New Journal for March 1-15 07

Dear Friends and Family,
This blog sight would not allow me on for a long time - couldn't even sign on for some reason - but now I'm back! If you are a regular reader here, I'm starting with my regular journal. Thank you for being patient with me and Google!
In Christ,
Doug

Thursday, March 1, 2007
I was getting pretty discouraged about my health until I got 2 emails telling me about missionaries in other parts of the world, one an old college friend – Sharla Sikes Markum, that were really ill – dangerously ill. Of course I started praying for them, but it made me realize how fortunate I am. I have this lingering cough and my itching to remind me how much I need the Lord! I said all that to say that I stayed in once again, trying to get well. We did have class here with 13. I did get some pretty exciting news today! 2 of our Moms of our girls want to come to Bible Club! Their English is pretty poor, so I am thinking about starting a VERY simple Bible Club for Moms! I think that I have at least 2 other Moms that will come, too, including 1 Christian Mom! I am very excited about this, because one of the things that we have always wanted to do was to be able to reach parents through our young people! Patience is a virtue!
Friday, March 2
Oksana and I went to the village today and had a class with 4 7th grade girls. Again, the 5th and 6th grades had long gone! The girls were good, but we got to get our timing down better as we are missing so many of our kids. About 30 minutes after we got back, 4 of us (2 students, Kelli and I) headed for the orphanage in Svetlovodsk, about 25 Kilometers the other way. We met Sasha and Valery (preachers from Komsomolsk) there and went and talked to the Assistant director about setting up classes to teach. The Assistant Director was very helpful and we will start on March 15th with a puppet show and then classes for at least most ages in the school of 1st grade through 12th grade. There are about 110 kids in this school. Lord willing, we will be able to use this as a launching grounds to reach out to the city. We got home about 7:30pm. After traveling about 230 miles in rainy weather, I was pretty tired and went sleep about 8:30pm!
Saturday, March 3
I had a very busy morning of preparations for Bible Clubs. Then we had just 2 in our Adult Club. For now, we are combing our 2 and 6pm clubs because of poor attendance at 6pm. I went to the church discussion at 3:30. We had 6 for our evening Bible Club. We did get more good news today! A single individual has agreed to donate money for our Bible Camp this summer that will make it possible for that camp to happen! Isn’t it amazing how God is always at work in His Church and for the lost?!
Sunday, March 4
Everybody gets down from time to time. I didn’t really realize it, but I had been allowing a lot of things to pile up in my life. Well, my daughter Jenise called me early this morning and she did an incredible job of sharing her faith with me and encouraging me in many different ways. After we talked, I fell on my knees in prayer. A part of that prayer was just pouring all my cares out to God and asking Him to take my burdens because I knew He could carry them and I couldn’t! Well, He took them right away and got up from knees to have one of the best days that I had in several months! God is such a powerful and wonderful God, if we will just let Him work in our lives! We had a great worship service and a beautiful day. A young English teacher that I hadn’t seen in a year, Natalie (not the one that moved to the US) brought a friend and met us at the Church building. Her friend is a 3rd year Univ. student that has just transferred to Kremenchuk and wants to come and be apart of our group! I was so excited to see her and them!! We had 13 for our evening service.
Monday, March 5
James left early for the airport to fly to Lubbock, TX for the AIM graduation. On the 15th he will fly to England for his and Anya’s wedding on the 24th and back to Ukraine on April 1st. Another great day! Oh, everything didn’t go like I wanted it to – we didn’t make our trip to the village, but I spent the afternoon with Max and that was good. Then at 4:30 Yulya (she hadn’t eaten all day, been at the Univ. and was starved so I fed her before we went) came to translate for me in a Bible Study with the Orphan Home family and we picked up Ksusha to teach the younger children at 5pm. Again, God was really with us and is working in the hearts of this family. We had a good study on the first part of the Plan of Salvation and then talked about the Church. They asked if they could come to the Church on Sunday. They were afraid that they had to be baptized before they could come to the Church! The misconceptions that people get!!! But the whole family, minus the little kids (2,4,6) will stay home with the grandmother (no room in the small car for all of them). The mother – Inna, father – Victor and three Teens, Liza, Andrey and Alexey will come! The boys were baptized at camp this past summer. Please continue to pray for this family and their souls’ salvation. They are a great family!
Tuesday, March 6
Today was mostly a day off today until our 4pm when I went to a concert for School #11’s woman’s day. Then at 6 I came home to our singing/devotional. We had 16 and a nice evening.
