Category: Bruce Posts (Page 194 of 211)

Yesterday Clarky and I (my joyful 3yr old) took a couple of trips to the town dump with Tom’s trailer.  It often becomes a ‘missionary’ community event when someone is going with a load.  With dismal city services in our town, it’s best to take it upon yourself for your trash disposal.. but it’s not a fun experience entering the dump to say the least.  Come over sometime and I’ll give you a tour.  This trip was a bit different as I’ve been seeking God this week with more zeal then usual for me.  A hunger for reading and implementing more productive routines and habits of mind have been sincerely inspired, I praise Him for it.  Anyway, I’ve been attempting to cut myself off from all modes of unproductive media engagement.  For most of you living in the same ‘mediasphere” as I do, we’re rarely de-tached from the world.  Whether it’s an iPhone pumping in real time email messages or texts, the daily perusing of google news, checking up on the status of Michael Jackson, to make sure he’s still dead.  Our homes, even in the center of Ukraine, are filled with conduits of the world, a world that represents anti-Christian morals, and stands opposed to the Christian worldview.  We are impacted by, I’m convinced anyway, the constant connection, the constant music, the noise, the priorities of the world in that they are telling us what, or who is important.  They define for us success, and influence our decision making and purchases.  I read the other night of a university that imposes a forced 24hr fast from media in one of it’s classes during a semester, and it literally causes students to hyperventilate.  They need post dramatic counselling as a result of the blaring silence. 

What does this have to do with the dump?  Or a kitten?  Well, it was with this backdrop and heart conviction that I entered the most despised smelly dump.  It is repugnant, the stench buckles your knees.  I try my best to hold my breath and empty the trailer in 7 seconds but I have to take that second.. and third breath.  They seriously need a tractor in there pushing it around and covering it right?  The garbage sits, and changes chemical properties in the hot sun.  The flies, the.. ok, enough said.  In the midst of my ‘disconnect’ from the world, and attempt to maintain a purer set of eyes, ears and heart than I have for the Lord recently, I notice a Ukrainian adult magazine right at my feet amidst the refuse of the town.  I felt God’s sickness over sin, the combination of the odorous offense and the absolute destruction of a life of sin.  In that moment I considered how tempting sin really is, how deceptive our enemy really is.  He preys on our weaknesses, twists and whispers us toward the edge.  Think of the marriages and families destroyed by secret sin uncovered in ‘due time’.  There a magazine sat, appropriately surrounded by what it represents.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying the temptation that represents, but it was in that dump that I felt God confirm what I already believed Him to be saying to me recently, “Get the world out of your heart,” and I had a first rate example of what worldliness and sin looked like to God as He views our hearts.  How can we even think to be attracted to things that are so vile?  Which one of us would ever consider frequenting the dump on purpose, for pleasure? 

For many of us, the ‘world’ may be sexual temptation, and you are not guarding your eyes with any sort of diligence.  Let me warn you as an experienced prisoner of sin, flee from wickedness, run to the Cross, and humble yourself before God today.   For others, it’s listening to the world’s lies through an over consumption of media.  Lies about insecurity, definitions of beauty, pride or success.  Whatever the ‘world’ represents to you right now, I hope you are filled with the same awareness I have been recently about the nature of sin, and it’s destructive, and disgusting result.  Our enemy has been practicing our demise for a few thousand years, we’re not as wise as we think we are, especially if we consider our own strength and wisdom to battle this world alone.  Run to your Savior, you’ll find grace to turn and overcome your sin.   Confess your struggles with a trusted friend, only pride would keep you from doing this, which confirms your sorry state if you are unwilling.   Harsh words perhaps, but Christ deserves our freedom from sin, He paid the highest cost for us to live ‘set apart’.  In today’s world of technology, we can’t be so passive in our attitudes, in my small world anyway, I’ve been awakened to the realty of the worldly influence, and I’m being more purposeful from here on out.  If you interested in hearing more about ‘how’ I’m doing this, email me for details!  bruce@liftupyoureyes.org  Let me plug a book too while I’m on this, “Worldliness” by CJ Mahaney, you can buy it at Amazon.

Enter the Kitten.  At first I thought I was hearing things.  Clark shouts, “a kitten!”, and sure enough, stashed between a few piles of garbage was a little black and white kitten that had been dumped off, literally.  I am not an animal lover, those of you that know me will confirm that Deb and I feel that actual human children are about as much work and much more rewarding, so we’ve opted for a few extra of them instead.  But in that dump, that stinky, disease infested Gehenna, I couldn’t leave that poor little thing.  Even the Tin Man had a heart!  Catching that silly thing proved to be a youtube worthy event.  Every inch toward it, it leaped deeper into the pile of garbage.  Soon, I was 20 meters deep into the most disgusting mess you could imagine.  I sometimes wonder if God seriously chuckles at the situations we get ourselves in.  I had on crocs and shorts, and desperately trying to jump from safe pile to the next.  Finally, I cornered the little guy, and found 2 more kittens along the way.. there was a whole litter in there.  Well, I’m not mother Teresa, and I know Deb has her limits, I could only take one.  The little guy took the long drive home with us, clinging to Clark, they were both about as freaked out too.

