Wide open doors for the Gospel in Ukraine

When I accepted my new role of an associate team leader for national student led movements in Ukraine one of my biggest prayers was for God to show me what plans He had for the whole country of Ukraine, not just for Odessa. From the bottom of my heart there was a rising understanding that this is a unique time in Ukrainian history to reach out to Ukrainian people and pray for the revival. 

It has been almost 3 months since I moved to Kyiv and God was showing me in details (big and small) that He is at work in Ukraine. I want to share with you few things that were recently happening in Kyiv that show how open are the doors for the Gospel in Ukraine.

Worldwide famous preacher Nick Vujicic came to Kyiv in October.

I attended that meeting, a huge arena in Kyiv full of people. And God has let him not only speak to thousands of Ukrainians and call them to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior - he was able to have a personal meeting with members of our Parliament and he called them all to pray on their knees for the peace in our country. This was all over the news in Ukraine. I think this is the second significant event in our government after prayers during Maydan revolution.

I was able to attend a massive English club in Kiev national University. God has blessed one of our teams to establish good partnership relationship with dean of this university and he allowed them to have English clubs right in the university buildings advertising among their students and using their facility. There were 350 students involved in this English club. 

There was a lack of Americans for such a big amount of students so I was asked to be one of the co-teachers in one of the classes. I was able to spend two wonderful weeks with this group of students teaching them, translating for them and meeting them personally to talk about Christianity and share from my spiritual life with them.

Sharing the love of God with Vika and Hanna

My co-teacher from US - Rita
 and Ukrainian student Svetlana

I want to encourage you to keep Ukraine in prayers and join God and our movement in this special time. 

1. Pray for more opportunities to witness to our government leaders 

2. Pray for more official partnerships with universities to hold our events for the students right on Campus 

3. Please pray for my continuing relationship with students from my English class. I want to keep investing in them and I'm asking God to give me a young Christian girl I can disciple. 

4. Pray for my mentoring relationship with the leaders of women ministry in Ukraine. I want to shepherd them with love, care and wisdom. 

5. Please consider a short mission trip to Ukraine during this special time of openness for an English club during the year or for a summer camp in July

Summer Joys

With my whole heart I can say that this summer was very joyful for me in many ways.

In June God has blessed me with my trip to USA where I was able to see a lot of people, reconnect and pray together and get a lot of encouragement from my dear friends and supporters. I was also able to witness the beauty of God's creation but visiting the Grand Canyon in driving through beauties of Arizona and New Mexico.

In July I had a privilege to attend our summer SpeakOut project in the west of Ukraine in Truskavets. This project united around 300 people students staff and volunteers from all over Ukraine and our teachers from USA.

 At the first part of the project we were passing the vision of CRU in Ukraine, learning about multiplying discipleship and praising God for what He's doing in Ukraine with our student volunteers. 

The second part of the project helped us apply the theory into practice. We had three projects at the same time:
 1.American camp- when we were witnessing to non-Christian campers who came from all over Ukraine and to local youth; I was attending this project and we were sharing the Gospel with students of my group. 

2. Ukrainian camp where we organized outreaches for local people and visitors of Truskavets. 

  3. Sports camp where the Gospel was shared during the soccer tournament.

Creative way to get attention of people  
- festival of paints "Holi"

During this project we were able to share the Gospel with the around 1200 people through many different methods. God has blessed us to get the permission of local authorities to make multiple city festivals  right on the main square. We had dancing flash mobs, open air English lessons, music festivals, games for families etc. While the crowd was entertained we were meeting people and engaging them in Spiritual conversations. I think Truskavets has never seen so much activity before we came to this little city and will probably not see anything like it in nearer future=)
 We were partnering with the local church and after we left they had a follow-up program for those who were interested in receiving more information and getting plugged into the body of believers in Truskavets. 
Here you can watch the video about this blessed and amazing project.

My joy of August is learning all about this new mysterious city I get to live in - Kiev. It is huge, hard to compare to Odessa, but it definitely has its charms.

This is my new team that I'm going to work with - the national student led movement team. This week we are seeking the Lord for guidance and starting our strategic planning for the next year of ministry in Ukraine. 

Please pray that God would give us wisdom as the team what we need to continue doing, what we need to change and where He calls us in this part of history of our country.

Pray for my adaption: so I would find a good church to attend, build new close relationship with people in Kiev and follow His lead diligently.

Gospel boom

The spring semester brought a lot of changes, new life and revival into our ministry. It all started from our Winter Bible conference. 

