Men's Retreat Andrei Sharing on Christian Business Ethics

This past weekend we were able to take 32 guys to Ivankiv, Ukraine.  Here are some pictures from the weekend.  The Lord blessed our time by providing Andrei, a Ukrainian Christian businessman who shared on practical work ethic, integrity and other lacking characteristics in this country.  I’m confident it was for some of these guys the first time they’ve ever heard such concepts.  Andrei was very like-able, humble but confident, and had the group eating from his hand.  He represents a very rare breed in this country, young, ‘successful’ but walking without compromise spiritually and in business.

Simeon teaching the guys how to play Monopoly

Usually when money is involved here, people are very pragmatic and do whatever it takes.  Andrei challenged everyone to stand their ground, uphold integrity and trust God.  He also encouraged the group with some business ideas, and tried to provide practical advice for different industries they might want to pursue as many are about to finish college.

Having Andrei share Saturday morning was great because it wasn’t too ‘preachy’ and allowed us to gain some trust while we spent the rest of the day playing games and paintball.  I skipped out on the paintball, there were exactly 30 guys that played, exactly the amount of equipment.  They came back completely wiped and ready to eat.  This was great because I could then share to an audience that wanted nothing more than to sit and rest:)

After Sergei led some songs (great job by the way Sergei!), I shared on the road that leads to destruction, and the narrow gate that few find.  I encouraged them from several scriptures about the nature of the wide path, how we’ve all been on it at some point.  By grace, God has sent Jesus to make another way,a way off the path to destruction and restoring us back to the road to eternal life.

The Chess board was continually in action, Ukrainians love Chess

I drew this all out on a large white board and ended with the invitation that God has been making through men for 2000 yrs, ‘be reconciled to God!”  It was a sober time, and the guys were listening, the Holy Spirit was moving on hearts.  We had 7-8 guys raise their hand who understood they were on that wrong path, and wanted to respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit to make some changes.

I was filled with joy obviously to see such a response.  It’s amazing how God uses His Word to convict hearts, very cool God! The next morning I shared on renewing your mind with God’s word, old patterns and new patterns.  We invited anyone that had made a decision to follow God to go immediately to Cabin #2 to talk with Dan.

We had most of the guys show up, another visible step toward a commitment to God, this time it was in front of others.  Then last night, Dan met at his house with 5-6 of them to start talking about their new faith.   Several of them already have a change in their demeanor, while a few are still wrestling and sincerely counting the costs.  For a lot of these guys, they have strong opposition at home to such a step, they need our prayers.

Sunday we had great weather for beach volleyball

This week the new believers are meeting with Kolya and Dan.  In the coming week or so, I want to get with them as well and review some basic Christian topics like faith and forgiveness.  The most important thing right now is to get them into fellowship with other believers and encourage them, and obviously pray.  Many are about to return home for the summer in a few weeks.  May God establish them in their new faith, and protect the seeds of eternal life that have been sown!

Anyway, our hope for this retreat was to build unity among our brothers, and provide opportunity for salvation among some of the students that could come.  God accomplished more than I personally expected, and I thank Him for it along with the rest of us missionaries here in RZ.  Thank you God for allowing us the privilege of working in your Kingdom with You!

Will be updating again soon.  We’ve had some very interesting things happening around our house in the past two weeks, including 1 stolen bike, stolen ipod and Ninendo DS.  Each with different stories, some still unfolding.  We have an amazing amount of kids at our house daily right now, as I type there are about 8 kids (none ours) around the trampoline and sitting around our porch.  Yesterday we had 18-20 kids, God is allowing us the opportunity to get to know them all more, ages 6-15 mostly.  We need prayer to show them God’s love, and when necessary God’s justice/honesty as well, some of these kids come from pretty rough backgrounds, and have little to no conscience left, professional liars.  Pray for our kids, that their own hearts don’t become bitter, so far they’ve had godly attitudes and sort of trusting us I think that by showing grace and love (when taken advantage of) gives the most joy to God, and keeps peace in our own hearts as well.  Thank you Otto Koning for those wonderful Pineapple Stories!

Thanks for checking in –

Bruce & Deb

We are back from our Men’s Retreat and full of thanks for a spiritual awakening in several of the students. They responded to God’s Spirit and are starting to take practical steps toward a life of faith in Jesus Christ. Thank you to all that prayed and I’d ask that you join us now as we pray for continued protection and favor over their lives in the coming weeks. May God firmly establish them in the faith, and may we be faithful in the process as well.

The gospel message still opens the eyes of the blind, it makes me want to share it more. Rejoicing with God for His power to justify and save those that fully surrender to Him, what a cool God we serve!

Bruce & Deb

Friend sent me this New York times article. Over the past few years Texas has had some interesting relationships building with Ukraine. We’ve had our own agenda with the Sister City partnership with Kilgore and Rzhyshchiv, partly cultural, partly democratic education, mostly to position foreign Christians in our town as an asset and not liability. Last month several Mayors from large Ukrainian cities visited East Texas. This article suggests that a greater international partnership may be coming with the President of Ukraine signing an agreement toward exploring energy options from Texas, which would be a huge step toward greater independence with Russia.

Bruce & Deb

Us with eldest 3 boys

Enjoying the spring weather, getting our first serious rains this week, it’s a nice change from the long winter.  I tried to turn our heat on in the house yesterday as temps have dropped back down, but something is broken.  It’s nice to not be in emergency mode, we can just dress a bit warmer and keep going while we wait for the repairman.