I didn’t intend to write all this, but my heart is full and maybe someone will be blessed to hear of Jesus Christ and His redemption.  You see, even as stinky and odorous, or potentially health threatening jumping through the rubbish of an entire village in Ukraine may be, it doesn’t compare to the lengths God Holy Son has gone, sent from a loving Father, to save you from your sins.  He suffered because your a sinner, unable to save and redeem yourself.   Instead of running to Christ, we’ve run from Him.  We deserve eternal neglect, but instead we have His eternal attention.  Rejoice that He’s found you, a desperately dirty sinner, cleansed you and calls you out of the world, and to Himself.  If you aren’t a believer, be assured that you are in fact living in that dump, a dump of worldliness and compromise, a life that will be found out, and found guilty.  Turn to Jesus, His cross reaches into the most sinful heart and will indeed take you to a better place with Him.

Dumpy the Kitten now resides (at least temporarily!) at 37 Nezeleschnosty, in Rzshyschiv Ukraine with our family. 

“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  – 1 Thes 5:23

Bruce & Deb

From Sunday, July 26th – All Church Gathering in our village of Rzshyschiv.

Clark posing with our sweetcorn. Deb’s ‘organic’ corn is pathetic and unworthy of a photo, however my genetically modified Texas sweetcorn is thriving amongst the weeds. Now to keep the kids paws off the precious developing ears… They only grow cow corn here, and they actually eat it too. We bought some thinking it was sweetcorn last summer, brought it home, boiled it, butter’d and salted… sat down with the family and… rejoiced that we had a can of corn in the pantry. To all missionary friends in the area, if we catch you in our garden, we will shoot.

On a more serious note, we appreciate your prayers this week as we have several decisions to make both for family and ministry. 

 
[lots of farming going on over here in Ukraine right now]

Hello friends and family – Life at the Crowe house is calming down after a fairly hectic few weeks.  We’re now recovering from a sickness that started with our youngest Noah, and slowly made its way up the food change by age.  Thankfully everyone is back to normal, mostly. 

It’s been very hot the past few weeks, in the 90’s on some days.  Might not sound that bad for all you Texans, but remember.. no AC in this town!  We actually have a mobile unit on wheels that we move into our bedroom at night, otherwise it would not be bearable on our second floor.  The kids have migrated collectively in the basement.  Thankfully the hot days are usually sprinkled with a cool day or two here and there, God’s form of respite, natural and free AC is a thing of wonder!

Deb and I have been planning/scheduling for the kids school and chores.  Life without Cassie has begun, and everyone has to pick up the slack.  We’re not stopping school through the summer, much to the children’s delight:).  They are happier when productive, sort of like us adults.  Alyosha is working on our garage, it’s almost finished, and we’re putting a deck on the top of it which we’re all pretty excited about.   The garage is of course made of concrete, and will withstand a german tank.  We look forward to the autumn, sitting out there on a pinic table and attempting to BBQ.  See below for what we’ll have to make ourselves if we want this dream to come true.. it’s the small things in life right?

[Jon and Ruth’s homemade BBQ, hey, it works!]

[no, that’s not soup, it’s tar, to be used to seal the bottom of the posts on our deck… why buy it when you can make it youself?  Wait, is that Deb’s pot? Shhh]

We’re heading into the City today to talk to them about a date for the ‘special’ kids camp (for handicapped children in the town).  The church has responded well and we have 7-8 volunteers ready to help make it happen.  Currently Simeon and Asia are leading a camp for kids down the street, they’ve had about 40 kids each day, and been faithfully presenting the gospel.  The summer time is definitely the time to do this type of outreach, it’s amazing the contrast of people ‘out and about’ in the summer versus the winter.  It literally feels like two different towns.  Many missionaries go back to their home countries for a few months during the winters here, and I can see why, especially if their ministry is toward kids/evangelism.  We need to get creative ahead of time to think of ways we can continue to shine the light of Christ in the dead of winter when nobody wants to leave their homes.

[noah is speaks as much russian as english, he’s a confused little man]

While in Ireland I bought an iPhone and been enjoying the seamless updates of photos/video to facebook.. which has caused less updating on this site.  The world of social networking is certainly changing how we all communicate, and I wonder how effective blogs like this will become, I need to install facebook on this site, bring you all here for some group discussion or something different.  I think the next update I will try and simply upload a video greeting/update, it is faster for me, and maybe more enjoyable on occassion to see us waving and screaming.

