Category: Bruce Posts (Page 88 of 211)

We went by size.. I think if Broderic were here I would be 2nd.  Oops missing Clair.

We had a great time in Minsk!   We’re loving what God is doing there, and was neat to get to know more of the city with the whole crew this time.  We also deepened our friendship with several of the leaders at the school and church.   The first part of our trip consisted of attending the Worship Marathon with our Ukrainian team.

Here’s a little clip of Yan leading an evening – he’s one gifted dude, along with his drummer brother Vikente, and artist sister Liza.  Love this song, “Your love, in death and life, to me Jesus.  Your love lives in me, my Lord, always.”

On the Saturday of the event, around 300-500 young people flowed in and out of the main auditorium during the 12hrs.  I was really impressed with the level of talent the church at large in Minsk.

The student leaders are all into these Meme type photos – this quote was taken from a message I shared to the youth on our recent burglaries. The quote says, “Install a security system on your heart.” It looks like I am going to steal your purse.

After the team returned to Ukraine, our family rented a cottage on the outskirts of the City and enjoyed the city for a few days.  Minsk is an incredibly clean and beautiful City.   The City itself is well laid out, and traffic laws are strictly obeyed – it’s such a contrast to the jungle free for all of Kiev (although I have to admit I’ve grown fond of the jungle!).  Our kids had a blast wake-boarding and enjoying their little zoo.

Each evening we were involved in Worship Nights, and a couple of them were quite memorable as God touched and spoke to many hearts.  There’s something so attractive when believers gather, not out of duty or tradition, but hunger for His presence.  It doesn’t matter if there are 5 or 500 – if believers gather sincerely, God shows up and it’s so refreshing to experience, especially among youth.   It’s a pity that most Sunday gatherings tend to grow into stale, uneventful ‘meetings’ – God doesn’t like to be predictable, but seemingly allows us to confine him to our expectations when there is little faith for more.

5 nights of worship and prayer – love it!

One evening, was not unlike a specific evening in Ukraine where the room was ushered into a chorus of prayer and worship that was very acute, forceful, ‘other worldly’.  The music faded into the background and the folks gathered, mostly 20 somethings, began to intercede for their nation, their world.  What’s unique from my other experiences in the west, is that none of it was engineered by a preacher or even motivated by the worship leaders – it rose up, it culminated – God’s people taking His heart, touching heaven.  You had to be there.

View from the loop that encircles the entire City of Minsk.. I love the the City is so spread out, grass everywhere even downtown.

I believe God deposited some seeds that night in many students hearts, seeds of His heart for His mission.   This generation in the FSU (former Soviet Union) is no longer going to be targeted as a mission field only – but a Missional Community that God is raising up, a Kingdom force for years to come.   It’s a paradigm shift for me personally –

I’ve always believed God was calling us to help bring the Gospel TO a people group.

Yet, there is a Gospel Movement underfoot that flips this on its head – God has a people that is already starting to take the Gospel TO the nations.  Our mission is to help fan this flame.

In the coming months we’d love it if you prayed for our families role, particularly as it relates to level of involvement in Minsk.   A piece of our heart is there, and we are excited to see how God weaves together our world in our small community of Rzhyschiv, Ukraine with something larger in a big city.  I think there could be some serious synergy and impact for the Kingdom coming.

Loved this photo from morning of Wake-boarding – perfect weather!

We’ve unfortunately returned with some sickness among the troops, coughing and sneezing abounding but thankful to be home safely.   Clark and Noah are now at kids camp with our friends up in Ivankiv.    Thank you to a special someone out there that cleaned our house while we were gone!!  They can break in anytime they want 🙂

Time to meet with our Cafe workers, get a read on how the week went and make some adjustments for June.  We had a record pizza day while we were away, the last day of school… over 20 pizzas in one day is a lot for us!

Some bullet point areas of prayer!  Sorry for so many, but we haven’t blogged in a while!