The theme of the conference was -Radical Christianity. Our staff and students were challenged to use this time wisely and use every opportunity given from God to witness about our faith "in season and out of season". Inspired by our speaker, united prayer and training we all went to our campuses to continue what God has called us to do.

During these two months, March and April, we were actively advertising on social media, on campus and at universities this project for students called Who am I. We offer them a set of three personal meetings that help them understand their worldview, life values, meaning of their existence and God's plan for their lives. God has blessed us with 70 new students who are participating in this project.

 

 This is how our Gospel boom looks like in the local cafeteria in the center of Odessa. This month we have been meeting students on daily basis doing a photo test, going through worldview chart and talking about God and Christianity. We became quite popular there:) (maybe we should ask for a discount for tea and coffee:)

Sasha and I

 God has blessed me with two special girls Sasha and Ira. They are both very interested in Christianity, believe in God and want to go deeper in their faith. Sasha immigrated to Ukraine from Russia. The only relative she has here is her mom and recently she lost her father. I know that our meeting, our conversations and what she hears about God's love and God's mercy to her is a unique miracle that God has performed for her in this difficult moment of her life. There is no coincidence that we met now. 

Ira and I

Ira really wants to restore her relationship with God and let Christ in her heart. But she has lots of fears and doubts. Please pray for both of these girls, for their sincere and deep conversion.

In two weeks we are taking 50 students to Carpathians on the hiking trip. Usually this is a key event that becomes a life changing moment for most students who are searching for themselves and searching for God. Please pray for our safety, good weather in the mountains and their repentance

Students are full of passion and energy for the Lord! Invest in students!

This past month I have been thinking a lot about investing in students. Why is it that I am devoted full-time to working with students and developing them??!! 

The answer is so obvious! Students are capable of things that I sometimes have no energy for. If a student is in love with Jesus and properly discipled- all of his passion goes to the work of God on Earth. Students are courageous, strong, creative and they have this childish faith and trust that we sometimes lack. 

 Our student volunteers organized a New Year's trip to the Carpathian Mountains and took non-Christian friends with them.

They did this by themselves and no staff went with them. During the trip they shared the Gospel with these new students by multiple ways: through personal conversations, daily devotionals about the Bible and discussions in small groups.

I want to introduce you to a few students.

This is Alina. She's a 4th year student in the Law school. She has been involved in our ministry for almost 2 years now. Alina initiated leading the student project in Carpathians and she did a tremendous job uniting the team of other students to work on it. Lord is working in her heart and calling her to ministry full time. Please pray for her future and if it's God's will may she joins staff with CRU next year.

Natasha

Helen

We met Helen and Natasha this past fall.  Helen is a deep thinker. She's very interested in Christianity and learning more about her faith. Natasha heard about Christ before and she said she even accepted Him but she was lacking fellowship with Christians.  They are both going to Winter Bible conference with us. 

Helen

Sveta

Sveta has accepted the Lord and she went through all the follow-up meetings with another volunteer Helen. Helen has been in our ministry for almost 4 years now and God has called her to full time ministry with CRU. She will be on stint in Odessa next year. 

February 3-6 will have a big conference for our students from all over Ukraine in Kharkiv. About 300 students will be gathered to worship together and hear the challenge to be radical in their faith and share Christ starting with their classmates, going to other students of Ukraine and eventually to the ends of the world.

Please pray for this conference to have a major impact in their hearts.

Katya and I

Please continue to pray for Katya Kornienko, my teammate. She continues to have problems with her health that cause insomnia and terrible headaches. We are praying for healing, the right diagnosis and treatment.

Thank you for your desire to learn about Ukraine and specifically our student ministry in Odessa.

I am able to do what I do because of your prayers and generous giving.

Calendar of blessings

With a great joy we have been witnessing these last few months how new students came to know God, the spirit of prayer among Christian students and effectiveness of our new strategies that took our ministry on the absolutely new level.

God is constantly encouraging us with new records!

*April 11 students are taking part in the short mission trip to a small city in the south of Odessa. We were able to gather 60 young people from two churches. For the first time they were on the streets of their own city praying and sharing the Gospel with us.

*May Almost 50 students are going on the hiking trip to Carpathians with us. Most of the students were reading the Scripture for the first time and were memorizing Psalm 121 by heart. 

*June Students were building the spiritual movement by themselves. While they were leading the Bible study groups four new non-Christians repented and joined in. These new students are very active and are involved in the ministry.

*August 7 students got baptized

*September We were able to invite 1000 students from the biggest universities of Odessa to take part in the WhoAmI project

*October 74 students from WhoAmI project are going to Lviv with us. Reading through the Gospel of Luke they were finding answers: what Christ has done for us and why we can understand who we are only by understanding who He is.