Wednesday, March 7
There were schools today, but because tomorrow is International Woman’s Day (even though most Americans don’t know about this, it is like having Christmas, birthdays and Valentines day all wrapped into one!), they are too busy for us to have classes in any of the schools. So I studied a lot and worked on things around the house.
Thursday, March 8 – Woman’s Day
This is a day to celebrate all females of all ages. It is much cheaper to celebrate Mother’s Day! Of course everybody was busy, the schools and Universities (rarely do they close the Universities) are closed for today and tomorrow. I did take Kelli and Yulya to a movie and fixed dinner for them. We tried to have a Bible Study, but there were only 4 of us guys here, so we did some. Our celebration with and for the girls is tomorrow evening.
Friday, March 9
I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 3. Went to the bathroom and back to bed, but got up at 3:30 - couldn't go back to sleep. Actually it is too hot in my room - about 80 - we have no way of regulating the heat - it comes through the pipes and is a battery - hot water. So when the weather warms up like this, the temp stays the same and the house gets hot. It's too cold outside at night, 32, to leave the window open, as the window is right by my bed. Fun dilemma! I walked to our market in the morning - about 1/2 mile away and bought 2 large sacks of food for our Woman's Day Dinner Celebration! We made 4 LARGE pizzas - all from scratch - (I really do have a good Betty Crocker pizza crust recipe!). At 3pm, 5 of our guys came and helped. We had ham & pineapple pizza, ham, red (not hot) peppers, mushroom pizza, hamburger and pineapple pizza, and hamburger, pepper, mushroom pizza all topped with lots of great cheese! Then the guys also cut up into medium size bowls grapes, oranges, apples, bananas and kiwis. After the pizza was eaten, we served this fruit on ice cream. The ice cream is really good here - tastes a lot like homemade. We served 27 people tonight. Also, we/I bought flowers for all the girls! They guys thought we can't celebrate Woman's Day without giving the girls flowers!!! I told you they go all for this day of celebration! A NOTE: Katya came back to us tonight – she was baptized at camp and we hadn’t seen her for a long time. We were all full of joy! About 8pm there were still 15 people here, so we got the song books out and sang together for about an hour. It was great! They the last people left at 10:30pm! I was all in and thought I would sleep really well, but I didn't!
Saturday, March 10
Normal preparation for Bible Clubs, but we had 2 for the Adult and 6 for the Teen Bible Clubs. But one of the people that came was Natasha, that came new to Church services last Sunday. It was just one of those days!
Sunday, March 11
Today was a great day – see I told you they would get better! Natasha was again at Church services today as well as many of our other young people and good attendance. Also, Victor and Inna came to services for the first time!!! We that know them were all so excited to see them! The older kids that were going to come couldn’t, but they will come in the future! 4 of us made sandwiches for the boy’s prison today. Then at 3, 4 of us went to the bigger orphanage in Patoki – I don’t think I ever told you the name of this village before. Personally, I had been making excuses for not going – I am not sure why – but it was so good to go and be with the kids to teach them, play with them and to love them. They need all of it soooo much! At our 6pm service, people came in slowly and it didn’t look like we were going to have many, but ended up with 19, including a new lady and her 6 year old daughter. So God blessed us with a GREAT day!
Monday, March 12
I never have a complete day off unless I leave the city and give someone else some of my responsibilities. Today, I went to a class at School 10 that Kelli is teaching, as she is leaving next Tuesday for about 6 weeks in the US. I met the girls there and then left so Kelli to teach her class. Then at 8pm (we waited this late, so Victor could be home from work) and actually started our study about 8:30pm. Again we had a great study with Victor, Inna and there 3 teenage kids on the plan of salvation. We will study Baptism in detail, Lord willing, next week. The 3 little orphans were absolutely adorable tonight. We, Ksusha, Alina and I, just love them to pieces and they feel the same about us!
Tuesday, March 13
I studied early and hard until about 9am, when I took Max to a village about 45 kilometers away to get some paper work done. Then at 1:15 Max and I picked up Oksana and went to the village Bugkivka where we have a lesson with 10th grade girls. There were 4 girls there today and we had a great study with them! They are so nice and seem like sponges that just soak up the truth. At 6pm, we had 19 for our singing/devo. Natasha came to her first singing tonight. We did a split devo. First we sing for about a ½ hour and tonight, Kelli taught the girls and Artem taught us guys. Our study went great and I understand that the girls did too! The girls went over to Kelli’s for a bridal shower for Anya O. who is getting married to James in England on the 24th, but leaves for England on the 15th. They had a lot of fun! The guys stayed at my place until after 9.
