Category: Bruce Posts (Page 100 of 211)

It’s amazing how the coffee ‘scene’ has become a global phenomenon.  I suppose it’s not that revolutionary.  Humans are social creatures, we need interaction. Bars and Pubs of various sort have been around for centuries.  Perhaps the coffee shop is simply a more sanctified version of that? In any case, it sure is a perfect venue to build relationships and we’re very thankful!

Last night we hosted a private ‘Coffee Tasting’ evening for most loyal customers and a handful of selected folks we are building relationships with in our town.   A wide variety of backgrounds, ages and seemingly little in common with each other aside from the remote village they call home.

We nestled together around 30 guests in our main room, soft jazz music playing in the background.  We served three new variety of coffee beans and asked them each to grade their favorite – the winner would be served at The Lighthouse Cafe this fall.

Sveta did some research on the history of Coffee, she shared descriptive of each variety as the room tasted each one.  She was our Coffee evangelist for the evening.

I was very proud of our team.  They were a fun group to serve with.  We provided our guests with some fancy desserts and waited on them hand and foot.  The atmosphere was relaxed, fun, and everyone left with smiles – and more than a slight buzz of caffeine flowing through their veins at 8pm unfortunately.. sorry!

 

After the evening was over, Deb and I were talking about the things we enjoyed the most.  I enjoyed the liberty we have to be friends with folks in our town – it felt like a very effective ‘salt and light’ evening without turning into something awkward or unnatural.  We Christians have a knack for blowing up bridges.

I looked around the room last night and I saw people that we’re naturally sharing the gospel with by being legitimate friends.  Jesus was a man of the people, he wasn’t a religious untouchable – in fact, He despised the religious spirit of the day. The ‘outside-in’ motif for knowing God was and still is the antithesis of the Kingdom of God!

Aren’t you glad our ‘sharing’ of our faith is a natural expression?  By sharing ourselves and being real, meaningful bridges are erected.  How valuable those bridges are, how careful we must be to strengthen and protect them!

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Last night we saw individuals, sojourners who have opened their own hearts to us over the past year.  Prior to opening the Cafe we had very little interaction with most of our guests.  We all enjoyed loving our neighbor tonight, being witnesses to the joyful nature of His love.

We’re looking forward to the continued opportunities among this little community of Coffee drinkers!  Bright and early this morning I saw one of the invited guests back for a morning Latte – this time with her mom – I was able to sit and meet her for the first time.   Bridges beget bridges.

Here’s a little original quote that encapsulates a new conviction in the area of relational evangelism.  Some of you will know what I’m talking about!

If our goal is to see the grace of God traverse the bridges we’ve made into peoples hearts – our job is to secure & strengthen them, not blow them up!

Bruce & Deb

We are two weeks into the school semester here in Ukraine.  We attempted to change schools for our younger boys from the nearby village they’ve attended for 3yrs, to one just down the street.  Everything was going well, but then we were hit with a series of ethical and moral dilemmas that would take pages to explain.

We do have permission to transfer the kids, but only after one month – let’s just say the director and 2 teachers were extremely thankful we stuck a deal, saving two teachers jobs.

It’s been fast and furious at the Cafe, especially last week with many new students checking out the Cafe.  It’s been great to see recognizable faces returning, and some Awakening shirts roaming around town 🙂

We have decided to start English Club for kids in two weeks.  We are going to host a separate Adult only English night – more relaxed and will experiment with formats – the main goal will be to get to know more folks in our town – hopefully families we could build bridges with.   I really enjoyed the opportunity English provided this summer to be used by the Lord in new ways.

We are hosting a Coffee Night on the 20th, here’s our ticket! It’s by invitation only, as we’ll be inviting our most loyal customers to try out some new beans – and help us make some new selections.  It will be semi-formal and Sveta is in charge of the evening.. I think I have to wear a tie…

This Sunday evening we’ll be hosting a Worship Evening on the 2nd floor. The weather has been perfect, not too hot, not too cold.. so looking forward to some events like this at our property before winter.  We’re seeing more and more folks here use social media, and even Facebook (over VK the Russian version), it’s led to some interesting new dynamics with communication.  I think we will see some visitors come to the prayer night that might not be church goers – we’ll keep you posted!   Bronwyn is playing, and Nazar from Khargalyk leading from guitar – we also have Nika Fuga from the Pentecostal church singing – and we hear a group from Kiev is coming down too.

Many other things going on, including finalizing our trip to Belarus early October, and gas progress (Alyosha our cook has been furiously knocking on doors and pushing paper).  He actually has traveled to 3 towns in the past week, if we could only see visually in some graphic how much effort, time, and distance traveled over the course of 2 years trying to get our gas turned on legally.  It defies anything imaginable.  One day, Lord willing, and soon, we may have pizza.

Today I Russian gentleman from Moscow visited the Cafe.  We chatted for a bit – I was as surprised to see him in our town as he was I.  It was lovely to hear pure Russian again, it makes such a difference in our understanding.  We’re looking forward to hearing and speaking with Russian speaking population with our friends in Minsk.  They officially have Belorussian there, which I hear is a lot more like Ukrainian, but most folks speak Russian.

Broderic is doing well.  He’s farming, driving huge pea/bean harvesters in Western Ontario, Canada.  Great experience, he’s working 12hr shifts now, 7 days a week.  He’s anticipating college spring 2016.. amazing how quickly that is coming up.

Please pray for:

• wisdom on heating situation at Cafe – and provision.
• wisdom with our staff, a couple of them are at crossroads with the Lord, and it’s challenging because I so long to give them more responsibility spiritually, but we need to move at a pace where their faith is.
• this sunday worship night!
• for Abbey, she’s been crying as I take her to her little Nursery/Kindergarten.. we’ll give it a few more days, we really want her to pick up the language, she’s so stinking smart.

Bruce & Deb

We now have two facebook pages:

The Cafe Specifically: www.facebook.com/lighthouseukraine

Ministry Updates/Events: www.facebook.com/lighthouse-ukraine

We felt it would be smarter to allow our business side to grow and be more ‘cafe’ specific without becoming an incubated Christian hangout.   We also want our community to continue embracing it as their own, and post mostly  in Ukrainian/Russian moving forward.

We hope you will join and follow both!  Your encouragements, posts, prayers and giving are critical to us moving forward and it’s so cool to be able to engage with friends around the world.

For those interested, we also have a VK page that we intend to grow more this fall for student outreach – http://vk.com/lighthouseukraine