This week we are helping our baptist brothers host a group of 10 German workers on a building team.  They are here helping to build a church building which has not progressed beyond a foundation for a few years now.  We have 4 guys staying with us for 12 days.  We’re truly rejoicing that this town will have another physical ‘christian’ presence downtown.  In a way it will make things easier for us with the cafe, hopefully deferring the  attention of our very strong orthodox community.  In Ukraine, if you aren’t part of the Orthodox Church, you are considered a sect along the lines of a JW or Mormon.  So to see the Ukrainian brothers being bold downtown with a ‘house of prayer’ just a block down from the Cafe is very cool, we praise God for the German church.

This weekend we are taking a group of 30 guys to Ivankiv, about 80km north of Kiev, to a Christian Camp run by our friends the Andrew & Jenny Kelly from Texas.  Our church is hosting a Men’s Retreat, first of it’s kind I think.  The group is about 50% believers and 50% students we’ve been reaching out to at some level.  We’re spending two nights there, and plan to have a few sessions to talk about the gospel and application.  The theme is ‘no compromise’, we have a guest speaker for part of it, a bold ukrainian brother who runs a business and enjoys to challenge people for Christ, as well as Dan and I will both share.  Pray for us, it’s quite an opportunity to have this group of guys, together for a time of fun and potentially life changing spiritual awakening.  I’ll be sharing Saturday night.  We’re also driving in our paintball guys from Khagarlyk, which is obviously a major draw.

Enjoyed having my good friend Dave Huber last week for a visit.  Dave’s been my accountability partner for many years, it’s always great to visit and relax with someone you have a long history with.  He took notes is now going to help us come up with remaining materials for the cafe, right Dave! 🙂

Aloysha is forced to pose with me during work today

Speaking of the cafe, it’s coming along nicely.  We have decided to tear down some extra walls, it’s really opening up into a nice space.

Vitalik, Alyoshas brother-in-law is a fine cement mixer!

Deb and Neil have been putting together some creative layout for the area, measuring and deciding where everything will go.  We are getting close to laying tile, then we’ll move to wiring/ceiling/lightning.  We’re basically moving week to week as we have funds, God is and we know He will provide.

FAMILY UPDATE (for the grandparents!)

Kids are well, Clark is working hard to save up for a bike.  He has a jar with ‘greevnas” for various chores, which he keeps losing:)  Noah loves to sing, Deb and I catch him humming along in his own unique language.  Brent is still the popular kid on the block, doorbell rings and kids want to play.  Our neighbor boy (notice we call him ‘our’ now?) Svyatik is officially fluent, unbelievable how he can speak English so well after living beside us for 3yrs.  His parents seriously owe us some tuition or something!  I was listening to him the other day though and noticed he has some of the exact same phrases (that don’t always make sense) as our boys, his teachers aren’t exactly award winning linguists.  Bronwyn is as tall as Deb, she is blossoming into a fine young lady / lawyer. She is quick on her feet and loves a good debate, watch out whoever gets my daughter.  Broderic has found a new friend to add to his collection of one (Jessie) that is his age, his name is Troy and he is from Canada, son of a lovely Mennonite couple that moved here around the same time we did.  They are farming (with about 6-8 employees) 30 minutes from here, great to meet like-minded believers with kids our age.  Who did I forget?  Tucker!  What can you say about the tuckster, he’s the quietest kid in public, just like his mom, sweet and thoughtful, but behind the scenes in the security of home, he is a chatty cathy!  The boy loves an audience, fortunately there always seems to be someone around to listen:)

Wow, haven’t blogged in a while, busy with family, church, work and everything else that pops up in between.  This past week Pastor David Wilkerson passed away, it was a shock to everyone obviously, but on a very technical level threw my company into an emergency mode.  We host their websites (World Challenge, Times Square Church) and the news spread across all social media, driving over 250k visitors in just 24hrs to their site.  While everyone was clicking away in shock, we were racing to add CPU power to servers and keep them from crashing, a testament to the man’s faithfulness and lives he touched while on earth.  Here’s a video that WC just put online, it’s about 9 minutes, I found it inspiring to see how God can use anyone that is willing.

I pray you are doing well, I pray God is helping you keep your mind steadfast on things that are pure, good, true.  I’ve been meditating on Phil 4:8, give it a try.  It’s harder than it seems to continually keep our minds on truth, on those things that reflect the Kingdom of God, and not of this world.  I want to be a man of peace, who knows where and Who to go to in times of anxiety or fear, and to do it quickly, early.  God help us all to be faithfully focused on Him, trusting with thoughts, to the outflow of our actions.   Despising religious-ness for it’s own outward sake more and more.  Why in the world do people pretend to have a form of Christianity that they really don’t?  The more I see this in Christianity, the more I recognize areas of inconsistency in my own life and come to Him for help.  God rip out those things that could prove to be a stone of stumbling for others. Help me to bridge the gap between what I wish I was, and what I really am.  Where I’ve grown complacent, bring progress! There’s enough hypocrites running around, you don’t need another one. Help me to die to all pretense, what I want others to see… but don’t leave me there! I don’t want to be sincere for its own sake. We can all be sincere in our carnality, or sincerely dead! What do I desire? Probably the same thing you do, I want to be sincerely like Christ, the image of our incorruptable God, and I’m pretty sure it’s what He wants too. Mold us kind Savior, inside first, then out.  Let your grace transform us!

Bruce & Deb