Wednesday, March 14
Well, the Bible College FINALLY moved out of the church building and into their new building about a week ago. We thought that they were going to do this last Sept.!!! So, Max was out of school again today and so we went shopping for things we want for the church building to make it more of a Learning Center/Family Center during the week when it is not being used for other things. We spent nearly all day shopping and buying a carpet for the family room and a davenport and 2 arm chairs and waiting for the furniture to be delivered. We also cleaned out and up the room where all this is going to take place. Squeezed around this was lunch at a pizza place, visiting school #1 where I will teach while Kelli is gone to the US for 6 weeks and going to the internot school in the evening. I was sooooo exhausted! A lot of lifting and I hurt my low back again. I don’t know if I mentioned in this journal or not, but we are starting a Bible Club for Mom’s (really older adults) that will be much more a beginner’s beginner’s Bible Club. But it is a dream come true, because 3 Mom’s for sure have said that they would come – Mom’s of our kids. We have long had as one of our main goals was to reach families through the kids! Now the Lord’s blessings and patience is paying dividends. We will start this on this coming Sunday. Please pray for it’s success!
Thursday, March 15
I was supposed to meet the guy who would put our new furniture together (it came in parts!) at the church building at 10am. In a very Ukrainian way, he got there at 10:45. Patience, Doug, patience! Isn’t it amazing how I can be patience for souls but little things like this is very frustrating for me!? He finished about 12, but not completely, so I have to meet him at 7:30 in the evening. I went home and ate a quick lunch. I am digging to find kids to come and do the puppets show for the orphanage today in Svetlovodsk. I found Zhenya and Ksusha. Zhenya needed some running around before we left, so I did that for about 45 minutes. Then as the girls were reading the scripts in the car, we just got the translated scripts yesterday afternoon, they found out we needed some props. So we went to 3 stores before we found a flashlight and a toy gun for the play. We were 30 minutes late getting to the Orphanage, but no one seemed to mind. I think that 90%+ things start late in this country and I’m still not used to it! Well, we had about 40 kids for our show and Bible Studies afterwards. It was a good beginning and the kids were all excited about our coming back next week! We then went back home and in about an hour we had our Bible Study with only 11 people tonight – where is everybody??? But then I had to leave early to SUPPOSEDLY meet the man at the Church building to finish the couch. Of course he came at 7:45 and so I didn’t get back home and to my supper until after 8:30. So it is with life in Ukraine! Many, many god things, but with a few frustration thrown in to keep me humble and realizing that I have to totally rely upon the Lord for everything!

Journal for Feb 16-28, 2007

Friday, February 16, 2007
For those of you that read this all the time, I will write here what I try to do every day. I try to study the Word, pray, read from a sound scriptural book, listen to encouraging tapes/cds, study Russian, and exercise. So I won’t write that kind of stuff everyday. I will try to write more of the highlights of the day. Like we are still under quarantine today in the schools (not Univ.) and just found out that it will be all next week, too. So no school for another week! We did go to the village for our class and had 8 students and a lot of fun! We had our fun night with 12 kids here and it was a lot of fun.
Saturday, February 17
Every Sat. mornings I go buy groceries for the Bible Clubs, clean up around the house, get set up, work on lessons for the day, etc. We had 7 for our Adult Club, 2 for our Beginners and none for our Teen. There are a lot of circumstances that are causing us to be short here, but we will combine our 2 afternoon Bible Clubs as one – at least for awhile. At 3:30 several of us met with Buddy Baker and Mike (sorry I don’t know his last name) about helping to teach orphans with puppets. That went well and we will go some next week with Buddy to some of the 8 orphanages that they work with in our area.
Sunday, February 18
Max, Ksusha and I went to Komsomolsk to worship with them and I preached. They were glad to have us and we had 9 people all together. We came back and spent the afternoon together, along with some others that came to my house. We had 16 for our evening worship service, with Buddy and Mike attending. They both really liked our service and singing.
