Bryan Shufelt

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

Looking forward to an awesome year!  God bless!

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!

Praise God, I made it back to the States with all of my luggage Saturday night!  I have not had any major problems so far with jet lag either

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

God bless

Schools, cinemas, and public gatherings closed for 3 weeks!  Students, now free from classes for these 3 weeks now flock back to their home villages.  More and more people use masks, scarves, hats, whatever they have has masks!  Inter-region travel restricted for non-urgent travel!  Swine Flu has broken out in Western Ukraine! And yet, God is still on His Throne, and He is still in control!  Psalm 118:6 “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?” (Think that includes diseases, too!)

Today, I was invited by Jessie and Teresa Beal to go to Metro (kinda like Sam’s or Costco) with them.  I was excited, because Metro has some of the things that other store don’t.  I met them in Center, by Shevchenko’s statue.  As I was waiting, I noticed some strange things.  A few people were walking around with surgical masks on.  A few others were covering their faces with their scarves.  I really didn’t think anything about it, till I remember reading a tweet or FB comment about 30 some possible swine flu deaths in Western Ukraine.  I smiled to myself, and thought nothing of it.  Caution is good for some, I guess.  Spent the rest of the time staring at the beautiful American flag hanging in front of the Grand Hotel.  When we got to Metro, almost all of the employees were wearing face masks!  Oh well, caution for them is good too, I guess…  Got a bunch of goodies (salsa, tortilla chips, Heinz spaghetti sauce, special spices, etc.), checked out, and headed home.  Since it is Friday, I only had about 15 minutes before I had to head out to go my language lessons.  Got the groceries put away, grabbed my lesson books, and headed out the door.  Saw more and more masks…

My first lesson was with my Ukrainian teacher, Veronica.  We try to talk in Ukrainian and only fill in the gaps with English (so I can fully understand the conversation).  Of course, the topic of today kept going back to the ‘outbreak’ of the swine flu.  Since Veronica is also a college teacher, she was filling me in on what was happening with the schools.  This entire time, not even a bit scared of the dreaded ’swine flu!’  In fact, as I was walking up the street to Veronica’s building, I was laughing to myself about all the cracks I could make in this post  We finished our lesson, then I headed over to my speech therapist, Dara.  She speaks no English, and as I speak Ukrainian much better then I understand it orally (neither is that good), or conversation is sometimes limited.  Dara is a grandmotherly type Ukrainian who is always trying to make sure I bundle up when it’s cold outside  Anyway, we get through our session, and we talk a little about the ‘outbreak,’ but not that much.  She makes sure I use my scarf to cover my nose and mouth when I leave her house  Get on the bus, and notice how empty it is outside.  Yes, it’s cold out side (high 30’s F), but not much colder then normal.  On the way back to my apartment, I see people using turtlenecks, hats, scarves, and a few masks to cover their faces.  All I do is make sure I breathe through my nose (mostly ’cause the cold area is not doing great things to the back of my throat).  Again, I’m slightly surprised at how unaffected I am.  I know I am where God wants me, and I know that nothing can happen to me without His approval, and nothing will happen to me that He will not turn out for His good (and mine in the end ).  I’ll stop rambling about the day now

So, now, due to the current crisis, I want to present a short devotional.  Thanks to David Grice and Alex Keeler (and who ever else posted it on FB) for the idea a few months ago.  The title of the devotional will be:  ’Swine Flu!’
Er…  Meant to say ‘Swine Flew!’  Sorry, it would have been better with audio
In the beginning of Mark 5, we read a story many of us are familiar with about Jesus casting legion out of a man into a ton of pigs.  Go ahead and read verses 1-20.  There are so many things we can learn from this story.  One thing that I always see is how much smarter then humans swine can be.  What happens when these 2,000 swine are possessed by demons?  That’s right!  Those swine flu er… flew into the sea! (Had to get that in there )  Seriously now, as soon as those pigs saw what was coming their way, they ran!  Even though it cost them their lives, they ran!  What do we do when faced with similar situations of temptation?  We run, but too often we run the wrong way!  And some times temptation doesn’t even have time to find us, because we are looking for it!  We should never take pleasure in the things Christ died for!  ”Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7  We can always be victorious if we rely on Christ and follow Him!  ”Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.” James 4:8  So the next time you hear about the ‘Swine Flu,’ stop and check yourself.  Are you being smarter then the pigs?

We’ve had a GREAT week for the Correspondence Bible Course this week!  We had 29 letters in the PO box on Monday (that was from last week as well, though), 8 on Monday, and 9 today!  We have at least 5 new people that are being added to the course this week, with at least 2 Good and Evil Full Request coming in as well! (I haven’t gone through today’s mail, so the numbers aren’t fully accurate, yet.  They could still go up! )  And with the swine flu break out, more people will be staying home, and that means we’ll have a lot more  lessons coming in for the next few weeks! (There’s blessings in everything!)  I know this will be slightly old news, but it’s exciting nonetheless!  We got a note back from one of our students a few months ago, that told as that because of the Bible teaching and the questions we ask in the Bible course, he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour!  AMEN!!!  That’s awesome!!  Please keep this aspect of our ministry in your prayers.  We will never fully know the impact of these lessons, till we’re in the Promised Land!  We’ve experienced several technical difficulties lately with the lessons themselves (misprints and the like) and with lesson development (future lessons), so I ask that you spend a little extra time in prayer about this the next time you are on your knees!  As Paul says, We are laborers together!  God bless!

