Bryan Shufelt

Wednesday afternoon brought good news.  But first, let me explain…

I usually have my language lessons on M, W, & F.  My instructor’s building is very near to the Post Office where we have our ministry box.  So it is my habit to gather the mail when I go to my lessons.  The fewest I’ve found is 3 and the most (prior to yesterday) was 8 (so our average is about 2-3 a day…).  Now here’s the great news.  When I went on Wed (I hadn’t picked up the mail for 4 days…), there were 22 envelopes in the box!  PTL!  The break down was 20 returned lessons, a returned reminder letter, and a request for a Good & Evil Full.  There were also 2 additional requests to join the correspondence course in one of the lessons.  :-)  Let me take a minute to explain how our Correspondence Course (CBC) works.  During the summer there are large amounts of invitations to CBC that are distributed throughout Western Ukraine through CMO (To learn more about CMO, click here).  From that, we have many people that request to be added to CBC.  (BTW, we still have a few responses to the literature from last summer coming in…  Ukrainians are more relaxed in regards to time and such then Americans are)  There are also invites in the back of the lessons we mail out, so that family and friends can be invited.  Once a CBC invite has been received (i.e. picked up from the PO…), it is entered into our system and a Lesson 1 starter pack is mailed out.  (I am able to input new registrations into the system, as I recognize cursive and print Ukrainian.  As I don’t fully comprehend Ukrainian yet, before the packet is sent, they double check my work  Just like some Americans, there is several times that you have to guess what was written )  The student goes through the lesson, answers the questions, then mails it back.  I pick it up at the PO, get the new lesson pack ready, and pass it on to the next person (right now, the primary one is Denise Hutchinson.  Josh and Kelsie do some, but they generally get the ones that have a lot of additional questions, so it takes them a looooong time to do them  jk).  They then grade the returned lesson(s), add it to the pre-made packet, then mail it back to the student.  Also, our reminder letters are mailed to students we have not heard from in 90 days and a year.  It asks things like, ‘Did you send a lesson and not receive it back?’ (This generally is the cause of not hearing from a student.  You could honestly say it was ‘lost in the mail.’ ) ‘Do you want to be removed from the course?’ ‘Do you need more time to finish the lesson?’ and ‘Did you lose your lesson?’  I think there is one more, but I don’t have a letter to look at…  The last one we had come in, I was able to read it and figure out what the request was!  (Though I did have to use Google Translator to help figure part of it out )  Wow, that took more then a minute…

 Tuesday’s English Club/Bible Study went well.  I think we had 7 Ukrainians come.  Bro. Jesse taught on the Authenticity of the Bible.  Next week we will not be meeting officially, but 2 guys (Taras & Igor) are coming over to practice English with me.  They have expressed much interest in working on their English, so hopefully this will be a beneficial time.  I don’t believe either are saved.

Wednesday afternoon, Sergiv moved into the Ministry Center with me.  Currently English is the dominant language (His English is a bit better then my Ukrainian), but I think that will be changing soon  Again, thank God for Google Translator  He helps me with my Ukrainian homework, and I help him with his English homework.  It works out

Sunday, at the Beals, we had birthday pies  Yep, I’m 24 now…  And let me tell you, birthday are best when you’re younger , I seem to learn this more and more every year…  It was a good day, even if I lost at Catan

Let me close this out with some prayer requests.  There is some type of illness going around the group here.  So far I haven’t got it (extra supplements any one?), please pray for health for our team (and that I don’t catch this nasty bug ).  I have been experiencing some spiritual battles (through which God is teaching me), please pray for all involved.  Finally, a great big thank you for all the prayers that have been lifted up for me!  God bless

Before I start, here’s something you might find interesting…

Ukrainian PIZZA

It was even delivered :-O  :-P  A new pizza place opened up nearby, so we figured we would try it.  It was really good!  The toppings were: Salami, tomato, green olives, and corn!  So now I’ve had corn on my pizza

Now on to the ministry

Tuesday, we finished the Gospel of John in our Audio Bible Study.  We will be starting the book of Romans in a few weeks, as well as topical teachings on popular questions sprinkled throughout.  Bro. Jessie will be doing the lesson next week on the ‘Authenticity of the Bible.’

