Summer Adventures

Here are a few updates about my summer activities in life and ministry.

In July I went through the training that’s called TRANSIT. I am so grateful that in CRU our staff are being developed, taken care of and prepared for major life changes and challenges like transiting to a new ministry field. In my case moving to a totally new culture and context with my husband and serving international students in Houston. I feel much better equipped with challenges I will face with moving. 

This summer we were finally able to hold the local student projects. Unfortunately we didn’t have our Speak Out camp, where all students of our ministry gather due to quarantine and covid limitations.

I attended the summer project with the Lviv team for 7 days in July. We were floating down the Dniester river in the western part fo Ukraine. There were 28 students, 9 of them were very new to Campus Ministry and they didn’t make a decision to surrender to Christ yet. Lviv has a very unique spiritual culture. A lot of students believe in God and they go to Catholic Church but unfortunately Gospel doesn’t have power in their lives and they don’t understand it.
It was very interesting to observe how after we had a short message about the walk with God some things started making sense to them. Christian students who are volunteers at Campus Ukraine were sharing their testimonies what it meant to them to realise that they were forgiven by grace, or how they dealt with guilt of not being able to fight their sin in their own strength (very common topic for religious people in Catholicism and Orthodox faith)

Yarik  (a student volunteer in ministry,
and Maria  - associate team leader in Lviv)

I was very encouraged by Yarik’s story when he shared his testimony how He experienced God’s mercy and forgiveness when his two year old niece fell off the window from the second floor when he was playing with her. It was a serious challenge of faith for him to accept what happened, trust God that He is in control and that He died for all of his sins, including this accident that occurred.

We also witnessed a miraculous power of God’s protection when 8 of our staff were on a hiking trip in Carpathians.

All of them were team leaders, husbands and fathers and they were struck by lightening when they waited out the rain storm in the mountains. It was a very serious damage but praise God all of them are alive, some experienced more skin damage, some had issues with hearing and are still going through recovery. We were all in shock as this group made it to several news channels. But we were grateful that God protected them and nobody died (which is usually a case when something like that happens) We now call all our team leaders - Sons of Thunder=)

Please pray:

 - For successful opening of ministry seasons for all of our 7 teams, for new students to come to know the Lord this year. 

 - For my transition to the USA. I have an interview at the embassy in September, so it goes smooth and we can get my visa soon  

- For Johnny and I to find a good place to live (house or apartment) in Houston. He is back to the USA to prepare for my arrival=)