Ukraine 13 – Day 18 (October 16)

We’re zonked! The Lord gave us a heavy itinerary today, but we did confess to having an easy day yesterday! There are three big things to report about today:

Visit to the Grammar School

This place was a big surprise for me. It was a beautiful school, unlike anything we had seen before in Ukraine. Only the brightest students get to come here; the school has a little over 400 enrolled. They all wear uniforms, which looked very sharp. The assistant director was an efficient fellow who looked after us for the three hours we were there. He organized six classroom visits for us.

The first class we visited shocked me. The kids were older than I was expecting, and they were very sharp. I was glad Malcolm spoke the first two times! Thankfully the Lord quickly gave me some different messages than the rope trick, which I didn’t feel comfortable using today, for whatever reason. One message involved Pangaea, and the other involved Henry Ford’s automobiles (an illustration I stole from Gooding and Lennox). There was no long-windedness on our part, as we were only given ten minutes in some of the classes, so the good news was given in compact form.

We had a nice lunch with the assistant-director, and then we had the treat of watching one of the beginner dance classes perform. After our classroom visits were finished we were shown some footage of the senior classes performing. Absolutely amazing. They would love to come to Canada to perform in the schools.

Potential Facility for the Christians

We also visited a potential facility for the Christians to use as headquarters. The building is in the core area, and the room we’re interested in would be big enough for storing the distribution supplies and for having regular meetings. Tomorrow we will find out what the rental charge will be, which will determine everything. Please pray regarding this.

Meeting with the Christians

We had a really nice meeting with the Christians at 5:00. There were around 20 out and the little room in the bank was filled up comfortably. I spoke first from Philippians 2 on the prerequisites for a group of Christians working together to spread the gospel (everyone putting the gospel first, and everyone putting each other first), and the Malcolm followed nicely with a message on Friendship. He then shared with the Christians our desire: that they all work together with Yaraslav and Halia in the distribution work. Everyone seemed very excited. We hope and pray that the excitement will be under girded by God-given desire.

Helen and I had to say some difficult goodbyes today. Luba, Maria, Lesia, Natalia, Tanya, Marica, and others, we will never forget you, and we will miss you dearly. Helen took down some email addresses / mailing addresses from the young sisters. It brought joy to my heart watching them group around Helen. I would be lost out here without my wife, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge it.

Then we took Natalia and Tanya home, following close behind a delivery van that was bringing them a new washer machine. We (the group) had used funds from the Christians back home to purchase it. They were overwhelmed. We stayed for tea and had a nice visit with the whole family, who were all at home. They are such a nice family.