Category: Bruce Posts (Page 161 of 211)

I often find pictures on my camera from one of my kids, this one is from Bronwyn, a lovely Christmas shot girl!

Today is our 17th anniversary.  What an amazing gift God gave me in Deb.  It’s neat that we’re in Texas for it, we had friends offer to watch our kids tonight and we’ll have an official date!

This week has flown by.  We’ve had several group type gatherings, seeing our dear church friends and family as well as hanging out with Bo and Beth earlier this week at their house.  Deb has enjoyed catching up with friends and the kids have been enjoying lots of play.  I’ve been working since we hit the ground in Texas with our guys at Cypress, pushing for a Jan 1 website launch for The Brooklyn Tabernacle, a project 8 months in the making and much overdue.

The hectic pace all around is not something easily adjusted to.  In our 3.5 yrs overseas we’ve become increasingly Ukrainian it’s not good or bad, it’s just a fact.  The first few days in Texas I watched in amazement at all the traffic, the sea of automobiles racing to and fro.  The orderly chaos of moving masses, some to work, others to shop, but all on schedule and strictly on it.  I was reminded again how the gospel has such a difficult task to ‘break in’ to the lives of this busy culture and what an opportunity we have in Ukraine where people aren’t in a rush, and relationships have the time to develop in meaningful and rewarding ways.  Everyone here has such isolated, modular lives, packed to the brim with 100 things each day.  The ‘conveniences’ and time saving efficiencies have only served to create more time to do 10 more things.. There’s got to be a balance between ‘some’ conveniences and not having any..

We love visiting our friends, but trying to spend quality time together seems like a daunting task, and simply inserting ourselves into the fray for a week doesn’t produce all that our hearts long for.  The answer?  They need to come and visit us!

Last week we were in Canada, here are some pictures from the Picton Parade.  My parents church had a float with live music and kids on the back.  This is the town where I grew up, driving in the truck with my dad I was able to see a number of school friends, old neighbors and relatives.  It was an odd experience as well, talk about time warp.

The marching band was always a favorite to listen to as a kid

View from the truck pulling the float, smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

We head back to Canada this coming week, where’ we’ll spend Christmas and New Year’s with my family.

This Sunday I’ll be sharing at Crossroads Community Church, our home church.  I’m excited about that, to try and encapsulate what the Lord has been doing in my own heart, as well as in Ukraine.  I don’t have as much desire to share about Ukraine or ‘ministry’ per say, but to encourage those that are hurting, or struggling in their faith.. and to do it in english without a translator will be fun again.  If you read this before Sunday, please pray for me!

Quick few updates:

A) pray for Vlad’s appeal date: Jan 12!!!

B) we received over $12k toward the finishing of the cafe!!  Thank you to all that gave, it was a timely encouragement as we’ve been out of $ for about 2 months and continuing to finish it in faith.  When we return we’ll order and finish the kitchen Lord willing, and then final stage is chairs, tables, and documentation.. we’re almost there!

C) We’re going skiing Jan 4-8th, this may sound trivial but would you pray for our family that this would be a relaxing/refreshing time?   This trip hasn’t been anything close to restful yet, especially since coming to Texas.  I want to be ‘all there’ for my wife and kids during this trip, it’s really a special thing for my older kids who’ve never been skiing.  Anyway, please pray that this would be a great time of family bonding.. and that nobody breaks anything!!  🙂

Thanks for checking in, we appreciate your prayer and support.  Please remember to pray with us for Vlad, and the church in Ukraine.  God prepare us all for what He wants to see happen this new year.

Bruce & Deb

Lake Ontario, Prince Edward County

“The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”  Psalm 19:1-2

Our favorite place in The County, West Lake

Rodge loses his hat and Brent enjoys the moment!

This morning our family (minus Bronwyn!) enjoyed some brisk Canadian air and powerful scenery.  Remembering our grand Creator, who with the stroke of His hand painted the sky and set the earth in it’s place.  The grandeur of God comes into more accurate focus when we get out of our houses, out of our familiar places and consider the work of His hands!

Clark wanders around the massive slabs of rock looking for ice to smash.

We’ve been slowly adjusting to the Eastern Time Zone, we’re still all getting up at 5-6am, and zonked by 9pm.  It’s been a nice change.  Tomorrow at church we’ll be joining dozens of relatives for worship, then directly off to sitting on a float in the Santa Clause parade.  The weather is much like Ukraine, one more week then we’ll be off to Texas and shedding the fluffy winter coats.

