The spiritual influence among our students

I want to share with you about unending spiritual influence that our student leaders have on the world around them. 

One year ago one student named Jenya went to the football championship with us and he heard the Gospel. That same year Jenya became a believer and got baptized in June.
After graduating he is both working and taking part in the ministry as a volunteer.

Jenya loves football and he was trained as a footballer since childhood. He once even played for the “Chernomorets” team (Odessa football team). That is why he decided he could reach the students using the “football language” with them.

This month Jenya organized a one day mini football tournament for the local youth. 7 teams took part in that tournament. All the students came from the Universities that we are trying to reach.

There were a lot of opportunities to evangelize at the tournament. Our students shared the Gospel in the personal conversations while guys were waiting for their turn to play.
During the break 40 participants were able to hear the testimony of one young American guy who was visiting Odessa with a mission.


We gave away the daily planners form Cru and received a lot of contacts. The daily planner itself contains some testimonies of the famous sportsmen and Christian footballers because it’s made for the Euro 2012 that will be held in Ukraine.
After the tournament we organized a treat dinner for the winners. We shared Four Spiritual laws with them that night.

                               An interesting fact:

Kolya is a graduate of Odessa State University and he works at school as a teacher of history. Two years ago he became a believer through this strategy with football.
This year he not only joined us for the tournament but he also brought two of the students from the school where he teaches. 

This is the great example of the spiritual influence that our students have on the world around them after the graduation.

Kolya and two of his studemts
(second row on the right)  

Prayer requests:

For the spiritual fruit after the evangelizing strategies we had.

For the spiritual multiplication. May each student leader have a student to disciple.

For our team. This fall two families are in the support raising period and there are only 3 of us in the active ministry.

My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." (2Cor.12:9)

At the beginning of this semester we realized the truth of these words of the Scripture as never before. We really felt our weakness. Instead of 8 active members of our team only 3 can participate in the ministry.  Each one of us has experienced emotional difficulties and fatigue.

But God has poured out His grace, supported and strengthened... Praise Him for the answer to the prayers of the laborers. We now have about 12 dedicated students who are potential leaders helping us in every way in building spiritual movements.

Earlier this year, we held a training conference on "Movements everywhere." We would like to add an emphasis to our ministry which is to motivate and help local churches to initiate a movement of evangelism and discipleship in their communities. God has blessed us with a "symbolic number" of students participating in this conference. There were 12! We pray and hope that God makes ​​a breakthrough in the spiritual revival of the youth of Odessa through these students. We want every non-believer to know at least one true follower of Christ.

Pray that the youth in the churches accepts the challenge to go to non-believers and work with them on permanent basis.

Giving out the planners

As usual, we began active ministry with the distribution of gifts for freshmen - diaries, which we ourselves develop and paste it there are many interesting and useful information, including the testimony of God. These diaries help us get to know new students and then invite them to our events. In two weeks we have distributed about 2,000 diaries in 4 major high schools in Odessa. 

Stella

We have a student, Stella, who graduated from the Odessa State Economic University this year and began working at the Odessa automobile industry college as an accountant. But despite that she wants to continue to be active and participate in the Campus ministry. God has put the desire into her heart to start a spiritual movement in this college. She went and negotiated with the director of the college so that we could distribute diaries to students. As a result, Dima was able to advertise our future events at their line up and we distributed diaries to all the freshmen. Stella will try to continue to build relationships with students and start a discussion club there. We thank God for the students who are the examples of spiritual leadership.

Dima speaks at the line up.
In the foreground - the director of college.

Please pray for:
  - the students who received diaries to come to our events (quest, paintball, discussion clubs, personal communication);
  - an evangelistic trip to Crimea at the end of October so that we could take 40 non-believers with us;
  - God’s blessings on Stella and wisdom for her in the ministry with her students from college.

LIVE IT OUT

Thank you for your prayers about our student project in Carpathians.  God blessed us to take 18 students from Odessa with us. The title of the project was - Live it out and the idea was to help our students learn to live according the principles of the Scripture. We had about 80 students from all over Ukraine. Together we tried to understand what it means to be an obedient, faithful and forgiving Christian.   


We also organized an out-reach for the local youth – football championship where we shared the Good News with the lost. We had three students who were not Christians yet – Roksolana, Luda and Oleg. It was a good testimony for them to see how we worshipped God together and studied His Word. Please pray for them to come to the Lord wholeheartedly!

PRAYER REQUESTS:

- for the beginning of the semester— may God bless us with a group of faithful student leaders who would like to win the world for Christ

- for the hand out of the planners for freshmen so we could set up some new relationships and find new contacts for the future Evangelism.

- for the partnership with the local churches – may God inspire the church youth leaders to start the movement of Evangelism and discipleship in the church
- may God bless our team to have close relationship with Him and each other so we would be a good example of unity for the students.

   
The team of Missionaties in Ukraine

Our happy team

The baptism of our students

God who causes the growth