Sorry this entry is so long! We will try to do a better job of updating this list a bit more regularly so that posts don't end up quite this long. Hopefully these are helpful for you in your prayers for us!
Praise
- Tanya, our new sister in Christ! One of the young adults who has been attending church and weeknight meetings accepted Christ as her savior a couple weeks ago! Please pray for her too, because she has been experiencing various challenges since being saved, and we believe she may be under spiritual attack because of her new faith.
- A successful 6 weeks with the Blessings at Bethel House. We wrapped up our time at Bethel House last week. We really enjoyed the time spent with the Blessings, and we were able to help them with many tasks around the house. We are happy to be on our own, but are grateful for the time we had there and the Lord's hand on that time.
- God's provision of the perfect apartment in the city. We moved into an apartment on Friday. It is wonderful - everything we were praying for, and more. It's in the perfect location within $35 of our estimated cost. This seems to be a miracle, because when we started looking, we kept hearing costs were very high and availability very low due to the high numbers of refugees and students from the East, who have moved to Lviv/transferred to Lviv universities.
- God's financial provision for us. God has provided above and beyond what we requested in our initial support letter! We even learned a few weeks after the fact that God had provided the amount requested in our support letter just before we left to fly to Ukraine! We are thankful for His provision, and are glad He provided more than we requested, because we have learned about some costs that were initially unexpected or underestimated.
- Lviv AcousticFest. Maggie had the opportunity to play violin with Bria, her cousin who is a singer in Ukraine, and a few other musicians at a local Acoustic Festival. Bria's most recent release, "Ми - України" ("We Are Ukraine"), is her first song in Ukrainian, and this festival was the first performance of the song at a concert. The bridge of the song contains an adaptation of the Lord's prayer spoken as a prayer for Ukraine, at which point a hush fell over the audience. After this bridge, the band cut out and Maggie played a portion of Ukraine's national anthem before the band resumed. This portion of the song stirred many hearts, and the entire auditorium jumped to their feet for the first time all night. (If you want to watch a video of this song, click here.) It was a wonderful opportunity for Maggie to play, and an opportunity for many people to hopefully encounter God through Bria's music.
- The church and our relationships here. God has blessed our relationships in particular with the young adults in the church, and we have really clicked with them. We are so thankful that God has given us friends to enjoy, fellowship with, and hopefully help grow (as they do the same for us). We look forward to deepening these relationships in the coming months.
- Our visas. We traveled to Krakow about 2 weeks ago to visit a Ukrainian consulate to get our religious visas. This involved overnight buses (think 5-hour bus ride with a 2-hour border stop in the middle) 2 nights in a row and a very long day in between. We'll probably share more about this trip in a blog post, but to summarize, everything went very well. The visa process worked very quickly and we had our visas in hand 3-4 hours after first arriving at the consulate. From what we've heard, over the past 20 years, this is almost completely unheard of. Since we got our visas before lunch and planned to return that night, we got to explore Krakow for about 10 hours, which was a treat.
Prayers
- Ukraine's elections, which take place tomorrow (October 26). This country has struggled for a long time with corruption in its government. Please pray for God to work in the election to establish authorities who value justice, demonstrate integrity, and who will lead this country well. We are thankful for God's sovereignty in this matter (Romans 13:1). Many people here seem to consider these elections to be very important, given the current political climate; we've heard in passing that many current leaders are friendly with Russia, so people seem to believe it would be in Ukraine's best interest to get these leaders out of power. We aren't familiar enough with the political system here yet to have much to say about or add to what we've heard, but we pray that God will allow good leaders to be elected.
- Wisdom and guidance as we establish our routine and further establish our ministries now that we live in the city. Since we have moved, some aspects of our routine will now change. We are praying about what our ministry to Lviv's poor should look like, and are awaiting guidance in this from Mark and Rhonda, as we are part of the Blessing Ministry in this effort. Please pray God will make it clear where and how we can best serve here.
- Ability for us to quickly learn Ukrainian. Many young adults speak English well, and occasional waitresses or store clerks can speak English. But otherwise, communication is very challenging. For instance, none of the orphans or workers at the orphanage understand English, and we expect the same to be true for the poor people that we help. We have already been studying Ukrainian some, but now that we're living in the city and are on our own, we expect the learning curve to pick back up again, as we are forced to handle daily activities (market, stores, transportation, etc) on our own in Ukrainian, without help from the Blessings. We just began private weekly Ukrainian lessons with an elementary school teacher from English club, so we are excited to learn from her in addition to our personal studies. Please pray that God will give us success in our efforts, so we can better communicate.
- Smooth processing for our documents. As we mentioned in the last post, we received approval to be in Ukraine for a year from the religious affairs department before coming here. Although this was the biggest hurdle, there are several more hoops to jump through. After arriving here, we had to leave the country and get a religious visa from a Ukrainian consulate (for some reason, we can't get this in-country). We thought we'd have to go to Budapest, but it worked out for us to take a shorter trip to Krakow about 2 weeks ago. We then re-entered Ukraine on the religious visa (which is good only for 45 days). We now must apply for a temporary residency permit, which will allow us to stay in Ukraine the full year. This is in process, with Victor (one of the church employees) running all around getting various approvals that are required for this application. We believe we will have to take a trip to the regional office 1-2 hours away from Lviv at some point. Please pray for everything to go smoothly and that we will get our residency permit within the 45 days without any problems.
- Peace for Ukraine. It is almost easy (even for us) to forget about the people in Eastern Ukraine, since we are so far out of harm's way here in Lviv. How much harder it must be to remember them if you live an ocean away! Please do not forget to pray for peace for this country and for its people in the East. Although the media has talked about a ceasefire, it's our understanding that there has still been some fighting and violence over the past several weeks. According to some sources, the ceasefire was ended 2 days ago, potentially to create unrest before elections. It is the belief of many here that Russia simply wants a destabilized Ukraine and will continue its pressure to achieve that end. But this isn't only a political issue. People are dying. Homes are destroyed. Many people in occupied portions of the east are not being paid in money for their work, many are being paid only in meager food supplies. We've heard reports of utilities not running properly, so people in some of the rebel-held areas don't have good access to electricity/gas/water, and winter is quickly approaching. Please pray for the physical needs of these people to be met, for the heart of Russian leaders to change, for peace in Ukraine, and for God to meet the spiritual needs of the people. Please pray most of all that through all of this, God would turn people's hearts toward Himself, because He gives true peace.
- Safety for those in the Living Word church family who are in danger. We previously mentioned Misha, a young man from church who was summoned to the East. He has been moved to progressively more dangerous areas. Please pray for his safety and also for his wife Olesya and daughter Solomiya. Please pray for safety and salvation for Nick and Oleg, who are sons of a church member named Mykola. Nick is serving with UN Peacekeeping forces in Sudan, and Oleg is serving in Eastern Ukraine.