Category: Bruce Posts (Page 197 of 211)

Wow we are getting pretty busy with stuff going on these days.  The next 2 weeks are jammed full of some neat activities.. but ones that require a lot of preparation.  Pray for the following… in order of date:

Friday, May 15 /  Regional Family Day

– this all day event wasn’t something that we knew about until yesterday evening.  The City called us up and asked if we’d be willing to help transport 2-3 families from RZ, along with some city officials to БIЛА ЦЭРКВА (bila tserkva), about 100km east of our town.   Dan and visited this morning and found out they really wanted to have RZ representatives at this ‘carnival’ type day for kids and family, but they didn’t have the funds to buy bus tickets for the families involved.  We were able to sponsor this for about $100, and our family, along with 20 others from our town will be off tomorrow morning.   We will have a serious full day of Russian practice, without any interpreter and a bus full of kids.   It’s actually a pretty special opportunity, we’ll be meeting several families from not only our own town, but the entire area, many of which are larger families, and some that are like foster homes for orphaned children we are told.  We’ll be learning Ukrainian dances and doing crafts.. here we go!

Saturday, May 16th  /  Playing hockey in a tournament at the Canadian Embassy in Kiev.  I’m really looking forward to that, even if my team is comprised of Rugby and Cricket enthusiasts.   This is very spiritual, pray that we don’t break any bones, Australians/Kiwi’s holding hockey sticks can be a dangerous proposition.  Ok, it’s not that spiritual but I’m pretty excited.

Sunday, May 17th  /  Pastor & Wives Dinner:  We’ve been meeting each week with the ministry leaders in our town.  It’s been a special time and we sense God working for sure, bringing us together and growing our heart for this community.  We haven’t met with our wives yet though, and this Sunday evening at the Gollans we’ll be doing just that.  We’ve also invited the Orthodox Priest, and hoping that our ‘reaching out’ to him personally will build some bridges.  It could be a very huge step for the Orthodox and the Christian ‘protestant’ believers in this town to come together and promote Jesus Christ.  We are inviting everyone in the town (or plan to) to our special upcoming service in the center.. we had 130 or so last time, and that was without any advertisement.  I am very excited to see what transpires this summer as we continue to meet monthly, and work together with all believers.  I’m praying for 300 believers gathering in this town by the end of summer.  What would be about a 10 fold increase from the most any group represented on their own, in only 3-4 months time.  God is moving, pray for our town, or I should say keep praying, because this IS happening because of prayer and God’s grace.

Wednesday, May 20th  /  Jacob’s Cafe Outreach:  Our Home Groups are meeting monthly for fellowship and worship/prayer at the cafe downtown.  We are turning this coming Wednesday into an outreach and have little invitations printed.. and we’re inviting friends, family, co-workers to come and join us.  We’ll have some performance type music, and share the gospel.   I’m hoping to see some new faces, we’d love to start an evangelistic bible study on Wed nights in place of traditional ‘christian’ gathering.  It would be healthy and exciting to keep the focus on outreach as we enter the summer season.

Sunday, May 24th   /  Rzhyschiv Christian Fellowship:  Not really our official name (for all the churches), we don’t have a ‘name’.. but in my head I’ve had that name for a few months so I’m going to start using it:).  People aren’t into names here, and that’s fine with me, but sometimes it really gets annoying when trying to communicate things.  Imagine trying to ‘not’ have a name yourself… that’s sort of what it’s like here sometimes (IE, we’re the Christians over there).  Back to the meeting.  We will be planning who’s speaking, giving testimony, doing music, greeting, helping with food/coffee… all those church things.  With different churches represented, styles of music, and age groups, pray that we hit the mark, and provide a time that really glorifies God and doesn’t offend unnecessarily.  The town is going to start noticing these monthly gatherings, and we really want them to be Christ centered and attractive in the sense of our enthusiasm and love for God and one-another.  Pray that our unity continues to grow.. we do have an enemy that isn’t pleased with what is going on.

Saturday, May 30th  /  Paintball!  This is a men’s event that we are hosting, Lord willing right in the forest next to my house.  The guy from the Paintball business is coming to survey our forest tomorrow, I think it’s perfect but we’ll see.  This will be an outreach as well, we’ll be stopping half way through and sharing truth with the men.  We want to get to know more guys in the town, and it’s a great way to build friendships when you are taking on fire from the enemy line!  We are sponsoring this event so the costs are affordable to the folks we invite.  If anyone wants or can give to some of this stuff, we won’t deny you the privilege of participating.  It’s about $20 per person that we are covering, they have to pay about $8.  Sponsor a dude for $20 so they can play for $8 by clicking here.   Remember, these guys make $200-300 per month, so even the $8 is something that will be difficult for some, but we’re making it extremely difficult to turn down, most have never played from what I’ve heard.