*November At least 3 new students excepted Jesus. 3 students said that they want to go on staff with Cru in 2016. More than 200 non-Christian students are a part of WhoAmI project. We have three new discussion groups for students who are interested in learning more. Some of them visited our church.

Our Lord turned our calendar into a picturesque painting by the power of his Holy Spirit. And you, my faithful partners, give me opportunity to be full time and 100% committed to this task of Evangelism and Discipleship among the students of Odessa - our future leaders of Ukraine. I am very much grateful. Praise the Lord!

God's ways are unpredictable and God is always at work!

 Our first phase of the project WhoAmI is over. As the result of this project we were able to share the Gospel in the personal conversations with 115 students. About a half of them met with us personally at least three times for coaching meetings, attended our weekly meetings and went to Lviv. So we ended up taking 74 people on the trip with us. This is a big breakthrough comparing to other years in Odessa movement.

We are glad that God is allowing us to search and find ways of long term influence on students. We're trying not to meet just once but to have a second and third contact, build closer relationships because Gospel isn't just what they hear once from us but it is our life and there should be more opportunities for non Christians to see our works, our priorities, our behavior.

During the game (lots of excitment)

Selling balloons with "Odessa air" in Lviv

The first day of our trip students played Quest game in Lviv. It was called IDENTIFICATION. During the game they tried to identify who Christ really was. Next morning we had a discussion group: how the personality of Christ changed this world and how He can change the life of every person, every student.

Sharing about the life of Jesus

During the trip I was surprised to see how unpredictable God's ways are. He is always at work in the life of every single person trying to lead this person to Himself through different life circumstances.

 In Lviv Nikita decided to follow Christ. Got introduced him to Christians long time ago in his home city and some seeds of the Gospel were planted. When he came to Odessa he met us and it was a final point for him to understand that God is calling him.

Luda's mom is a Christian and she even remembers going to Sunday school when she was a kid. But she never understood the meaning of the Gospel. When she came to Odessa her spiritual life was on the back row. When she met us she realized that God is giving her a second chance and she wants to go back to Him and start close relationship with Him. 

God has His perfect timing for everything. Don't get discouraged if some of your closest ones are not completely there yet with God. Or maybe you shared your faith with someone and you don't see any fruit. God is always at work in the lives of those people. Somebody planted, somebody watered, somebody will reap but God is the one who makes the seed grow!

Right now we have several new discussion groups launched. We offer students to go deeper and get to know more about Christianity.

Girls from my discussion group (Luda, Tanya and Ksusha)

Please pray for all new students to continue growing in what they need to know about Christianity to make their step toward God. 

Also pray for new Christians, may they grow spiritually and share their faith with others.

Please pray for health of staff on my team. Katya has problems with headaches that are caused by problems with neck and blood vessels. Dima, my team leader, was in the hospital with his gallbladder removed.

Results of the project WHO AM I

Advertising at the Odessa National University

 In my last letter I asked you to pray for God to bless our project WHO AM I. It's been more than a month after we started our active advertisement at universities of Odessa. We spent most of our time at six major universities. Students had their pictures taken at our banners and posted it on the wall of their social networks. We introduced them to our movement and shared about the opportunity to register for the project WHO AM I. 

Students love taking and posting pictures

 At this project we offer them three personal coaching meetings and interesting weekly events that reveal the theme of the project – the search for themselves and meaning of life through the knowledge of God. And at the end of October we will take a group of 70 students to Lviv, to get to know them closer and share more about Christ. Pray for this trip, for good weather, friendly atmosphere and depth in spiritual conversations with non-believers. 

At one of the weekly meetings

 140 students registered for this project and we already had personal meetings with 80 students. During these three meetings we help students to understand their worldview, to understand how Christianity differs from other religions, discuss the meaning of existence on this Earth, and we share the Gospel.

We prayed a lot about guys in the ministry. We had a special outreach where boys played paintball. God is faithful and answers prayers: now we have more guys registered for the project than girls. Pray that God would work in the hearts of men, may they come to Him and become leaders after God’s heart.

 God is especially working in the hearts of our volunteers. Almost all of them share our vision and our goal for discipleship. They are devoted to the weekly prayer and the study of Scripture. We believe that if people who know their God display faith and take action, then the Lord will be with them "(Daniel 11:32) Pray for our volunteers may God bless them with faithful disciples.

Special Bible Study with Butch and Dawn Freeland

This month I had personal meetings with Ksusha, Tanya and Christine. Please pray for their repentance, may the Word that was sown takes root and yield fruit.