Category: Bruce Posts (Page 135 of 211)

“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”  Karl Barth

I like that quote.   We can start to rise against the evils of our day from a place of prayer.  I’m guilty of underestimating the power of prayer and I’m ashamed how little I come before The Almighty with a believing heart.  The proof of our belief in God’s desire and ability to act in this world lies in our prayer life.  When persecution comes, we pray.  When devastation arrives, we pray.  When life is swaying along, we’re less apt to come.  It’s our nature to enjoy life when it’s nice to us, and go to God when it’s not.  But should this be?

Wouldn’t it please Him to recognize the wickedness of the world WITH Him everyday?  To take sides with God in a spiritual uprising against all those things evil?  To do this regularly would require a change.  It would mean a casting off of my cares, my wants.  It would mean taking on His view, by faith, embracing the nature of reality in all it’s callousness.   It would mean a certain death to become a disciple of Christ.  It sounds like a heavy and undesirable place, but that’s part of the world’s deception.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This is a wicked world.  It is deceptive to our senses.  It would have us embrace times of prosperity as a permission slip to deny the suffering around us.  The sinful places people live, the dangerous slippery places.  Wake us up from this sleep oh Lord.  Enlist me in the battle.  Rather, help me enter it more effectively.

“There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.” CS Lewis

There can be no greater battle than the spiritual one.  All that we see with our physical eye  is but a reverberation of something greater, eternal.  To believe this is both easy and difficult.  We cannot deny this spiritual battle yet we retreat from it when we do not pray.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. – Ephesians 6:12

Pray.  Talk to God.  Take up the fight for souls.  Do it regularly.  Do it voluntarily.  Do it by yourself, with your family and friends.  This is what the Lord is challenging me with this week.  There can be no lasting Kingdom impact without prayer, only temporary physical activity.

Bruce & Deborah Crowe
Missionaries | Ukraine

How can we give an update without including our little monkey Abbey! She still doesn’t walk more than 3-4 steps, stops and praises herself. Love them baby girls!

It was 5yrs ago this week that we moved to Ukraine from Texas.  A few pictures from this week.  We said good-bye to Deb’s parents (and Jesse!).  They were here for 3 weeks, we had a great time.  This past month has been full of family visiting other missionary folks as well.  Deb’s parents, Shane’s mom, Priscilla’s folks for a few days, and Cheryl’s parents too.

Cheryl’s parents were visiting from Canada and her father was struck by a vehicle in Kiev.  He ended up in hospital with a broken femur.  To make matters worse, he’s also battling cancer which heightened the injury and situation.  After a week of waiting and last minute arranging, he was flown in a leer jet back to Canada via the insurance company – accompanied by Canadian medial staff.  Cheryl flew ahead of them in preparation for their return in Saskatoon.  His name is Blake.

Clark taking Noah for a spin. We brought this little ATV over from Texas. It’s 6yrs old and still clicking along somehow, minus some parts both stolen and broken!

Off to Cherkassy tomorrow with Igor.  We’re visiting our friends at eKreative, a development company similar to Cypress our business in Texas.  They’ve been helping us on a few projects.  It’s 2hrs south of Rz.   Our Cypress office is mostly finished on the 2nd floor of the Cafe.  We’re hoping that we can start using it this June, doing some support and smaller type jobs to help the guys in Texas and create some jobs here in town.

Speaking of the Cafe, we haven’t heard anything for weeks.  Ukraine has all but shut down over holidays and just getting back on its feet.

Our needs are two-fold, document and equipment, and they both represent another $8-10k of investment.

Documents Needed: ($4-5k)

• Gas meter installed by gas company (now on 5 months waiting)
• Local Business Permit (supposed to take 2 weeks, now on 9 weeks)
• Fire Dept Doc (paid 50%, but can’t finish until business permit in hand)
• Electricity Meter changed from house to business (same as above)
• Inspection Permit (for food sales).. no idea what this will take.

Equipment Needed: ($3-4k)

• Coffee Machine (hoping to lease with coffee vendor)
• Freezer
• Fridge
• Vacuum & Cleaning Supplies
• Start up ‘stuff’ like first month (snacks, drinks, pizza stuff).

Geega, or Deb’s mom Noline, her first game of pool – she was a shark!