• It looks like our Kickstarter won’t reach the 100% mark, but we made it to 50% with 2 days left.  We need wisdom to know if to re-launch with a smaller goal and do less, or just leave it for now.  It’s been a neat experience and I’ve learned a lot.
• This summer.  We will be receiving a couple of short term missionaries to serve with us, as well as starting our internship program.  Prayer for wisdom and for the 2-3 students that are very interested in committing.
• August Team from Minsk coming to serve in children’s outreach.  Meeting with some area leaders to consolidate efforts hopefully.
• We’re also receiving guests/friends from Texas, NY, and possibly family from Canada… so much for slow summers!
• Brent is leaving for Canada this week Lord willing, to work on the farm.
• Broderic is applying to Augustine College in Ottawa, Canada for Fall Semester.  It’s a one year intensive apologetic course.
• Bronwyn is considering fall Bible School in Minsk!
• Who else can we send out…. any takers, we got more 🙂
• Studio: hoping to see it evolve to next step and we have one person in mind to help with that, but need prayer, wisdom and finances.
• Continued prayer for Widows ministry – feeding now 40 and I’m looking to see Natasha continue to grow in leading this.  They do such a great job!
• This week we hope to get another used coffee machine for the 2nd location near the school.  It’s hard to find reliable stuff here (and people that sell honestly).

Blessings,

Bruce & Deb

View School Promo Video

Well we’re packed and ready to leave at 6am for Minsk tomorrow morning.

We’ll be driving straight through – hopefully about 9hrs if all goes well!

It will be interesting to see how the border goes – two van loads and most of the Ukrainians are students, their first time exiting Ukraine!  The border can take anywhere from 2hrs to half a day.. if they let you in.

We’ll be spending Saturday noon – midnight in worship and prayer with +500 young people – well, probably not 12hrs straight but it will be neat to join 100’s of young people as we cry out to the Lord for His presence and reality to change nations.  There are 13 bands and artists rotating every hour, including Collins (only only US representative!).

After this, I will speak 3 different times on Sunday, including a group of +100 young people at a new ministry called ‘6pm’.  It is led and was started by Belarussian young people with a passion for God.

I’m writing quickly as I’m unsure of our ability to blog there – no laptop this time, still in the hands of thieves though we do have GPS tracking with icloud..  🙁 We will post to FB with our phones as we are able.  Excited to spend quality time with the students and expose them to the Kingdom of God at work.

Please pray with us for:

• traveling protection and border favor.
• health of entire team and our family.
• God to work on the students hearts we are taking with us.
• God to refresh us all!
• Sunday messages, and also next week sharing two other times at a 5 night worship event – Awaken Belarus Lord!
• For the police while we are gone, and protection of our house – we do have some people staying and a new alarm system on alert.

Thank you to an old school friend from the County who donated last week to our robbery helping us replenish funds for our trip costs.  God is so gracious to us.

Thankful for our crew here at Lighthouse in Ukraine, they not only hold down the fort but will be off to Kiev Tuesday to buy more product for Widows and visiting, serving and loving well in our absence.  Pray for them too!

Bruce & Deb

My lovely wife informed me that today is our 8yr anniversary… in Ukraine 🙂

Family photo just prior to leaving Longview, Texas – and one from this past fall.

One of the great turn-offs for me personally is a faux christianity that suggests faith is an unwavering denial of reality.  “It’s a beautiful day!” when it’s a miserable cold rainy one.  “I’m feeling great” when in fact you are suffering with a migraine and can’t muster the energy to play with your kids.  Scripture never instructs us to pretend, in fact that is the antithesis of saving, sincere faith.  The religious hypocrites pretend.   We come to God as we are, for we’re never anything else in His eyes – and the kicker, we’re not loved less for being real.

Deb and I are grieving.  Yesterday morning we awoke to yet another discouraging and maddening break-in while we were sleeping.  Same window broken into.  Both Deb and I’s computers, and over $700 in cash, gone.   The cameras this time, were not powered on – we had unplugged them weeks earlier as they killed our internet bandwidth and we had believed the previous thief, Pasha, had been both caught and sentenced (we had gone to court and he was put on probation).    Small problem, Pasha is part of a network of thieves.. nice way of saying a gang.