Today has been a good day.  The sun was out, temp got up to 62 degrees, and it looked like autumn.  It was nice to be outside for the time I was.  I have two lessons on M, W, & F, with the Monday lessons starting earlier at 3:30pm instead of 5pm.  Daylight Savings ended here in Ukraine Sunday, so we are on normal time  Maybe that helped to make the day nice as well  It was really nice to be out in Fall weather.  We had a few day of that 2 weeks ago before the snow fell  Anyway, I enjoyed it while it lasted.

We had 29 envelopes in the PO box today!  26 are lessons that have been returned, and 3 are letters.  I’ve got some work layed out for me tomorrow!  I hadn’t checked it in a week, so that is 7 days worth of mail, but that’s still a lot!  I was really glad when I saw all of them, PTL!

Things have been going pretty well over here.  With the approach of Dec 22, the daylight hours are getting shorter; the cloud coverage doesn’t help much either.  Without the sun, L’viv looks a lot like one color: grey.  Boring and depressing  The harvest times are coming to an end and people are getting ready for what some are saying is going to be a pretty hard winter.  Funny things is, when I get back to TX in Dec, I think I’ll be so used to really cold temperatures, I wonder how I’ll adjust to the TX cold temps

Thank you for reading all of these ramblings.  Sometimes it’s good to just type away without have to think to hard.  As you can tell, I’m not into deep thought right now  Have a great day!

Forecast on my Mac for L’viv says that next week will be a lot of rain with snow intermingling towards the middle of the week.  Then it drops below freezing.  My hope is that the heaters are turned on before it gets really cold. (Here in L’viv the heat in all the apartments is not controlled by the individual, the entire building gets the same volume.  I’m thinking the people in charge of the building decide when to turn them on…)  There was a sign on the door downstairs that stated all remonts (remodeling, construction, etc) had to be finished by the beginning of October because they were going to start prepping the pipes for heating.  We’ll see…

The ministry is slowing down here.  As we get farther away from CMO, the request for Good & Evils are slowing down (the great news is that we have reached a few people in different villages/cities that keep sending us addresses of friends and relatives that want G/E, which is awesome!).  The correspondence course is still going, growing slowly, and keeping us busy with answering questions that have come in.  English Club is going pretty well.  We are averaging around 6-7 Ukrainians each Tuesday night.  The Bible Study part has been postponed till January when Nathan and Katelin get back to Ukraine (we don’t have an interpreter, and neither Jessie nor I are fluent enough to teach without one).  CBC Development is back up and running.  We had a software problem earlier due to incompatibility issues on Josh’s snow leoparded Mac .  Thankfully those problems have now been resolved, and we will have new lessons coming out soon.

I purchased my ticket back to the States this week.  I will be flying back to the States on Dec. 12.  I was able to get my flights through Luftansa (Praise God it wasn’t LOT ), so I’ll have a short layover in Germany.  Never been there, so that’s one more country I can add to my been in list

Well, that’s all for now.  I have Good & Evil requests calling my name  God bless!

Just a quick update to let y’all know what’s going on here…
We recently added our 400th student to our Chronological Bible Course! It was really exciting for me! Since I got here in January, over 80 people have been enrolled in the course! Please keep these students in prayer, that as they study the Bible, God would speak to their hearts. Also, please keep in prayer the lesson development for CBC.
This evening, we had 7 Ukrainians at English Club. At the end, some started talking about our CBC, and it ended up with everyone taking a starter packet home with them! The group tonight was all newer people, so we are looking forward to the responses we’ll get back.
It’s getting late, so off to bed I go (Thankfully, I just killed that irritating mosquito! ) Have a great day, y’all!

I’ve only got a few minutes before I need to head out to church, but I wanted to share a quick update and a thought that has been running through my mind….

The Correspondence Bible Course is almost up to 400 students!  I anticipate that we will hit that mark this week or next.  I’m really looking forward to that mark

I watched ‘Saving Private Ryan’ recently, and there was a line that is running through my head.  (BTW, this is not a recommendation to watch it, just an observation)  On the bridge while Tom Hanks is dying, he tells Matt Damon (Private Ryan), after giving his life (and several of his men’s lives) to protect him, Hanks whispers, “Earn this.”  Taking a spiritual application, I am SO glad that we do not have to earn salvation.  Jesus didn’t say from the cross, “Earn this.”  He said, “Father, forgive them,” and “It is FINISHED!”  Now going down a different trail, we should be living our lives remembering that One has died for us.  We should be, in one sense, living our lives to ‘earn this,’ meaning that we should be living our lives, remembering that Someone died so that we might live.  We should be living in honor of Him and His sacrifice.

That’s all I have time for, have a great day worshipping the LORD!