[that says Paintball…with info… thanks Jon Vashey for the design help!]

That wraps up May, you should see July, there’s a ton going on for that month and the group coming.  I won’t even get started there.

Thanks for checking in, hope this gives you a feel for what we’re up to and how to effectively pray.  God is working, and we are excited to be in a place where we can be used for Him like this.  With all the complaints, we praise Him for the opportunity to serve and for friends and family like you that support us.   We’ve been battling the flu off/on the past two weeks, pray as well that we all get healthy soon thanks!

Sincerely,

[Noah stole my drink, Clark is pretending to be the Karate Kid]

This weekend Ukraine will celebrate “Victory Day” across the nation.  Special events in Kiev will commemorate their victory 60 years ago against the forces of Nazi Germany.

We are also celebrating, on a much, much smaller scale.. the completion of our house.. the basement is complete!!  Yesterday I spent the afternoon gathering remaining materials to finish out the guest bedroom and bathroom…  Alyosha has been working hard for the past two months tiling, putting up sheet rock, painting, plumbing.  Here’s a few pictures for you, as you can see the garage is now a guest bedroom, and the bathroom and kitchenette area is really cool.  Not only can we host guests, we can let them have some privacy as well.  The kitchen is also used on Wednesday nights for HomeGroup, and food/tea/coffee is shuttled through the little drive through window which was a natural hole in the foundation walls that we decided to creatively use.. it is Clark’s favorite place to hide as well.

We’re excited to be able to host friends, family, and guests passing through our hotel-less community.  Starting at just $59.99 per night, you even get a free continental breakfast.. locally continental that is, a piece of cheese, bread, and a strong black coffee, but you have to make that yourself.   There’s no pool, but we do have plenty of exercising opportunities (if you like to pull weeds).  The Crowe hotel will also stock wild animals for your entertainment, 6 roam around daily.  You will want to catch one of the many feeding times on the upper level, at Deb’s Cafe, which is open 24hrs a day.  We are a green hotel, earth friendly, and appreciate you joining us by taking :30 second showers, we’re not quite sure how our well is going to hold up with increased traffic.. our neighbors are already low or out.. and it’s only spring!

Actually, this weekend our new friends Simeon and Asha are moving in with us!  Our first guests, they win should win something.  They are staying with us for 4-5 weeks while their place of rent is being completed.  They moved here 2 months ago, newly married (a year i think?), he’s from Scotland, she’s from Poland, and they desire to work with children.  How cool is that?  On our one year anniversary next week, we will be hosting a family in need.. the memory of being without a place of our own in a strange new land is fresh in our memory.  Thank you God for all that you’ve done this past year.. and continue to do for us!

[ Broderic helping this week as we compile all extra materials ]

Couple updates-

– Church Unity – the pastors from the area churches have agreed to meet ONCE PER MONTH, on a SUNDAY MORNING for worship and build unity.  This is amazing!  25% of our gatherings now will be with all the believers from this town.  That’s 100-120 believers gathering with one voice.  We have rented (for the year) the City’s new but unfinished civic building, which seats several hundred, and host our first meeting there together on May 24th.  Dan and I are leading the logistics on this, and really appreciate you praying for these monthly meetings.  This is the start of some exciting things in Rzhyschiv.

– July 2-9 the official dates for the group of Texans coming over to our town.  We met with the Mayor and his staff this week, and they are excited about it.  We are going to join with them for a day of festival/cultural stuff (which will already be going on.. we think… they keep changing their dates).. and we are hosting a Business Seminar on July 7th at a local resort for business owners and directors (managers).  We have had a very warm reception to the concept of educating/training within the local economy and this is a great way to build bridges relationally, and naturally.  We have also been in contact with some Kiev contacts that work with the Ukrainian and US government on economic development/training, and have expressed interest in joining us, perhaps sharing/speaking at this event.

– HomeGroup has been going well.  It’s nice to study and talk with our friends on eternal topics.  I feel edified after each meeting, we chew through a lot of scripture and everyone is participating.  We ar starting to move our focus toward evangelism and this May 20th we’ll be meeting at Jacobs for an evangelistic time, sharing the gospel and we’re inviting our friends/co=workers to it.  Please pray for this would you?

