I have been in New York now for about a month and thought I would let you know what I’ve been up to. The wedding of my friends Zachary and Heidi was a blessing to see.  When his mom asked him a couple weeks later how the whole marriage things was going, he said he was a fan.  I got to help with our church’s Spirit of America celebration on July 4th and thoroughly enjoyed selling hot dogs and watching the beautiful fireworks display. Praise the Lord for America and the freedoms we still have.  I have been doing some scrap booking and shopping for some odds and ends that aren’t available in Ukraine.  My chiropractor tells me that I have a herniated disc in my neck, and he has be treating me for that a couple times a week. If it doesn’t improve significantly soon I will have to have protisone shots and an MRI, both which will be costly financially, so please pray that it improves soon. This week my mother and I have traveled south to visit some friend I made in college and shortly thereafter when I was living in Augusta, GA. It has been great to reminisce over old times and catch up on the last several years.  I still have another trip to take in August to visit friends in the Midwest, but most of August will be spent close to home in Rochester. Unless of course, God changes things. He has a way of doing that, we know.

We will continue with English club during the summer months on Tuesday evenings, though we will not include the Bible study with it.  Josh, Nathan, and the others will be kept busy with other aspects of ETO ministry, and preparation for a study each week is timely. Two weeks ago we had a full house at English, with 16 total folks. Yesterday there were only 4 Ukrainians, but they are our faithful few, and the interaction with us Americans has been great. I just thought I would throw in a couple pictures.

Dasha, Roman, and Taras are there almost every week.

Jessie does a great job each week leading the discussion.

Just a short note to let you know what is going on this month. We have had some pretty wet days this past month, but lately the skies have been quite blue and beautiful. The Carpathian Mountain Outreach ministry is in full swing now, and it is great to have Benjamin Anna here to be a part of it. They are expecting another 3 or 4 men during the summer months, but Josh, Nathan, Bryan, Ben, and Jessie are already busy passing out literature and evangelizing villages. CMO is an arm of ETO, Euro Team Outreach, of which the Correspondence Bible Course and English club/Bible study are also a part. If you haven’t looked into the ministry, check out our website at www.euroteamoutreach.org. We also have a Facebook page that includes several pictures and videos of the ministry.

My biggest project right now is getting ready for Vacation Bible School, being held June 21-26. It is coming along well, and the kids are excited and inviting their friends to be a part. A special thanks to my ladies’ prayer group for the treats and prizes they sent to be used in the pinata that will the great treasure at the end of the week. I would appreciate you prayers for that week. First of all, for lots of kids to come and hear the gospel. Second, for adult helpers, and third, for good weather the entire week.

Not only is June a busy month because of VBS, but I am preparing to return to the states for July and August, and there are a lot of things to do to before I leave. Katelin Day and the Beals have volunteered to help with the correspondence course in my absence, and they will need a little training in the process of correcting lessons and sending materials. The CMO team has “rented” my apartment for the time I am gone, and I will need to get that ready for them. There are a few other things I have to finish up, so there won’t be much “down time” before I head back. Praise the Lord again for my prayer group and a few others who donated some money for my plane tickets. “But my God shall supply all your need..”.

Our days on earth are short, and the trumpet my blow at any time, so let us be faithful unto the end. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee: the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” I’ll see you here, there, or in the air.

I am at the Beal’s house watching the girls and Jack, the prettiest dog I know.  We took a picnic lunch and walked up by the lake, hoping to sit near the stream to eat our lunch. The weather was gorgeous and warm. No, actually, it was downright hot. When we arrived, there were several guys swimming and fishing, so we decided to find a different place. We found a flat spot on the top of a hill with a beautiful view and some trees for shade.  The steak sandwiches, potato salad, and home-made lemonade were delicious.  We read a book to each other while Cassia sketched, found interesting shapes in the clouds, and came across a solo yellow orchid in the middle of the wild brush.  A couple of dark clouds rolled in, but quickly blew away, and did not compromise our outing.  We were home in plenty of time to tune in to our home church’s live stream Sunday morning service.  It has been a nice, relaxing day.  Except for the very fresh moist cow pie I stepped in just before we got home. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Here's looking at you

It has been over two months since my last post and I apologize for the lack of faithfulness in keeping up my blog.  I could say that I have been really busy, and just forgot about writing, but even the truth is no excuse.  Alot of my time has been spent preparing for the Vacation Bible School we are holding June 21-26.  The theme will be the treasures in the Word of God with the focus on the treasure of Jesus and eternal life in Him.