We are looking forward to family coming over to visit in August/Sept.  Until then we’re praying this update finds you well, and thank you for any thoughts/prayers coming this way.  God be glorified in all we do together for His Kingdom!

Sincerely, Bruce & Deb

Well our team from Texas has come and gone, I thought I’d give an update today while things are fresh in mind.  Overall it was a very fruitful trip, thank you all for praying and supporting those that came.  As many of you know, I’m not a big short term missions trip fan on the whole.  I believe that if a group is going to raise $1000’s of dollars for only a week or two of on-site activity, it had better be worthy and helping the local indingenous church in a significant way.  I can say without a doubt the week of activity here was a major stepping stone in gaining furthur trust and appreciation in our Ukrainian community.  The attitude of the group was one of service, they were here to help us serve the community practically with some business training and education, as well as deepening the sister city relationship between Kilgore and RZ.  The fact that 6 americans travelled acrosst the Atlantic to learn about their Ukrainian traditions, meet new friends, and share what informational resources they could to a struggling new democracy meant a lot to the Mayor, the leaders in city government and local business owners.  Here are a few of the things the group experienced while here as well as some of my thoughts.

Tour of town:  The group was led by Nadya Ivanova, the assistant to the Mayor.  She holds much power in the town, and takes very seriously the interest of cultural preservation and has been our main point person since arriving (remember the christmas dinner).  She took us around to some local schools, where we visited with some directors and caught of glimpse of the educational system here in Ukraine.  We also were taken to a new company in town that produces paper goods, and employs roughly 100 people in town.  We visited the nursing home, which the Mayor of RZ was formerly the director of.  

Little kids sleeping at the government provided nursery school.  Around 100 kids attend this particular school, ages 4-5-6.  It’s provided year ’round, as most women in town are the providers in the home.

Roundtable: The city gathered each of their department heads to a conference like discussion in their main board room.  Our group was fed practical questions of what life is like in the US, our education system, healthcare, tax structure, and eating habits:).  I know most of the department leaders now, it’s neat to get to know them more, and in a setting like this with the group from Texas they could see that we have friends supporing us in our efforts to make a positive impact on the community. 

Everyone knows that we are Christians, but we are not of the Orthodox faith, which means we are a ‘sect’, and to them, we are of a different religion.  It’s amazing to me that we’d be considered a different religion when we theologically believe in the person and deity of Christ, His resurrection, and all the main tenants that make up traditional orthodoxy.  Anyway, sitting down and sharing about practical issues with the town leaders is, I believe, a big step in helping them see that we unorthodox ‘Christians’ are normal, we are loving, and we take very seriously the teaching of the same messiah, only without the outward traditions of men demonstrated through their ‘religion’. 

Business Seminar:  Working together with the city economic development leaders, we rented a resort type facility 15 minutes away that we recently found out about.  We setup a conference like room, brought our sound system, and invited around 40 business leaders/city workers to attend.  We had around 30 show up to this, it was from 9am – 2pm and our speakers (Jeff Rash, Lisa Denton and Aaron Florzekowski) were given topics prior the trip to prepare for.  The topics included “Becoming an Entrepeneur”, “Economic Development Basics” and “Customer Service”.  They each did a great job sharing very simple principles that are either unheard of in Ukraine, or concepts that are still relatively new to the developing nation. 

The question and answer time was quite lively, often with 10 folks at one time shouting out their thoughts.. if you didn’t know the culture you’d think they were mad, but this was a sign that they were engaged and interested.  We will look to host more of these events, bringing in perhaps some folks from Kiev, and maybe more foreign guests as well.  My main interest is to develop relationships for the influence of christian ethics, the business community and political climate is very unstable, they have only been a democracy for less than 20yrs, and their constitution continues to evolve creating many loopholes and room for all sorts of corruption which has become the standard in almost every aspect of business as a result.  The businesses see (and rightly so I’m afraid) the government (local or federal) as prohibitors, as ‘stoppers’ toward personal and community improvement, there are little ways that the government can ‘help’ business, but a million options to shut you down.  Our group was able to share about how business and community work together, and yet so much of what we take for granted (like taxes trickling down to the city, city makes new roads, schools etc) simply can’t work in Ukraine, at least yet.  The taxes (which are seldom paid anyway) go directly to the federal level, and may or may not make it back to the community.  So there isn’t any incentive for local government to help you, a new business that needs some help or wants to start is simply a burden and whether they come to your town or the next, makes little difference to the local government besides more headache.  Simple concepts we benefit from in the west, are not here yet, and there is still a two-class system of rich and poor, with no middle class.  The business seminar isn’t going to change these major national issues, but it does provide hope, connects people, and provides a way for God centered issues to be considered (honesty, integrity, helping others) in a new environment.  “God” is very much an isolated religious topic here, kept within the four walls of the local church.  We need to do more practical sharing about our faith in every other facit of practical life to show them Jesus is alive, His truth applies everywhere.