The beautiful Deb enjoying her kids

What is the glory of God?  We hear this so much that I think it takes on various meanings.  I think God’s glory is the radiating nature of God that we experience.   God has revealed His glory through creation.  We learn about ‘who’ God is in part through the work of His hands.  How else do we experience the glory of God?  The person of Jesus Christ!  I think too often our theology gets in the way of God’s revealed nature in Christ.  When we think about “glory”, we often think about God’s power, His sovereignty and other attributes that distance the Creator from His creation.  While no-one doubts God is not made in man’s image, we shouldn’t deny the opposite.  God has poured out His nature in us, we enjoy the things that God made because we are made in His image.  We appreciate beauty, we despise injustice, we are moved by kindness and appalled by wicked acts.  We have been designed for God, to know Him in the beauty of genuine relationship.  We are given the mind of Christ to enjoy Him, and the Spirit of God to experience His very presence.

The next time you think about the glory of God, think about how God has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind.  A manger, the Son of God made flesh, walking among us, ministering to man and offering up His life for sin.  The next time you think about God’s glory, think about love, divine love exegeted in the person of Christ, the exact representation of His nature (Heb 1:3).  When we study Jesus, we study God’s revealed nature, the Word become flesh, beholding His glory (John 1:18).  Jesus was the demonstration of God for us, not Zeus, or some abstract, unknowable, superior being, but Jesus!

Sometimes when I listen to fellow believers, they sound more caught up in overly repeated quotes from popular authors than the person of Christ as revealed in our Bibles.   We relate to Jesus, because God wants and chose to be related to.  Jesus declared the Glory of God, the true nature and character of God.  Do you believe this?  It’s taken me years to wrap my tiny head around this simple fact.  It seems we want God to be different than the clearly revealed nature in Christ, we find it impossible to believe that God thinks and would act JUST LIKE CHRIST!  Once we accept that it was OUR GOD, IN CHRIST, reconciling the world to HIMSELF, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob incarnate, wow, the glory of God becomes amazing, because the nature of God is revealed..

He loves, He cares, He pursues, He is moved, He waits, He longs, He sees, He knows.  How can you be sure?  Study Jesus!  The next time you look up to the heavens, or gaze upon the setting sun, think about the God who has shown Himself not only all-powerful, but all loving.  Consider not only the hands that stretched the sky, but the hands that fed the poor and healed the sick.  He’s not left us abandoned in our sinful state, He’s entered our world and promises new life to all that will surrender.

I enjoyed creation today, it reminded me of the gracious King who became man.

Bruce & Deb

Bronwyn snaps a picture at the Kiev Airport

Bags packed, kids excited, Sergei’s van delivered us to the Kiev Airport yesterday as we began our Christmas adventure to Canada and Texas!

It’s been a hectic past few weeks as we prepared to leave our life and home in Ukraine for 2 months. Would like to catch up on some blogging over the holidays, as we reflect and begin to make plans for our return, and the new year.

Updates:

Vlad: His situation has not visibly improved.  He is still in prison, the appeal is not progressing that we can tell, in fact the opposition is mounting even more accusations according to their lawyer.  The family has finally agreed to allow another 3rd party lawyer to hear the case and give some advice.   We have been encouraging this for weeks, and have lined up the lawyer as well as paying for the services.  There’s something amiss with whole situation, please continue to pray for our friend and brother in Christ.

Dusty but finished tile in the main dining room

Cafe: As I left this week, Alyosha was completing the tile on the main floor and it’s looking great!  This leaves the kitchen as our last remaining ‘section’ to finish.  The Cafe is warm, and we meet in it now every Friday morning for prayer.  We’re hoping that in the Spring we’ll have enough funds to complete it and open for the public that is VERY excited about it!

Care of Christ - забота о Христе (clothing ministry)

Care of Christ Ministry: the cafe garage is now a weekly clothing ministry for the poorest of the poor families in our town.  Together with the local social services department we are inviting families to come every Friday morning to select from donated clothing.  We have a lot of VERY needy families in our town, some without heat in their homes, many terrible situations including alcoholism and abuse render families in desperate situations.  We’ve even had a young 18yr old boy for the past two weeks come, who is an orphan that ‘graduated’ from the system in need, living on his own and completely ill-equipped for life.  We’ve invited him to Friday night college outreach.  Tom is overseeing the clothing ministry, please pray for us as we connect with some very needy souls that need Christ too.