– Men: we need more men! Pray for this coming May 30th, we’re going to host a Paintball event here in RZ for the purpose of gathering men together to share about God.  There are only a small handful of Ukrainian men serving God in this town.  Most of the guys here are missionaries actually.   They like paintball, but it’s out of price range for 90% of them, even though it’s 40% less than in America to do it.  We are going to sponsor the event, and cover about 70% of the cost, making it truly affordable for guests we invite.  I think we’ll get a big crowd, we are printing invitations and plan to break in the middle and have a MAN talk about God.   I’m going to undergo some serious xbox 360 training before the event.

Miss our friends, family and church in Longview – remember to pray and lift up this town and all that God is calling us to do together.

Bruce & Deb

[Spring cleaning- ladies in full force sweeping the streets]

 [If you look really really closely you can see our house:)]

Our first full spring in Ukraine… and we are wondering where the rain went?  Amazing it’s almost May.. we moved over here last May 15. We’ve begun reflecting and wondering where the time has gone.  Simultaneously amazed at what has been accomplished, both in completion of our house, language progression, social network (aka friends), relationships in the town, opportunities to promote our great God.. and youth group that congregates around our trampoline daily.  Another thing that feels great is having a better grasp on visa/passport/registration regulations and procedures.  Registering a business here in Ukraine has already proven to be a very good decision, we were able to keep our ‘stuff’ in the country without import tariffs using the company, attained 3yr business visas, registered with OVIR.  This year we also completed the purchase of our house, registering it fully in our names.. we’re still working on the land part:).  Anyway, when I start to get overwhelmed, I step back and gain encouragement from all these things… most of the time we feel like we are still swimming in mud, but we’re seeing results and learning everyday how to better navigate through the mess of bureaucracy.

We have a team of 7 coming over July 2-9!  Excited about the group mix, Art Bradshaw a good friend and a teacher in Longview is leading the group.   The group will be meeting folks from our town, building relationships, hosting a business luncheon, a cultural evening.. and representing East Texas.  I’m excited about this type of trip, it’s great for our community here, it builds more bridges, help us foreigners continue to be an asset and gain more trust as we live among our Ukrainian neighbors.  I think the group will be very blessed as well to experience a taste of life here, literally.

Deb is doing great, she’s a wonderful wife and mom.  She hasn’t been blogging for a while, I’ve been encouraging her to start updating again.. there are so many things happening in her world that I miss reading about on her blog!

Today we met with the city leaders responsible for Child Services.  We have begun researching how Ukraine governs orphans, orphanages etc.  It’s quite fascinating, and complex.  There are over 20k legal orphans according to a state website, and 160-180 ‘orphanages’ which care for 40-400 orphans each.  A lot more information to gather, praying about eventually, as the Lord leads, helping in this area.   We’ve met some interesting contacts over the last few months that either manage orphanages, or work with children/youth in this capacity.  Next week we plan to visit some in the region and build some relationships with the directors, find out really what the needs are. 

[This picture is for my dad]

We met again last night for our monthly Jacob’s Cafe meeting, we had a time of singing and praying together with the church.  Pray for us, we are going to make next month’s an evangelistic outreach and invite people, share the gospel.  Next month we are also going to host a Men’s Event… Paintball in our woods.. this will also be an outreach focus, I’ve already talked to a couple guys in town that are excited about it.  We’re going to help sponsor the event so it will be affordable for everyone.  I wonder if Ukrainian paintballs hurt like American ones?  mmm. 

Thanks for checking in –

(PS, nothing is growing in our garden yet.. it’s been 2-3 weeks.. shouldn’t i see something yet?)

Bruce & Deb

Maybe we are dreaming.  We should probably be praying.  The field in our backyard has become our families first garden… You simply stick the seed the in ground and God does the rest right?  The way the Ukrainians work daily in their fields, the tender loving care they give each plant.. we starting to wonder:). 

Anyway, a quick post to show you how we spent our Saturday afternoon.  We wrapped it up with a campfire, and good ole American burgers… well, shaped like them anyway.  Once again, we had another crew of young kids over on the trampoline today, we’ve managed to meet at least 20 new kids this week.   It’s really cool, even if the odd toy goes missing with the added visitors!

Hope you all are doing well, and have a blessed weekend-

Bruce & Deb