The Correspondence Bible Course continues to grow and we continually get notes of thanks for the way that the course has helped them know God and his Word better.  In the last few weeks  one student from the town of Chervonograd has sent in lesson invites for many of her friends and we now have 47 students from that city.  It is a real blessing to have Bryan Shufelt back for the summer for the CMO ministry.  He returned at the same time the Steeles did, and he has helped organize the CBC data base and prepare lessons to be corrected.  The Carpathian Mountain Outreach ministry this summer is expecting 5 young men to join them as they evangelize in L’viv and surrounding regions. They even have a trip to the east of Ukraine planned in the month of July.

Bible Baptist Church is doing very well of late.  We have some new attendees, including  2 ladies, a family of 4,  and a father and his son.  They have been coming rather regularly, which is a big blessing.  Our prayer is to see more men and families in church, and this is a good start.  The services are back at the Bardwell house in the village, and even with a lot of rain, most weeks we have a good crowd.   I have more to report, but will take a  break for lunch and walk, and get back to you soon with pictures and a couple of interesting stories.

Spring is just around the corner, but the cold temps and intermittent snow want to hang around just a little longer. I continue to watch the Bardwell kids on Mondays and help with school while Laurel takes Ukrainian language lessons and does some shopping at the bazaar. This past week there was a chocolate festival in town, and we walked around a bit and got some chocolate covered donuts. Pretty tasty, I must admit. While out and about we ate lunch at a relatively new place in town, and their calzone is delicious. March 8 was International Women’s Day, and though many countries don’t give the day much attention, Ukraine plays it up pretty big.  At church Alla, one of our faithful young ladies, gave each lady a homemade candy bouquet.  The correspondence Bible course continues to go strong, and in the month of February alone I registered  31 new students.  Most of these came from invitations from other students who are already taking the course.  They say word of mouth is the best form of advertising.  In an effort to improve my Ukrainian language  and reading skills I have been reading the book The Prince and The Pauper by Mark Twain in Ukrainian during my lessons. I finally finished the book, and look forward to starting another one soon.  We are looking forward to the summer, when we minister to the local kids through a week of Vacation Bible School. I am developing a week of lessons and activities based on a “seeking for treasure” theme, with the main idea that Jesus is the greatest treasure.  I am still helping Greater Grace church with their Saturday kids’ club, and this past week Edgar presented the parable of the sower lesson. After Resurrection Sunday we will begin a new series of lessons about the early Christians. Continue to pray for the ministry and ministers here in L’viv, Ukraine. Thank you, and God bless.

I love this picture of little brother reading next to big brother.

Edgar teaching the lesson at kids' club.

The fuse bead craft the kids made in club this week.

Anyone for a donut?

Just about anything at La Piazza is delicious.

Can you find the boy in the tree? I walked right past him.

Laurel modeling her candy bouquet.

Even in the midst of a cold and snowy winter we have several students who have been coming to English club faithfully. Now that Nathan has returned to Ukraine we have resumed the Bible study portion of the evening as well. It has been a blessing to meet with these young people and continue to build relationships with them, as our ultimate desire is to see them come to know the Lord. We do have a handful of believers who attend, but the majority of them are not saved. Below are some pictures taken at one of our recent meetings.

Dasha and Roman

Katelin hanging with Marion and Yarina

Nathan and Taras

Taras is a faithful regular and his sister Yarina comes when she can.

A man on the street walks away reading the John/Romans we gave him.

Zoie and Ashley realized they used to be best friends when they were 4 years old.

Everyone is exhausted by the time we boarded the last train of the trip.

Dan making sandwiches while waiting for the train out of Debrecen.

Here are some pictures to go along with the post from yesterday. I am sorry if they don’t seem organized. I have trouble figuring out how to lay out lots of pictures on the blog.

A nice dinner with the Henolds. They have Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew in Romania.

A good gathering for church in Baia Mare.

The kids kept a journal of what they did throughout the trip.

Fried dough on a roll at the Christmas Fair. Very tasty.

The kids swam several times at the resort pool.

Silas, Zoie, and I went into town on our own for a few hours one day.

Our accommodations at Petnehazy Resort in Budapest.

