Update on the Church Situation

We left many of you hanging in regards to what happened to our last church location. It turns out, the director of the preschool/daycare center that we had been renting from failed to pay taxes on the rent she collected from us. We do not know exactly how she managed the money, but we were aware of several updates on the building. Anyway, one of her employees got suspicious and reported it to the police. The director was called in for questioning and from what we were told, denied everything. So the following Sunday we showed up at the daycare center along with a group of PCA pastors and their wives who were visiting orphanages here in Ukraine. When the director saw a van full of people, she called it quits and told us to get out.

We met at our house that Sunday and then at the house of one of our elders the following Sunday. Our pastor spent several days in that area trying to find a place and heard a dozen of 'no's. Then, by the grace of God, he was able to secure a location that is relatively close to our old place. It is a "House of Culture for the Deaf" and has a large movie-theater style room. It hasn't been updated for 30 or so years, but it is actually nicer than the old place. It is easy to find, right on a main street, and it's closer to the orphanage than the daycare center was. But the biggest blessing of all is that the manager/director welcomed us and told us we could rent it for as long as we wanted. We might take a long-term lease for granted in the US, but here there were numerous places that were only willing to rent their hall for just a Sunday or two.


Our new meeting place already hosts 2 churches: an adventist church on Saturday and a Pentecostal church on Sunday morning. We are only able to rent it startinge at 1 pm, so our church service had to be moved. However, we are thankful for God's provision for us and look forward to staying there till our church building is usable (probably this spring).


Our team calculated that in the 9 years our church had to move 10 times. We believe most of the times it was a form of religious persecution/fear, when the hall directors/managers did not want to be associated with a church group. Other times were probably similar reasons for the last one, when the person in charge took the money under the table and then was afraid of reprocussions.


Thank you for praying for us. Just the fact that we were able to find something so quick is truly an answer to prayer.