It's been some time since we posted... As the ministry has picked up here, we've really been struggling to keep up with our blog and emails (and if we haven't emailed you back for some time, we're really sorry, and we are answering all of our emails tomorrow!).
There is so much to talk about, and even more ministry developments have unfolded over the last few weeks. So, we've decided to once again revisit "The Update Series," and will give you two more updates to close out the series.
Probably since December, we've been asking people to pray that we would find an office for our church to start meeting in. Of course, there are many reasons why we had been hoping to find an office, but the biggest reason was so that our church could begin to grow.
In December, we wanted to possibly find an office to rent hourly for our weekly Sunday and Thursday service. We also had hopes of starting a weekly English club too, but needed the office so we'd have a place to meet. However, as we started to look into hourly rentals, we discovered that on average, an hourly rental runs about 200 UAH (In December, this was about 25 USD an hour). We decided to figure out how many hours a week we would need an office on average and came up with 11 hours, which would cost 2,200 UAH per week (In December, this was about 275 USD). This is a TON of money on our budget, and there was no way we felt we were in a position to take on a 1,000 USD commitment. This was the moment in which we completely understood that if we were supposed to have an office to meet in, God would have to open the door, and we had to wait on Him.
In our prayer letters, in our weekly fellowships, every night before we went to bed, we prayed that God would guide us with the office.
By about February, we started to feel really antsy, and became weary of waiting on The Lord. So, we started trying to "push" open some doors to find an office. We started asking around, seeing if our friends knew of any realtors. Whenever we saw a "for rent" sign on the street, we would write it down and then call the number, asking home much rent would be for a 23 square meter office (75 square feet). Of course, in our broken Russian, we didn't have a lot of success. However, with all of our asking and calling, we did find out home much it would cost to rent an apartment in the area we wanted - 15-20,000 UAH (Around 1,500 USD per month) And just like that, The Lord quickly made it abundantly clear that He still wanted us to continue waiting on Him, which brought us back to prayer.
Throughout "The Update Series," we've talked a lot about learning how to completely trust God. Yet, even though we've learned this lesson time and time again, somehow we still go through times when we start to trust ourselves more than trusting God. And we try to make things happen in our own might.
After we had to go back to the prayer "drawing board," The Lord really encouraged us with some familiar verses - And if you don't know these verses, I encourage you to memorize them. These are some of the best words to have tucked away in our hearts as you move through life, unsure of what will come next.
"'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says The Lord of hosts." - Zechariah 4:6
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." - Proverbs 14:12
"Trust in The Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." - Proverbs 3:5-6
"But those who wait on The Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." - Isaiah 40:31
"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." - 2 Thessalonians 2:16-18
As we continued to pray, and time passed, political unrest began to stir up in Ukraine, and I felt a little uneasy about everything. And, whenever life becomes a little worrisome, I always find myself in the kitchen, baking. This is a habit that I picked up in my university years. During finals, I would start to feel stressed out from all of the studying, and I would eventually get to the point where I had to take a break from studying and from stressing, and I would just bake. Cookies, brownies, cakes, anything really, as long as the baking would take my mind off of the stress. And in early March, when the stress started to weigh heavily on me, I began to feel that familiar urge to bake. To pray, and to bake.
I started my chocolate chip cookie endeavor, and after baking for a few hours, I had a lot of cookies on my hands, and I wanted to give them away to our neighbors.
One of my favorite American traditions is baking cookies, or brownies, for new neighbors that move into the neighborhood, or your apartment complex. When we lived in Ternopil, I wanted to bake cookies to meet our neighbors, but we lived in a newer building with relatively no neighbors. I actually only saw my neighbors a couple times during the whole year we were in Ternopil, and I was never sure which apartment they lived in. But, in Donetsk, I see my neighbors somewhat often, and the cookie tradition felt like it could work here.
I plated up the cookies, with the help of Byron's sister and Byron snagging a few cookies here and there to eat themselves, and proceeded to take cookies to our neighbors. I had made tons of cookies, and had high hopes of giving them out to our neighbors that lived above us, below us, and on our floor. But, as we went from door to door, no one answered our knocking. First we tried the neighbors above us. Nothing. Then, we tried our neighbors below us. Nothing.
I was ready to just come home and eat all of the cookies myself. But then, Byron's little sister, Blythe chimed in.
"We haven't knocked on the door of our neighbors on our floor yet. Let's still try to give them cookies, and then, if they don't answer, we can give up."