Eating lunch at a local Burger King

All together on one of the many public transportation rides. This was the subway.

Dan gave his testimony at the church we visited in Budapest. Afterwards the Prangers fed us a wonderful lunch.

Silas loved the Hungarian goulash we had at the restaurant Monday night.

It has been a month since I last wrote, but most of that time I was away.  My vacation started on Dec. 4 with the Bardwells and me traveling to Budapest, Hungary and then on to Baia Mare, Romania the next week and staying with the Henold family, who are missionary friends with Dan and Laurel. Our overnight trip to Budapest went smoothly, and after a little trouble meeting up with our escort to the resort, we got to our lodging on the west side of Buda around noon on Saturday. Since we had no personal vehicle for transportation we bought week long passes for the public transport and didn’t have to worry about getting tickets for every ride we took. It was gray and cool most of the week, but not uncomfortable, and we did a lot of walking and riding. We scheduled a personal tour of the city on Monday and capped the day off with dinner at a restaurant that caters to tourists and provides food and entertainment with an authentic Hungarian flavor. Highlights of our week in Budapest include visiting the Winter Christmas Fair and Advent window in the city center, visiting the Palace of Wonders Science Center (highly recommended), eating at the American restaurants like Burger King, KFC and Subway, and swimming in the resort pool.  Our accommodations at the resort were very nice and homey, and it was a blessing to just kick back and relax and not feel that we had to be somewhere at a certain time.

By 8:30 a.m. the following Saturday we were out of our resort and on the road again to catch the cross-country train to Debrecen that would eventually connect us to Baia Mare, Romania.  We got to Debrecen with about 3 minutes to get the connecting train to Romania, and we jumped in the train and found an open compartment to settle in before taking our second breath. When we handed the steward our tickets she informed us that we had only paid for the tickets and not the reservation fee. The ticket agent never even told us about that fee, so we had to shell out some more money to make peace with the steward and be allowed to stay on the train. We are pretty sure it wasn’t a bribe, like is so common in this part of the country.

We were greeted at the train station in Romania by the Henold family, and grabbed a bite to eat at McDonald’s before going to the house and crashing for the night.  During the week we had 3 opportunities to pass out John/Romans; twice in Baia Mare and once in Sighet after we visited the Communist Resistance Memorial Museum, located in a former prison where the resisters were held.  Our first Sunday in Romania we went to the gypsy village where the Henolds are trying  to get a church started. We had a good turnout the for the service, and a solid gospel message was given.  It snowed hard the second weekend we were in town, which made the mountain roads difficult to traverse.  Dan was looking forward to preaching that week, but instead of going to church we listened to Pastor Sowell’s message on the internet.

Other than Silas getting his foot caught under the car at the science museum, our trip home proved to be the most dramatic part of the entire vacation.  We weren’t sure what kind of connections we could make at the Romania/Ukraine border, so we thought our best bet was to take a train back to Debrecen, Hungary and then up to L’viv.  So our journey started at 3:30 a.m. Monday morning, the 22nd.  By 9:30 a.m. we arrived at Debrecen with no trouble, but through a series of events we ended up having to hang out at the train station all day and wait until midnight for the next train to the Ukrainian border town. To make a very long story short,  in the dead of the night, with 6 sleepy children and lots of baggage we changed trains 3 times, until finally, at 5:30 we caught the train (almost missed it) for the final leg of our journey. God blessed by allowing us to have the compartment mostly to ourselves, letting everyone stretch out and get some real rest, and giving us some beautiful scenery through the Carpathian Mountains. Just about 40 hours after we started our return trip from Romania we finally arrived in L’viv. A taxi driver gave the Bardwells a great deal to take them home from the train station, and I had a quick and easy trip home on the bus. Overall, I think our trip was a success, and I praise the Lord for an opportunity to “come apart and rest awhile.”  Check back in a couple days and I will have added pictures to the story.

Well, part of it anyway. I will be leaving today with the Bardwell family for a 17 day vacation. We will be boarding the evening train to Budapest, Hungary and will be staying at a resort there for a week. Laurel and I have spent many hours surfing the internet for interesting things to do and see in Budapest. At the end of next week we will get on another train and ride east to Baia Mare, where we will be staying with Bob and Tina Henold, missionaries in Romania. We look forward to the time away from home, meeting new people, and trust God for health and safety along the way.