We enjoyed great fellowship and shashlyk together
I just got back yesterday from a two day pastor-leadership conference in Irpen outside of Kyiv. It was great to get a chance to meet people from Calvary Chapel who are serving in Ukraine and have fellowship with them. God is doing amazing things throughout Ukraine.
The most important thing I took from the conference was something that John Chubik shared on the first night. He told us about a church member's father who had spent 14 years in a Soviet prison in Siberia because of his Christian faith. He told us that this man, and others like him, prayed for the day when the Gospel of Jesus Christ could be freely preached in Ukraine and men would be raised up for that purpose. He told us that we were the answer to those prayers. Our ministry in Ukraine has been built on those prayers. We are here in Ukraine because someone we probably don't know, prayed for us to come.
I think that message really affected a lot of us that night. It makes perfect sense, knowing that most of us, myself included, didn't just wake up one day and say, "I think I want to go to Ukraine". Most of us felt an overwhelming pull to be here and experienced circumstances and events that only God could have orchestrated to bring us here. It's comforting to know that the power of prayer and God's faithfulness to answer is so great that he would bring us here to serve His people in Ukraine.
I remember what a blessing it was to have someone tell us when we first started the children's ministry in our church here, that their Bible study had been praying for us to come for over a year. That's the kind of God we serve.
In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. -Psalm 5:3
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