Dnepr Tour: The Mayor rented two small boats for our group and lead us on an expedition of the river.  That was a alot of fun for the group.  Their most attractive and natural resource for the region is the river, it’s deep and wide, with beautiful landscape and cliffs on either side.  We also went to an old submerged village (after they dammed the river 50yrs ago), the only remains left is the orthodox church, about 170 yrs old, completely surrounded by water.  Inside was a priest, he talked about the history of the area, the church, and said if we gave  money the big Priest man from the region would pray for us… sounds like some faith preachers in the US.

Webcast: Near the end of our trip we hosted another skype webcast with Kilgore and Mayor Parker.  It was neat for the group to see their Texas friends on the other side of the pond.  This is the third time we’ve hosted this, and each time the group on both sides becomes more relaxed and is starting to have a lot of fun.  We’re finally at the place where it’s ‘unscripted’ and I can simply start the call (this time both sides used projectors and speakers), then pass it over to the Mayors and they chat about anything from fishing to the economy.  The Mayor from RZ presented the Kilgore folks with a couple of very nice gifts including a handcrafted violin, and a clay cup with RZ emblem and art chizeled in the side.   After the skype call gift bags were presented to our team.  I sat and thought to myself during this call how cool God is.  Only a year ago the two towns didn’t know that either existed, and now look forward to saying hello in each others language.  We have a special connection now and ‘inroad’ that allows us to operate locally as believers, as businessmen, and whatever else we feel God leading us to do in this town.  My prayer and what I believe God calls us to do as believers is to become assets in the community.  The Ukrainians don’t need to see a group of people meeting by themselves, occassionally coming out to do an ‘event’ or ‘outreach’, but relevant, need meeting and relateable fellow citizens.  There are many others in town that love God and are doing practical things to help this cause, it’s exciting and going to produce fruit as we are faithful by God’s grace.   Nadya touched my heart when after the Skype call she made a small speach thanking Daniel and myself for the work we are doing.  They think it’s great that we aren’t just sitting up in our houses but working with them and trying to make the town a better place to live.  She presented us with gifts as well, and to my astonishment kissed us both on the cheek.  Ha!  This is the same lady that really gave us a hard time pulling off the Christmas dinner, it has been a slow process of building trust, I’m not sure if a kiss means we have total trust, but it can’t be a bad thing:).

Picnic:  This was probably the highlight for us, the town provided a very special Ukrainian feast of a picnic, complete with smoked fish, Sala (pig fat raw) on bread, fruit, some other local favorites including their beverages of choice (cough).  Together with the Mayor, Nadya and Boyko (not really his name but what I call him, he’s the Economic Development guy), we had a looooong picnic meal which lasted about 2hrs.  This was out at the cities little camp ground, overlooking the Dnepr.  It was a former aviation / pilot rest camp.  It looked about 100yrs old, but the natural beauty of the forest and river made up for it. 

We experienced as a group first hand how to toast (everyone was required to toast at least once, the topic was ‘love’), and everyone really had a great time.. even if the food was out of this world.  The group wouldn’t understand how special this was, it cost them personally, the city doesn’t have any money, literally, and the local workers including the mayor have taken 50% pay cuts 6 months ago.  They really blessed us, and it was neat to talk ‘off the record’ on a number of topics, and feel that we are really getting to know them.  It must be very puzzling for them to see Dan and his family, our family, and a number of other foreigners plugging into this community when they know we have left the pleasures and comforts of western life.  I don’t know what I would think if I were them, probably that we are up to something and should be watched carefully!  Well, we are up to something, we are trying to love our community with the love of Christ, gain trust and influence anyone we can to look to Him for help in this life, and the assurance of salvation for the next.  The texas group helped us take more steps in this direction, thank you for coming guys!

Orphanage: the team brought over 3 suitcases full of nice kids shoes and new socks/underwear, we visited two orphanages and blessed them with enough for each kid to have at least one pair of shoes.  

Wow, this is long.  I have much more to say, or at least in my heart.  I do want to thank Cheryl, Priscilla, Cassie, Deb, everyone who helped this past week.  Together we served the community and our God.  Thanks to Art who led the team, the team who took time off work and sacrificed some funds to do it.  Svetlana for all the work setting up the business lunch and your trasnslation help.  Tanya for helping Cassie in Kiev.  Our church at Crossroads for praying, and sending over all the shoes, socks and underwear.  The church here for praying and welcoming our guests.  The guys at work who always step up a bit more when I dissapear for a week like this, everyone plays a role in this and I praise God for serving with you all.

Bruce & Deb