From our dear friend Larissa who was married this summer and now lives in the US. Deb helped make this staged frame thing with Cheryl… my lovely Deb!

Preparing for incoming teams is always a lot of work.   It’s also exciting because we know the Lord is at work, and many lives (both coming and already here) will be touched.  I sometimes catch myself thinking, “Why in the world am I doing this?”

If you do nothing, pretty much nothing is going to happen.   It sounds so basic, but for much of Christendom doing nothing has become a form of trusting God.  There are times when God calls us to stand firm in faith and it might look passive to others, I get that.   I wonder if those who stand in faith are in actuality standing in unbelief.

We often want God to move but I think He wonders why we aren’t moving ourselves.   Faith looks more like Noah swinging a hammer than someone praying for a boat.  We get bored with God, maybe He’s bored with us?  We play things too safe.  What motivates our fear of stepping out and trusting Him?  I’m thinking out loud to our generation of believers.   We are so incredibly risk averse, it’s as if everything depended on us.   Lord help us change this focus.

Today I met Valeri, the leader of Steiger Ukraine – a youth movement that hosts concerts and has started 20 youth clubs in the last 2 yrs all over post-Soviet Union.  These guys are leaping in faith, it’s inspiring.  He explained how difficult touring for 5 months in Ukraine was.   They had a ton of problems and over 1,500 hearts surrender to Christ (and over 20k hear the gospel).

Why should we host a team of Bible College students for a week of lessons in our little town?   It’s going to cost quite a bit of money, time and energy.  Why should we operate a Coffee shop in the middle of one of the worst economic situations on the planet?  Why do you take on roles and opportunities given when you know inside you really aren’t qualified?  Why do we do anything that is risky?

God calls us out.  He challenges us to trust beyond our senses.  He delights in our abandon. 

I’m excited for next week!  It will be stressful, and cool.  The team arrives from Belarus on Saturday.  We will be worshiping this Saturday evening with area believers.  We have a couple guest worship leaders (one from Kiev who asked if they could come, sweet!).

The Kiev escalators to the metro system are some of the deepest in the world. This is seriously only half way!

During the week we will be intermixing  young passionate believers in Bible School with the precious lives we are loving through the week.   We will be trusting Him to do ‘above and beyond’ what we ask or think.   Pray with us for hearts to be awakened to the Spirit of God this coming week.

Do you have a vision or itching desire to see something ‘not yet’ come into pass?  Step out in faith.  Begin speaking it (start with those who know your heart!), praying it, believing it.  Share it with others, ask folks to lift these burdens up in prayer with you.  Prayer, in faith, accomplishes stuff.  It re-routes history, it brings the risen Jesus into focus and dares the world to take notice.

As Tucker and I ran around Kiev today getting products and preparing to host 14 folks for the week I was smiling.  Some folks on the subway probably thought I was weird.   I enjoy the calm before the storm, because I know the storm is what the Kingdom of God is all about.   Sometimes we need to create the storm, commit to stuff, take risks..  He relishes, I think, the opportunity to move in situations when those situations are created in faith, even as a prayer.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Rom 15:13

Let’s go trust Him!

Bruce & Deb

We’re hoping our new Lighthouse website will better communicate the story of what God is doing in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as our ministry and team grows.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new website!  If you have a few minutes please take a look and tell us what you think.

Click Here to Visit (or the image above)

In the coming months we will be filling it up with more videos and content to keep it interesting.  I realize we are living in a snapshot culture and folks don’t typically surf websites anymore.  I’m hoping that through video, live events, and other interactive mediums we can better tell our story online.

Building a website is always an interesting experience.  It helps you define what you are, obviously, but also your vision for the future.  Over the past year, I believe God has been helping us refine our vision and I’m very excited about it.

My prayer is that you sense some of that vision clearly as you click around the site.   If you don’t, maybe a few pictures will bring a smile to your face anyway!

Some interesting areas of the site:

• YouTube Channel: we don’t have many videos right now, but we’re actively producing some Student Biographies and plan to ‘tell our story’ more through video with Max and our new video department.  Check back and share our videos!
• New Donation Format:  We allow you to designate to various parts of our ministry.  The funds now go directly to our sending church Crossroads in Texas, which we will receive as part of our ongoing monthly support.  This will enable us to legally provide you with an end of year tax-receipt (for US residents only).
• Support Team Page:  We have listed those that have been faithfully part of our financial and prayer support family.  We have also included many of those that have contributed to various projects this past year in particularly.   As we head into 2017, we are growing (geographically and number of staff), and praying that God might use this site to gather more support as well.   If you are already a supporter, please share with your friends!  If you’ve never been a part of our ministry, we welcome you to invest with us in Kingdom growth in the former Soviet Union.
• Translation of Site: Currently the site is only in English.  Our primary audience out of the gate are the supporters in the US/Canada that have followed our journey and pray for us.  We are actively working on a Russian (possibly Ukrainian as well) version as well, step by step.