Byron and I agreed to give it one last try. We had run into these particular neighbors on the elevator a couple of times, and so we already thought they were nice, and our hopes were renewed at the prospect of giving them cookies. So, we walked up to the door and rang their doorbell.
It felt like ages before someone came to the door (but it was probably just seconds). And then, we heard the "click-click" of the door unlocking, and a young man opened the door.
We were so shocked that our neighbor actually came to the door, we totally forgot about speaking in Russian and started stuttering over our words. I think we might have even tried to speak in English. And then, the most miraculous thing happened. The man's wife came to the door, and they told us that they spoke English!
We gave them the cookies, said goodbye, and came back to our apartment. Not much time passed (I can't remember if this happened on the same day or the next day), but our neighbors came over to our apartment and invited us over for tea. We couldn't believe it, and happily accepted the invitation.
We had a great time hanging out with our neighbors, and Byron and I were really excited to realize that we have a lot in common with them (and we're about the same age too!).
As more time passed, I was able to hang out with the wife, and I mentioned to her that we were looking for an office to rent (Now the story will come full circle :D). She was so kind, and she and her husband offered to help us find an office. Not only that, but they're both lawyers, and wanted to help us get a really good deal on the office.
It was so cool to see how The Lord worked through a batch of cookies - something so simple, but something that produced such an amazing result.
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| First Time at the Office |
The wife went with us as a translator to check out the office and to read over the lease. But, much to our dismay, we hit a huge roadblock with our dream office - The building owner wanted a Ukrainian to co-sign for us. At this time, we knew God was totally in control, but we had no idea who we would find to co-sign. We just prayed and gave it completely to The Lord. We saw the apartment on a Thursday, and we only had until Monday to find someone to co-sign.
We literally texted, emailed, and messaged everyone we could think of that might possibly be willing to co-sign. But by Monday morning, everyone we had talked to had either said "no" or hadn't responded to our email yet. I saw our neighbors that morning and told them the bad news, that we would have to give up the office. I think this was around 9am. We were so disappointed because we had really felt like God wanted us to have that office, but after our last office experience (only finding extremely expensive offices), we knew that it was all in the Lord's hands, and we had to just completely let go of everything and give it to God.
But, the story doesn't end there! Ok, ok, I know, this is totally a book now... But it's just such a cool story about God's faithfulness! Keep reading! Don't give up yet!!!
At 11am, our translator, who we had only met once at this point, and that was for about 30 minutes at a coffee shop, sends us a text and says, "oh sure, I'll co-sign for you guys." (Andrey, you're the best!)
We were TOTALLY blown away! The Lord did the impossible, and He did it once we had completely given the office idea to Him. I called our neighbors, told them the good news, and we proceeded with renting the "dream office."
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| Our First Sunday in the Office |
On March 24th, we received the keys to our office and began to make it our own. We needed to paint the office, buy chairs, clean it, and figure out how to hang a white board on a cement wall for our future English club. We just kept praying, we didn't ask anyone for help. And all of a sudden, people just started contacting us, offer to help us. One friend called us out of the blue and said she had a friend that wanted to help us buy chairs and move them with his car to our office (Thank you Yanochka and Losha!). And then, a few days later, other friends offered to help us buy paint and hang the white board in our office with their special cement drill (Thank you Dima, Tanya, Jane, and Bogdan!)  |
| Byron and Yana Painting |
And once we started painting, SO many people offer to help us, that we actually had to turn people away because we only bought enough paint brushes and rollers for three people (Thank you again, Yanochka for helping us paint!).
And then, the Lord provided in a way that we had never even dreamed of. Byron and I had been saving money so that we could pay for all of the office needs once we finally were able to get the office. So, with the initial rental costs, the chairs, the paint, the white board, and other miscellaneous items (buying a broom, a mop, etc.), we had used up pretty much all of the money we had saved.
And then, the Lord did yet another amazing thing... He provided us with the money to pay for the office rent for an entire year!
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| Byron's Favorite Broom |
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| The Newly Painted Office |
So, now, it's April 13th. We just had our 3rd Sunday service at the office today, and things are going great!
The office is amazing, it's perfect for our little church, and The Lord has totally provided the finances that we need to stay in this office until next year.
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| Sunday Service |
And on that note, stay tuned for our final "Update," coming to you on Wednesday.
Blessings,
Emily
P.S.
Shout out to the world's coolest neighbors, and our two new friends, Lena and Ruslan :)
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