Prayer Letter

April 18, 2012

“As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”  Proverbs 25:25.  Proverbs 25:13 says, “...so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters.”  As we travel to those who have faithfully supported us over the past 5 years (or more), that is our goal, to refresh your souls with good news from a far country.   We know we are quite late with our update and apologize.  We do desire to keep you informed.

Family
The family is doing well and baby Daniel (born on January 10th) is growing fast!  We have been surprised by how well the kids are traveling and praise the Lord for protecting our family on the roads.   We have been sick quite a bit, but the Lord continues to give us energy.  We pray that He will revive our hearts and use us even more for His honor and glory.  We are anxious to get back to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Church

Thank  you all for praying for our little group of believers  as they were left by themselves  for a month and a half after we left until brother White arrived to fill in for us.  Thankfully in January brother White and his wife safely arrived in Vvedenka with a warm welcome from our believers.  They have  settled in well and seem to be doing a very good job.
As for the church we have good news and bad news.  The good news is that Slavic who recently got saved last fall seems to be growing in his faith.  We also have had many guests attending since we have left.  Tolic and his family,  Baba Maroosa,  Baba Vera, and Valodia, as well as some others that we havn’t mentioned in earlier prayer letters.  It is exciting for us because each of these individuals are people that we have personally witnessed to and given tracts to in the past.   Please pray for the salvation of each of these guests that have been attending the church.  The rest of the  members are faithfully attending services as well, except for  Yuri and Kristina.  Unfortunately Yuri had to be church disciplined out of the church and Kristina hasn’t been attending.  Please pray for this young couple. 
In our absence brother White and the church has continued to remodel the church property.  Just recently we received some large love offerings and we were able to send over  money for them to install a new heating system ,  which was desperately needed as they were really freezing in this past years extreme winter.  The small heaters that we had just weren’t enough to battle the extreme cold.  So we praise the Lord that the funds were provided for them to install this new system.
Since we have been on furlough we have tried to put as much of our love offerings as we can toward paying back the money our sending church gave us to purchase the church building .  We now owe only  $5,080.  Please pray with us that we can totally pay that back before we go back to Ukraine in November. 
As we get closer and closer to our departure, please pray that we will be able to get our visas without any problems.  And please pray that God would enable us to pick up the needed support before we go back.  We needed to raise $500 more of support per month but with some increase from our supporters we are down to about $400  more needed.  We know God will supply all our need.  Thank you for praying.
Pray also that we will be able to save enough to purchase a vehicle when we get back.  We rarely had the convenience of a vehicle during our first term, which made life a lot more difficult.