We decided to take the opportunity that this offers us to let all of our L’viv-based Correspondence Students know about our Tuesday night Bible Study.  On Thursday morning, I headed over to the Steele’s apartment to work with Josh and Denise on the mail out.  We have over 230 students in L’viv!  That means we had a lot to do  We started by printing a name and address of each L’viv students on sheets of paper.  After that was finished, we started our production line!  First step was Denise.  She went through all the printed address to make sure everything was legible (the printer decided to not print a few of the small lines, which makes a difference when these small lines add up to half your zip code!).  She filled in anything that was missing.  Next step was me.  I divided these corrected sheets into stacks of 25, inserted these sheets as necessary into the printer, then let it do it’s thing  Next step was Josh who signed every single one of those letters!  Surprisingly, his signature was still legible after #235  Then came the folding.  Had to make sure that the back of the letter with the name and address would show through the window of the envelope!  Then came the last step of stuffing and sealing…

The rotation...

And then, we were done  Took about 6 hours to get it all done

This is what over 230 envelopes looks like!

Prayerfully, these invitations will lead to more Ukrainians hearing the ‘Wonderful Words of Life!’

There was also work going on at the Beal’s house!  Lesson 13 is now formatted and ready to head to the translator!  PTL!  A team can get a lot accomplished in one day when they all work together!  And so we did

Thank you for the prayers in regards to the housing situation!  We have found a roommate, and now we will start looking for an apartment.  I’ll keep y’all updated on that status.  In the mean time, God bless!

Last night we had our weekly English Club and Ukrainian Bible Study.  We had 6 come for the English club (2 new people Igor and Christina).  Unfortunately, 3 had to leave before the Bible study part due to school meetings and such, but there were 3 who stayed for the the Bible Study – Taras, Marian, and Igor (first time) stayed as well!  Josh Steele taught on John 20 (The resurrection).  I was able to understand a couple words that he said.  I listen when he talks trying to pick out words that I understand, then when he reads I follow in my Ukrainian Gospel of John with my English (KJV ) Bible open next to me.  There were several times last night that I was understood a phrase or a few words and was able to make out what I thought the phrase said.  Then I would check out English Bible to make sure I was right .

I will be heading to my 7th Ukrainian lesson in about an hour.  I take private lessons with a Ukrainian teacher from a local university.  Her name is Veronica (She also taught Josh, Kelsie, and Nathan).  It is… interesting  I’ve had a problem the last 2 lessons understanding the difference between Case 1 and Case 4 of personal pronouns.  We were working through it, when she mentioned in passing that there were 4 more cases to learn that were different!  AAUUGGHH!  :-)  In that regard, English is better; it, at least, uses the same words  Oh well, another saga of the curse…

Thank you all for the prayers!  I would like to write a little more, but I’ve got to make lunch and get ready to go to my lesson!  I am preaching Sunday for the English service our team has at the Beal’s Sunday afternoon, after our Ukrainian service at Greater Grace.  God Bless!

We just now were able to get the internet working at the ministry center, so now I am updating.  A lot has happened in the past week!

I’ve met the police 2 times since the last time I posted on here.  The first time was at 11 o’clock at night next to my apartment (I was just getting back from the Steele’s).  Thankfully, they were satisfied with my TX DL as I am not in the habit of carrying my passport on my person.  (And, of course the fact that we were barely able to communicate…)  Apparently, they have questions about people who carry a Nalgene of water around with them…  Then we met one at the Train Station Tuesday night.  He stopped Josh and I and asked for our passports (We had them as we were on the way to the Embassy in Kyiv).  He was drunk, of which I was slightly surprised but not shocked.  Nothing became of that either besides a delay in getting to our train.

I got to spend a short time Wed. on American soil (I registered at the Embassy).  :-)  Thankfully we got everything taken care of.  We met up with Yura Popchenko for lunch (He is working on translating the Bible into Ukrainian).  He and his family are going to the States to show their work to their supporting churches.

Tuesday night went well.  We had a lot of people there!  The Steele’s Blog has more info on how it went.  There is a possible opening with one of the guys who attends.  He is trying to improve his English, and has invited me to learn Ukrainian from him while I try to teach him English.  Please pray that if this is God’s will doors will open.

Language lessons are going … well  I am having some problems with different sound combinations (my tongue just doesn’t obey sometimes).  Thankfully my lessons are only an hour and a half, after this point my mouth is so mixed up!

Tuesday night I found out about a tragic accident.  Without going into a lot of details, I ask that you pray for Josh Beasley and his family.  His wife of 3 months died last Sunday morning.  Thankfully, she was a Christian.  Pray for strength, comfort, and wisdom during the trying days and months ahead.

Thank you all for your prayer support of the ministry over here!  God only knows how these will affect eternity!