first as they had little ones, so I sat in the waiting area and found a free wi-fi signal! I got totally absorbed in trying to sending out a few emails, check Facebook, and skype call home, that I didn’t hear the desk calling my name! I got to the end of the line for boarding when my group was called (it was the last one), and found out that I had to get a different boarding pass then the one I had! Thankfully, they were able to take care of it with no problems and I didn’t end up looking like that big of an idiot . Blessing #2
Munich was uneventful, except the fact that we had to go through security. Having flown several times by myself, I’m used to dumping my stuff on the belt, retrieving my stuff from the scanning machine, then heading off. But, when you’ve got 3 adults and 2 young children, things take a little bit longer . Not only are there more bags, you’ve got 2 inquisitive youngsters that keep things interesting . Looking forward to having that happen to me several years down the road
Arrived in L’viv, got through Customs with only a few problems (visa and declarations, I love bureaucracy! -that was sarcasm- ), met Jessie, Nathan, and Alexandria outside, got loaded up in the yellow van (which is in need of being replaced – more on that later) and headed home.
I had a harder time this time adjusting to the time zone (Ukraine is 8 time zones ahead of Texas). It took a few days of zombification in the afternoons, but I’m ok now
I’ve been working on trying to get caught up with all of the ministries we’ve got going on right now, and helping plan for the ones coming up. Here’s a quick update. Our Correspondence Bible Course (CBC) has over 450 students in it right now. English Club/Audio Bible Study (ABS) has a core group of regular attendees, as well as several who come when they don’t have school. There’s some other stuff, but for some reason my mind is drawing a blank…
CMO is rapidly approaching! The application deadline is Saturday! We have 3 men confirmed, and this week we heard from another 2 men who were interested in coming! That being said, if you’re wanting to come over this summer, you need to get an application in asap More info can be found at www.euroteamoutreach.org/cmo Looking forward to a very productive summer!
There are a few prayer needs that I would like to share with you. We are still have some problems with visas. Without going into tons of details, the L’viv OVIR (the office of registration) has decided that they don’t like the visas we have and will no longer register them. We are in the process of finding out what we need to do to continue the ministry here. It looks like currently all we need to do is get a different type of visa and everything will work out for the next few years, but that could change. Please pray for wisdom in this matter as we are working on trying to figure this out.
Also, the Beal’s van that we have been using for CMO since ’06 and earlier is essentially on it’s last leg. Prayerfully it will get us through this summer’s CMO. Please pray about this situation. Specifically, that Jessie will have success as he works on raising the necessary funds for a new vehicle and that the old yellow van will last until they get a new vehicle. If you feel lead to donate toward this need, it would be much appreciated!
I ordered my airline tickets a few weeks ago, and this evening I realized that in less then 4 weeks, I’ll be back in Ukraine! I’ll be leaving for L’viv on April 27th (2 weeks after early voting in Texas is over – BTW, remember to vote on April 13th Texans!). I’ll be in Ukraine for 90 days (any longer and I would have to go throught the difficult process of registration). I’ll be able to help get things ready for CMO 2010 (Registration deadline is April 15th!), and I’ll be able to help out for the first 2 months of the project! My post will be a little more frequent once I get back to Ukraine
Just wanted to let y’all know what’s going on with me. I’ve been working for a state wide campaign near Austin. I’ll be heading back to Ukraine in April to help prepare for and participate in CMO 2010. Then I’ll be back in TX in August. If you know of a church that would like to have CMO presented as a mission trip possiblity, feel free to contact me! That’s all for now!
If you or someone you know is interested in attending CMO 2010, registration is now open! For more info on our summer missions project in Western Ukraine (aka CMO) check out: http://www.euroteamoutreach.org/cmo
We’ve also got a Facebook event page as well! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=252638114146
Hope y’all had a great time of celebrating the birth of our Saviour! With only a few days left of 2009, what else are you going to do for Him this year?
God bless!
Just noticed it’s been over a month since I posted! Sorry about that… To get you caught up with what is going on:
English Club has been going well. Last Tuesday we had 9 Ukrainians come, 4 of which we hadn’t seen in a while, so that was a blessing. CBC is continuing to grow with new students being added weekly. We’ve added over 130 students since I arrived in Jan. That’s awesome! We’re still getting requests for Good & Evil’s though the flow has slowed down a bit as we get further away from the summer. Last week, a request came in from an invitation we handed out LAST YEAR! That was really awesome!
Saturday I fly back to the States! I fly out of L’viv at 12:55pm (4:55am CST) and am scheduled to arrive in DFW at 10:57pm CST. Please pray for my trip. I have short lay overs (95 min in Munich and 105 min in Chicago), meaning that if one flight gets behind, the entire schedule goes out the window. Pray that all the flights stay on schedule and that I will get through security/customs in time to catch them all. Speaking of, pray about the Ukrainian side as well. The immigration laws have changed and no 2 people agree on what the current law is. Please pray that I will have no problem getting out of L’viv.
I am looking forward to spending Christmas with my family and catching up with some friends back in FW. I’ll be in the DFW area until Jan 4, at which time I’ll be heading down to the Austin area for the next 2-3 months. If you, or someone you know in South Texas, is interested in having our Summer missions project (CMO) presented to your church, contact me and we’ll try to set something up. (BTW, I’ll be looking for a vehicle when I get back, please pray that God will guide me to one that I can put some miles on without it breaking down ) I’m planning on heading back to Ukraine in the summer of 2010 (late April – late July) for 90 days (due to registration restrictions and the headaches that go with that…) to help prepare for and work with CMO 2010.
I apologize for the scatteredness of this post. It’s past 1am and my brain isn’t making really great sense right now Lots to do before I head out on Saturday
If you haven’t signed up to get the CMO E-report, you’ll want to 
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] Bible Course) and 100,000 copies of the new Genesis tract delivered (meaning filing for me 