Each of the items taken are painful losses.  My work and ministry laptop, which I use for travel, club 180 and teaching abroad – next week I’m scheduled to share multiple times in Minsk.  Deb’s laptop was actually a gift from my dad, his used laptop a replacement for Deb’s previously stolen laptop last year. She studies Russian daily on that laptop and has been really pressing in.  The cash, a crazy amount of $700 in it from returning the previous day a coffee machine in Kiev (that didn’t work) for a 2nd Cafe location (Crossroads contribution) we have been quietly working on as well as trip money for Minsk.

Bronwyn also had money stolen.  She had been saving from our Cafe work (she gets paid $2/hr), and had been accumulating for Minsk as well – $120 in total, a great deal in her world.

If you’ve ever had stuff stolen, you know it’s not really the stuff that hits you deep inside.  It’s the feeling of being violated – of something ‘not right’, an injustice that is difficult to explain.  While some have suggested we are too trusting, naive, and even deserved it (this being our 4th noted break in in past 2yrs), it doesn’t erase the feelings.  You feel stupid for not getting a dog (we’ve been wrestling with this for several months as our previous experience was terrible), for not fixing the lock on the window (it locks but the thieves can break it), for not installing a better alarm system, for leaving so much money in your wallet, for leaving the cameras off.. nothing removes the feelings of violation and anger.

We’ve had friends graciously offer to help replace items, send money, all incredible acts of kindness – but the replacement of items doesn’t erase the grief over yet another stranger in our home while we sleep.  We take our safety and security for granted – we live in an evil, selfish world, and that is reality no matter how we embrace the justice and goodness of God.

The police have lists of names.  We are putting pressure on Pasha to find the culprits because all signs point to him (enough to put a kid on probation in big trouble again).   We have 4-5 police guys going in various directions, after so many break-ins I have no patience for the insanity of bureaucracy and have taken more of a leadership approach to their process.  Call me Columbo.  However, we really would just like our stuff back vs being some vigilante justice crime fighters.

Tuesday we are installing an outdoor motion detection system which will text us and deter.

Thank you for the kind words of encouragement on facebook and messenger.   This time it’s interesting – we are just ‘feeling our feelings’.  Where other times we’ve really tried to stay positive and encourage one another, this time we’re just plain tired and angry.  Angry with ourselves, but a deeper anger over sin and it’s complete disregard for others – we aren’t in despair, but in no race to get ‘happy’ because that is more ‘Christian’.   I am hopeful that something is going to turn up, but not as anxious about it like the previous times.

For the record, over the past 2yrs we’ve had the following stolen, and at least 4 break-ins, 3 of which were while we were home and sleeping:

• Canon T3i Camera
• 5 laptops
• $1800 in Cash
• Xbox (this was returned)
• 2 ipods
• Cables
• All of our kids bikes (except Abbeys, we have one bike left)
• All kinds of outdoor stuff, gas cans, sports equipment..

We leave for Minsk early Friday morning, for weekend of worship and prayer with young people.  This adds to our intensity and burden to see a real lasting generational change – it’s personal! 🙂  Sunday I’ll be sharing 3 times to different groups including a larger group of young people, many who are only just starting to seek God.  I suspect the enemy inspires folks to do acts of evil at certain times, and God’s people must dig in and be filled with His Spirit, this is my prayer right now.  If you would like to pray for us, please pray with us – that we would ‘get back up’ from this stronger and more resilient, that we would bring sincere love and the presence of God would encourage many next week.  Also pray our stuff comes back!

It’s all too easy to say, “God is good, He’s in charge, He knows what’s going on”, but another to actively come with your real feelings in times of hurt or anger, and work it out in the quiet place with God.  We see this in the Psalms in particular with David.. frustration, disappointment, fear, genuine faith in a broken world is messy and real.

Maybe this might encourage you to join me in coming sincerely to God, in faith, and dealing with your own life’s challenges – He challenges us to come!   Frustrated, angry, sad.. come!   I’m going to go do that now as I hit publish on this post.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

Bruce & Deb