Spiritual Refreshment

Tonight we leave for our MTW Ukraine Team retreat. It will be held in Western Ukraine in the Carpathian Mountains. Our first stop is in Kiev where we will have routine medical examinations for the children and some vaccinations. Julia will also see an OB/GYN. To get to Kiev we are taking a 13 hour train from Kherson. The kids are excited about it - Julia and I are wondering how we will manage with the luggage and small ones. On Thursday, we will travel with the Kiev team to our team retreat. We return on Tuesday morning back in Kherson. We will post pictures when we return.

Provisional Presbytery

Jamie, Mel and 4 men from the Kherson church went to the Presbytery last week. It was in Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, a town in the south-western corner of Ukraine.

Discussion on the floor of Presbytery

Jamie and Sergei Kukushkin, an assistant pastor at our church and a seminary student.

Sergei coming under the care of Presbytery.

Thanks for the pictures, Bob!

We Are Back Again!

After 10 days of no phone and internet, we are happy to have a connection to the outside world again. We rejoiced when our phone rang today!

Last Tuesday our neighbors hired an excavator to dig a whole in the street near their fence. Well, they did not bother to "call before you dig" and excavator damaged the pipe that had telephone wires in it. Finally, 10 days later, we got our connection to the outside world again. The wires in the picture are telephone wires, and one of them was ours! This picture was taken this Monday, almost a week after they broke the pipe. The next picture was taken this morning, and it looks much better. The telephone repairman finished fixing it up today. I wonder who paid the bill. In this country, one can never tell.

We will try to update our blog in the next few days. We have some new pictures to share!

Carrying On

Has it been a month already? This month started out with so much sadness and chaos we did not know how to write what we were feeling and going through. Julia received excellent care in Vienna though it was hard emotionally - leaving our children behind and traveling, waiting to be admitted into the hospital, waiting to deliver a baby that had died, delivering the baby, no baby to hold after the delivery, leaving empty handed, and more. It was all so hard. I don't know if I have ever felt such emptiness and sadness as when I saw Julia deliver our baby. The baby was a little boy and we named him Matthew. We all still have moments when we think about it and are saddened.


We have been busy this past month. We started school with the kids after we got back from Vienna. Julia was not quite ready but they were all excited and eager to get started that we could not put it off any longer. It is hard to think of Nadia being in the 4th grade and Timothy starting first grade. Even Anna is doing a combination of kindergarten/pre-school work. (Yes, Julia is super busy right now as she figures out the right balance of attention to each of them and Polly as well.) So far they have kept their eagerness to do the work.

As regards to the ministry, I always like the Fall. There is an excitement to starting up Bible studies that took a summer break as well as starting new areas of ministries. We live nearby a dormitory of 600 or more students and are looking for ways to proclaim the Gospel there. We know of a student who lives there and is wanting to help to do this. We are wanting to start a Bible study as well as have students over on a regular basis.

I am also looking forward to start a men's ministry. It is the need of the hour and as an article that Rev. Tim Bayly gave me states, this culture needs a men's movement. The culture does, and so does the church. And the church needs to lead the way. That has been on my mind and in my prayers a lot this summer and fall.

That is all for now. More later this week.