Monday, February 19
This day’s activities planned fell flat. We were supposed to go the village to teach my class with my 10th grade girls, but shortly before we left, we got a message saying that their school had been closed for quarantine too. Schools all over central Ukraine are closing. Then the personal Bible study we were supposed to have with the family didn’t work out. When Ksusha and I got there, they were not there because the parents and some of the kids had gone to try and get the money owed them from the Govt. for the last 2 months. They had received no money for 2 months!
Tuesday, February 20
I left the house to pick up 4 of our kids to go with me to go with Buddy, Mike, Nickoli (driver) and Anya (translator) to orphanages in Svetlovodsk, 20 miles from Kremenchuk. We left at 9 and we went to an Orphanage/school for the visually handicapped children from the ages of 1st grade through the 12th. There are about 110 children in this school. They were very happy to receive us and were also welcoming us to come and teach Bible in their school. So Sasha and Valery from Komsomolsk will teach weekly here and we will at least a couple of times a month to teach as well – maybe more. The kids and I left them and got back to Kremenchuk about 12:30 and went out to each pizza together. Then we went to my house for a bit and then picked up Kelli at 2:50 to go another place where Buddy goes to serve. It was a children’s rehabilitation center for handicapped children. It was very touching what they do to help children at this school. It is not an orphanage, but a great place to serve and reach out to children. The director agreed to go to Church with us this coming Sunday and I will go and pick her up and take her! We had 23 for evening devo/singing and Buddy spoke for us. Then he invited all to come and eat pizza with him! 17 of us actually went to eat. We went to a different pizza place than where we went for noon. We all had a wonderful time together!
Wednesday, February 21
This was kind of a catch up on things day. I was pretty tired and didn’t sleep well. I tried to take a nap to no avail as the phone kept ringing and people kept coming by. I gave up spent the day with people – that’s why I am here – for people!
Thursday, February 22
At 11 Kelli and I had lunch with Buddy and Mike before they left. It was good having them here. We saw them off about 1:30pm. At 6, for our Bible Class on Hebrews, we had 14 people present. We had some good fellowship and people left around 9.
Friday, February 23
One of main events is going to the village to teach on Fridays, but no school still, so not so much going on today. I am still not up to par on my bronchitis, so maybe it is not to bad for me. We had hour fun night with 12 people and we had a good time.
Saturday, February 24
We had 2 Bible Clubs today. For the Adult/Univ. Club we had 4, with some regulars not present. I decided to combine our Beginners and Teens for both have been poorly attended at 6. But at 2pm we had our first ever Congregational Leaders meeting with 12 present to talk about the work in an area wide perspective and we can be more effective in outreach and greater fellowship with each other. The meeting went for about an hour and then we decided to meet every last Saturday of the month at 2pm. I felt it was a big success! Then at 6pm, we had 7 present at our Bible Club – nearly all beginner students!
Sunday, February 25
I had a bad coughing bought today during services, and I am worried about my bronchitis. We made our 112 sandwiches today for the boy’s prison work and I fixed apple pancakes for those that wanted it – about 6 people. Because of the flu epidemic, it was decided not to go to the orphans home to teach today. At 6 we had 12 for our evening service.
Monday, February 26
The schools started again today, except for the village and it starts tomorrow. I did a lot of errands in the morning and stopped by the store where Zhenya (our oldest student and Christian of our group, being baptized the summer of 2003) works and invited her for lunch at a restaurant next to where she works. We hadn’t had any time together for a long time, so this was nice. In the evening I started itching real bad and first thought it was dry skin. But it was not.
Tuesday, February 27
I woke up at 1am and 3:30 with bad coughing and terrible itching! I was at a loss to know what to do for it. Finally some foot spray reduced some of the itch, but only a small amount. I had planned to go to the Dr. today for the bronchitis, but now it became imperative to go for the itch and strange rash. At noon, Yulya went with me, translated and helped with the Drs. I got a ton of meds, a shot for the itch – they said it was something I ate on Monday – and went home. A very difficult day. We did have singing/devo at 6 and had 19 people. Then about 8:15pm, I went to health specialist until about 10:30 – boy was that long with translation and all. I bought some things there, too. It was also an expensive day!
Wednesday, February 28
By Drs. orders, mostly a rest day. I did have to make a trip back to the Dr. by bus, for I can’t drive today because of the meds I am on. Just a check up on the allergy reaction. He can speak English pretty good, so we did fine. I stayed in almost all day. I had to go for water and a few other things about 6:30. I am sick and tired of being sick! I am trying to get well and healthy again. Thank you for your prayers!