We are aiming to open the Cafe for “Coffee” only asap, maybe as early as June or July at latest.  If we can get things organized and ironed out we can just add the Pizza portion once gas is situated.  Even if gas is turned on sooner than I think, I believe it will be wise for us to just get open with some minimal offerings.. doing it all it going to be just too overwhelming I think (to do well anyway).  The town is so ready for this, it’s going to be so cool!  I think we need a soft serve ice cream machine.  They are about $1000 and wow, how great would that be, we’d be the only ones around with that – and I’d get really fat.

Our first meeting downtown this past Sunday. Pretty relaxed, Coffee and snacks, we had one visitor. Teaching Martin how to run sound! Time for Ukrainians to step up and take hold of what God desires to do here.

Thanks for checking in, especially if you bow your heart and lift us up – we need the Lord’s strength and endurance to keep moving forward with joy.

Oh also please remember us in prayer for our personal documents.  We’re still working through Deb and kids Permanent Residency.  It was chugging along nicely until they wanted a bunch of new things that required us sending things to the US and back.  We also found an error in Broderic’s passport and had to replace it.  That has slowed things down and now all Debs medical documents completed 3 months ago must be redone.. it’s like chasing your tail I tell you!  Broderic and Bron went to Kiev today to get medical things done for their residence.. next the 4 little ones.. fortunately Abbey I don’t think will need these things.. yeah for being born in Ukraine!  – Bruce

Very good interview / debate with Rob Bell and Andrew Wilson.  If you are a Christian and take your faith seriously, take a listen.  This is a major cultural battle in the church today and Andrew Wilson does a great job helping Rob Bell see that being ‘relevant’ at the cost of being a heretic is a ridiculous place to be.

I wrote a short article on this topic if you enjoyed this video that explains another approach to tackling similar error.  Click here to read.

This past weekend Ukraine celebrated Easter.  Spring is in full force with grass growing, trees in blossom, tractors in the fields, and sneezing in our house.

The kids had a little egg hunt in the yard.  Leading up to Sunday, Deb and the kids each gave up something for an entire month as a way to better appreciate the concept of sacrifice.  For the kids, it was giving up juice – they could only drink water and milk.  Bronwyn went all month without sugar, as did Deborah.  I’m not sure if Broderic went all out crazy like the two ladies but I think he also attempted a sugarless month.  I didn’t participate in the crazy events, although I did suffer from secondary effects of it.

This week we’ve had 5 students from the US staying with us.  They stayed back for a week as the rest of the team went back stateside.  All bible school students, Deb and I have enjoyed the crew.  It brought us back to the days at CFNI where we met.  Their whole lives ahead of them, embarking out into life with nervous excitement, green as a four leaf clover and simple believing faith.  It was fun to chat and relive some of  our own testimony – we’re old now to them, amazing – we feel 21, life just happens doesn’t it?

Yesterday we took the guys and our family to the first Cricket match in Khargalyk.  Yes, cricket!  The only think I could tell you about cricket before we moved here was that the English gentlemen played is whilst their gowned ladies sat under umbrellas and drank lemonade, eating cucumber sandwiches.  Since moving however, and being alongside Australian cricket fanatics, we’ve been introduced to it a bit more.  I’ve even played a few quick games, swinging away and running in circles.   Here are a few pictures from the event.  This is a labor of love by Wayne in Khargalyk, a fellow missionary and pastor.  He loves the game, and has found opportunity to get involved introducing the game in Ukraine, among several Indian friends and teams from around the area.  It’s been a great way to build relationships and become salt and light in the community for them – their mayor even came out and watched a bit.   Crazy foreigners.

Been working up at the cafe this week with Tom and Alyosha Kurliko.  We’re getting close to finishing the office upstairs on the 2nd floor.  It feels good making progress of some kind while we wait on documents.  Still no word, but I’m itching to see this thing open this summer.  Deb and I were talking the other day about possibly opening earlier just with coffee  – it could mean we could open without gas which may be a while still, and allow us to hone in on the coffee part of the business.  We think ‘coffee and pizza’ and they really are two different business models.  Maybe smart, once we can officially open, to open with coffee and desserts and get that going well before introducing pizza.  We’ll see.  I’ve been thinking even an ice cream soft serve maching would be enough reason to open, it doesn’t exist in our town  – but I fear I would live off it, we love ice cream!