As we head toward the finish of 2016, we want to thank each of you that have generously sown into our faith journey in Ukraine.   2017 has some really cool things in store for us as a ministry and pioneering effort in the former Soviet Union.  God has been stirring us to believe Him for more, not sit back or be satisfied.  We need the body of Christ and thank you in advance for continued partnership.

Together for the Kingdom,

Bruce & Deborah Crowe

No matter how difficult life gets, I always enjoy this stretch of woods by our house.

We are staying put this year for Christmas.  It feels different knowing we aren’t packing up and heading to the US/Canada to see family and friends.  We’re excited to be seeing Broderic our oldest end of the year, but sad our eldest daughter won’t make it as she’ll be in Africa with YWAM outreach Lord willing – she still has to raise a good chunk of money.

Staying through the holidays does have it’s benefits in Ukraine.  Life literally does shut down over 2-3 weeks starting in New Year.  Makes for more visiting and the Cafe shines downtown even brighter.  It gets dark really early, around 4pm.  Very little daylight.   The day is made even shorter because we live next to a forest that blocks out 2-3 hrs of sunlight over our house.  In the dead of Jan/Feb winter, we get up, have breakfast, and then start to think what we need to do before it gets dark 🙂

Bettina is doing some really cool thing with technology, connecting 3rd world legit needs with kids around the world.

Yesterday we met Bettina in Kiev.  She’s a family friend of Deb’s parents and worked with them for +10yrs with David Wilkerson.  She has served in fundraising and logistics for conferences/setup in probably +80 countries.  She was in Kiev en route to several other countries helping Gary Wilkerson setup some meetings for next year.

She also has started a non-profit that is really quite cool.  Kids can give $5 to specific vetted projects by Bettina around the world – everything from diapers for orphan babies, to widows feeding programs, to bread in the poorest of poor situations.   100% of the income goes to directly to the needs, no overhead, no staff, just an app and connectivity.

Max is our latest Lighthouse hire. He works as a part time barista and part time youth helper. He loves video and we’ve given him a few projects producing some new video content for our new website.

We are getting ready to host the students from Minsk on November 6.  So far we have some really cool teachers lined up to join us.  Andrei Murzin, our long time friend is coming down to teach on the Kingdom of God.  Andrei has been traveling quite extensively teaching in Ukraine and Russia the past few years and also at the seminary in Kiev.  We also have a YWAM leader and friend coming down to teach a morning.

Our Pellet stove has arrived and is being installed just in the nick of time too.  Thankful to family and friends that helped make this purchase possible, it’s going to immediately bless and warm many folks.

The best part of this picture are the ‘ponies’ spectating on both sides. Abbey (I almost typed Bronwyn), loves her ponies.

Our new pellet stove arrived this week and we’re installing today!

The family is doing well.  They have been at home on ‘fall break’ (whatever this is!) and been driving poor Deb crazy.  Just finished making them clean both our vehicles, after a year they can get pretty dirty!

We’re meeting this weekend with the widows team to pray and discuss next steps for outreach.  We take food packages and visit regularly, however the folks really enjoyed gathering at the Cafe last time, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to give testimony of Jesus reality and love.  So, we’re expecting to host some more fellowship for the sweet ladies (and one man).  Please remember us in prayer, that the Spirit of the living God awakens them to His love.

This Sunday we’ll also be connecting via Skype to our home church Crossroads in Texas.   It’s been cool to see friends and have some visitors this past year from Texas, it makes the skype time more fresh and I think more relate-able – so if you haven’t visited us yet, make plans for 2017 folks!

We’re winterizing and preparing.  When you know you are here for the winter ahead it’s more work.  My chickens have yet to produce an egg and we’re having little conversations each night.  They want heat?  They need to produce.  What comes first.. heat or the egg?   Give me something to work with chickens, its been 6 months.   I wonder how God feels when we don’t produce fruit.

Skatepark is used everyday if it’s not raining, but kids of all ages.  We’ve added our basketball goal to the pad making it even more unique.  So far the ball hasn’t been stolen after 2 weeks!   This past Wednesday night we had a large crew of +15 boys come out to Club 180, it’s an overwhelming privilege to share weekly of Christ’s suffering and gift to all men freely.  Focusing on the gospel exclusively for the past few years has been just what we’ve needed too.   Does His grace still amaze you?  Are you overwhelmed by His love toward you?  Think upon Jesus!

If you’ve made this far, you most likely really do care about our family and pray for us.  We treasure this prayer support.  You literally reach across the globe and battle with us when you clasp your hands in prayer.  Your faith is a gift from God, and for God – and for us!

We all need Him in greater measure this next year.  I’ve had a ‘get ready’ in my heart for several months and been trying to prepare as best I can.  God is at work, He is stirring, give us all faith Lord for your exceeding abundance, whatever that looks like!

Bruce & Deb