Time To Buy Galoshes

...And maybe a new umbrella!

Life in Ukraine has been picking up speed, to say the least. We never imagined that we would be this busy after being here for only two weeks. We've had so much going on with ministry, it's really been exciting.

October 13 - Outreach
We met up with a few Ukrainians from our church and hit the streets with tracks. It was crazy to see how willing people were to talk to us, even excited. There's a collective hunger for the Word of God in this town, and that really stirred us up. I was only able to talk to two or three different groups of people, but Byron was able to talk to around ten different groups of people... Not to mention all of the people that the Ukrainians got to talk to (it's easier for them because they speak Ukrainian) during the outreach. We don't know if there was any fruit from the outreach, but it doesn't really matter. We were all being faithful to do what God had called us to for that evening... So now, we just pray and give it to God.

We were also able to have a time of worship during the outreach. Right when I took my guitar out of its case to tune, one of my guitar strings broke (G, of course), which made it really difficult to play in certain keys. Byron reminded me that every time I've played my guitar in Ukraine, something bad happens to my guitar. Definitely spiritual warfare. Last time I had a guitar in Ukraine, the head of my guitar actually broke off of the neck. It was so unexpected, we knew it had to be an attack. And when my string broke, we felt the same way. But we just kept praising the Lord.

It was so hard to play. My guitar kept going out of tune, and my fingers kept getting disoriented because of the missing string, so I played the wrong chords constantly... But regardless, people came and listened to us worshiping the Lord. The Holy Spirit was definitely there with us, and we rejoiced in that.

All in all, we were so encouraged by the presence of the Holy Spirit, we plan on doing outreach again this weekend. And in the mean time, we ask that you partner with us in praying that the seeds sown will fall upon good soil.

October 14
On Sunday, we invited all of the youth at our church to come over for a game night at our apartment. We had 11 people come over, and it was awesome! We had so much fun fellowshipping with our new friends. We played cards, Wii Dance, and other "get to know you" games. At the end of the night, Byron and I felt like the Lord was telling us to start a Bible study with the same group of people. We began to pray and seek the Lord, and the Lord gave us this verse:

"So that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding" (Proverbs 2:2).

We want to call the youth Bible study "Incline," and have been working on making flyers to invite more people to the Bible Study. We're going to be having another youth fellowship at our apartment this weekend, and we hope to give out flyers for the Bible study then. If you could also pray for this, we'd really appreciate it. We're trying to be really careful not to step out ahead of the Lord, but it's hard to wait and have patience when you're really excited about something. 


October 16 - Prayer Group
CCTernopil has a weekly prayer group every Tuesday night. I've never really participated in something like this before, and it's really started to change my personal prayer life. At the prayer group, we start with a short time of worship, and then pray together for about an hour. I've been so encouraged by this, I'm finding myself praying more and more. Pray has always been somewhat difficult for me. Often, I have a hard time focusing during prayer, but being part of the prayer meetings has almost retaught me how to pray, and even how to focus on prayer while others are praying out loud. It's been a cool experience, and I've been so excited about praying recently.


We're really starting to settle into life here... And we absolutely love Ukraine! Now that it's getting REALLY cold, we've started to have a more Ukrainian diet - warm soup everyday for lunch. So, I went grocery shopping this week to pick up the ingredients to make borsch. I wanted to share this funny picture with you all... The carrots here in Ternopil are HUGE! And delicious too!

We also wanted to share a funny video with you guys. First, the back story. When we were in Colorado, anytime there was a DJ that you could request songs to be played from, we would always request "Surfin' Bird." We just think it's a really funny song, and we always try to get someone to play it at weddings, etc. Byron thinks it's such a funny song, when he used to work at PF Chang's, he and a coworker decided to put it on repeat and play it throughout their entire shift - just to be ridiculous. So, now that you have the back story, please enjoy this video that we took two days ago in the main square of downtown Ternopil!

 

God Bless, 
Emily