1st Corinthians 12:31b

1st Corinthians 12:31b "And now I will show you the most excellent way!" 1st
Corinthians 13:13 "Trust steadily in God, Hope unswervingly, Love
extravagantly. And the best of the three is LOVE!!!" (MESSAGE)
Doubtful that most of us actually believe this but the truth anyway! And
then the first verse of chapter 14 says in the Message Bible "Go after a
life of Love as if your life depended on it-because it does!"

Ok enough preaching but these verses and the "message of Love" has once
again been laid on our hearts like never before. People are starving for it.
Hope this update finds everyone doing well! We really have been having
a "most excellent" time here in Ukraine. I know we probably should have
gotten an update out earlier than this but we really have "hit the ground
running!" It wasn’t really what we had planned but oh well it really wasn’t
in our hands anyway! For those of you who are concerned that we take time
for ourselves, we have been doing that also and maybe that is why you
haven’t heard from us earlier :-). Like I had said on our most recent update
about our getting here safely and all that, it was probably the best trip
(plane ride etc) ever over here. It also was the shortest time of "culture
shock" or whatever it is. Somebody needs to come up with a better
description for that! Sounds so shocking! Last time we were here for the 6
months we felt isolated and in "shock" for about a month. But this time we
are 3 minutes walk from the Sashchuks (Kostya Jenya and parents Tomah and
Yura) who we hosted in America for a month in August and really strengthened
our relationship with them. What a blessing that has been and is! So to get
to the point we only felt "shocked" for about 3 days. I remember the first
morning looking out our kitchen window and seeing the "starkness" of this
world and the effects that winter has on everything over here. But by the
third day it looked quite normal. How strange for that to happen so fast.

Upon arrival in Kiev at the airport, Jenya and her mom, Tomah were
there to meet us with a "driver" who Yura had arranged to come pick us up
with a small van like truck. What a blessing that was for us instead of the
train with all of our luggage. We love the train but the luggage is such a
pain to try and get on the train etc, so it was a nice way to start our time
here. Of course (nodah in Russian) it was so good to see them and have the 8
hour ride back to Kharkiv to talk with them and reconnect. As you can
imagine we have spent a lot of time at their flat (apt) when we have the
time, but even that we don’t get done enough because of our schedule. But
the time spent with them is really the same as taking time for ourselves. We
are also staying in a flat owned by them and it was clean and completely
ready for us when we got here. You have no idea what a blessing that was for
us compared to last time. I want to post some pics for everyone to see in
our gallery on our website here. It is small but nice and on the 3rd floor.
Kitchen is small but adequate and the bathroom is actually good size and
very nice. We have a bedroom and a sitting room and everything is furnished.
The only thing we have actually considered buying is a microwave but have
decided its not necessary this time. The weather has been cool but not bad
at all. It averages about 60 degrees or so. I am looking forward to the
weather warming up a bit more but I would rather this then 90 degree weather
by far!

So we arrived in our flat here in Kharkiv around 10 pm on Thursday
evening. Tomah had brought food for us to eat on the way from Kiev so all of
our needs were met when we arrived and they had even stocked the fridge for
us. What more could you want?? Don’t think we could have arranged it any
better if we would have tried and that is the blessing we didn’t have to
try! Any how we spent the day sleeping Friday getting over the trip and
Saturday we had the Sukhovs, over for dinner, Vova and Tanya for those of
you who remember them when they came to America in the summer of 02. They
got married in the summer of 03 and now have a baby named Max. We had never
seen him except for pics so it was good to get together with them although
we were still getting over the jetlag and acclimation to the culture etc. So
we may have been a little out of it. Sunday we went to Fathers House for
church and were disappointed to find out it started at 11 am in a different
building than 2 pm in the other building. Could have used the extra sleep
:-). With the 2 other churches that have started out of Fathers House we
didn’t see that many people that we knew but it was good to see those that
we did. We went to lunch with a bunch of young people who usually go
somewhere to hang out between church and their youth group who meet on
Sunday nites. That was a good time for us as we went to a Arab cafe and had
pizza etc.

Well i am going to have to find a way to shorten all of this down a bit
so as not to bore everyone. Also i apologize to everyone for me not knowing
everyone’s last names but I will try to describe everyone in a way that
those of you who know them will recognize them.
We have visited an international student’s church held in the Baptist
church building that is close to our flat. Very cool experience for us being
basically the only white people there. Around 50-60 Africans, a couple of
Indians and they also have some Christian Arabs there and one is even from
Iraq. Alex (last name???) who plays the trumpet in Igor Ivanov's band is
their worship leader. The whole service is in English translated into French
for those French speaking students. Alex's English is very good and he leads
worship in English. How cool for us! It was also very good to see him. When
we walked into the room they were just finishing the worship practice and he
was so surprised to see us that he stopped singing. We had to laugh.
We are going through pre marital with one couple. We meet once a week.
The pre marital book is about to be translated into Russian. When that is
completed we will begin to train people here to do it so that the churches
can implement it as a part of there ministry. We have a small young adult
discipleship group that meets once a week. We are excited about this group
of “kids”. It will be interesting to see what the Lord does with this group.
Christine has just begun a college age girls group that will meet every
Saturday. She was asked to start this group by the girls here. The funny
thing is the girls are mostly African. I mean from Kenya and Uganda Africa.
God has such a creative way of doing things. Who would have thought that we
would come to Ukraine to minister to Africans? Not me!! It also happened
this way last time we were here as she did have a group of African girls
that met with her.

We have been visiting home groups and we have been to 4 different
churches, 2 of which have come out of Fathers House. We have been asked to
speak at a church not connected to Fathers House but we need more info like
about what, before we will make our decision if we will do it or not. It is
hard to explain all that has happened and all that we are doing. In some
ways it seems so small and insignificant but in other ways it seems so much
bigger then we are. I am not sure how that mix happens but it does exist
here with us. We are doing A LOT of ministry and we are having a good time
doing it. It is amazing how much we do enjoy praying for people. It is
really a good time for us to do that. The Lord has been blessing us in so
many ways and showing us His love. We are so unworthy of all of this and so
humbled that He would allow us to just experience Him working in others. We
are often overwhelmed by His goodness. Our days are very busy!! We average 2
to 3 meetings a day. Meetings here are much different then at home. It is
not unusual for a homegroup or meeting with someone to be 5 or 6 hours.
Ukrainians are so relational that you cannot just “get down to business” you
must first have a cup of tea and chit chat a bit before you can do anything.
We do not mind this but we have had to readjust our own mindset in how much
we can get accomplished in one day.

Well for those of you who are not interested in all of the details, we
will end our update here, not that its not long enough already but so many
more details could be talked about. For those of you who have been here and
have many relationships I will continue the update with all the details of
who we have met with. But for the rest of you this is probably more than you
wanted to read anyhow. Please continue your prayers for us and thanks for
the prayers you have already raised for us. We really are doing well and are
enjoying our time here very much. It really is a blessing to be used by the
Lord. Wow how life has changed for us in the last 5 years. It really is
amazing!!! I used to measure my success by how much money I could make etc.
How brief those times of satisfaction actually lasted! How different is
this?? All we can do is say Thank-you Lord for this opportunity to follow
you!! (Sure is hard to type this with tears in your eyes)

Following Him:
David & Christine

Ps. some of you will recognize some of the writing here as I have taken the
liberty of "pasting" some of the content from Christine's personal emails.
:-)