Texas: we are really excited to meet with our friends and church family next week.  We’ll be in Texas from Dec 8-20.  During this time we’ll be meeting with church leadership and planning some project next year, including a new discipleship program for Ukrainians (with a church planting focus).  As well, connecting with our wonderful Cypress & EDsuite team.  We’ll have a number of Christmas parties too, we timed it just right!   I’ll be sharing Dec 18th at Crossroads Community Church in Longview, we’d love to see you.

After watching Jurassic Park, the boys needed to be caged

Kids: Thanking God for healthy great kids.  Including the little girl growing in Deb’s tummy.  She’s now 5 months!  It’s been such a joy to watch the grandparents enjoy seeing their grandkids again.  Family is such a neat thing.   We are looking forward to hanging out with all our cousins, brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, and speaking 100% english!

Igor talked and Masha, Alyosha and Sveta listen:)

Over the past 6 months we’ve had Bible Study every Wednesday night in our home.  Here’s a picture of some of our church family hanging out with us.  We have anywhere between 12-25 join us weekly, this past week on our final night for 2 months, we enjoyed having over 30 not including the kids, we love a packed house!

Found this family picture downstairs in my parents house, it’s about 10yrs old I think, we only had two kids at the time.. how time flies!

Hanging out on Papa's tractor!

John Piper Book "This Momentary Marriage" in Russian

Last year we helped to sponsor getting this book translated into Russian.  Our friends Jake & Danny here in Ukraine run a Christian publishing ministry called Inlumine and agreed to get the rights and get it to press.  Coy at Cypress designed the cover.  We’re anticipating blessing many marriages here in Ukraine with this book as a gift.

If you’d like to donate a book to a Ukrainian couple, we’d really appreciate the help!  $25 will get us 10 books, please use this link here to donate. The Ukrainian family has been decimated by immorality, alcoholism, and this kind of devotional book on marriage, in their own language is a true rarity.  Your donation is like sending medicine into hurting homes.  We’re believing God wants to change this culture, beginning with a biblical view toward this incredible thing called marriage.

The Cafe also needs money.  This is turning into a financial report!  We went to an industry trade show in Kiev last week.  They had all the kitchen equipment and supplies you could ask for to run a full cafe or restaurant.  Unfortunately all we could do is look because we’re out of cash.  We have everything in place, including a working heating system now, tiles are being laid this week, trim completed.  We’ll be on hold through the December and January as we travel to the US/Canada, hopefully returning with some funds to wrap up completion and open this thing!!!

Deborah is looking great, and feeling about as good as to be expected 1/2 way through her 7th pregnancy!  If the second half is as fast as the first, this baby will be here before we know it, so we’re already starting to realize some things have to chance.  We haven’t had to worry about baby proofing our house in a few yrs, everything from stairs, to clean floors.. The other day Deb and I were in a grocery store and independently walked down an isle filled with diapers and baby supplies.  We met at the cashiers desk and simultaneously said, “did you see the diapers?”… here we go again.

Kids are all very excited to return to Canada and see their grandparents and cousins.  We’ll all be traveling down to Texas as well the middle part of December, introducing the little ones to everything they’ve forgotten about life there… including Shipley’s Donuts!

Lastly an update on Vlad.  He’s doing well, Tom just called me a few minutes ago and gave a quick update.  As soon as I finish this update I will be writing a character reference type letter, furnished with our business ‘stamp’ for Vlad.  The courts have received his appeal and we are waiting on an appeal date.  We’re hoping some healthy pressure from his supporters will move this along.  Connor from Chernigiv, where the prison is, has taken supplies to Vlad, we’re trying to figure out ways to send some $ and supplies as well towards this.  The prison is about 4hrs from here.

We’ll be opening the clothing ministry for the needy families this Friday.  Looking forward to getting all the warm clothes collected thus far into the hands of those most in need in our community.   Temperatures are still just above freezing, but not for long.  Pray we build some inroads into the hearts and homes of these families. This is an important outreach for the Cafe and our collective witness as believers (and foreigners) in our town.

Thanks for checking in,

Bruce & Deb