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Podil Kyiv, Ukraine Report (September – December 2016)

Key Verse: Matthew 9:37-38 – “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”

I thank God who blessed our Matthew SWS messages this past year. In Matthew 9 when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion on them, not because they had many problems but because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Christian life is not a life without struggles. Christian life is to have our Shepherd Jesus lead us in this troubled world. Jesus saw the problem of the people is the lack of Gospel workers. So Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so he asked us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field. We thank God that he is raising up harvest workers here in our small church in Kyiv, Podil. In my report I want to talk about our harvest workers.

First, Rob Crane, an American teacher who works with me and participates in the men’s prayer group at our international school, joined us. Rob is a mature Christian who served in many ministries especially in music. He asked me last year if he could help serve in Podil. His participation had been an answer to prayers. He co-works with Yana to lead our praise and worship playing the ukulele and singing. He also gave several Sunday messages to help me carry this cross in our ministry.

Second, Sunday service and conference workers. Our Worship Service has been growing and now we have 10 faithful co-workers who help serve our service. Before we only had two translators. Now God has raised five; Natalia, Yana, Yulia, Anya, and Viktoria.  So the cross of written and speaking translation has been lightened. For example, when we had our joint Fall conference with Kyiv UBF in October we took turns translating for our English speaking guests. Also at this conference two of our sisters shared their life testimonies. They were Yana who is from Lugansk where the war is happening now and Anya, first year master student from KMA, the campus we are pioneering. Many people were moved by it. We also performed a drama at this conference about “Living in the End Times.” It was good to co-work with Kyiv UBF. Their messengers are world class speakers. The theme of the conference was “Holy people, Holy nation.” God also raised one faithful brother Vitaly who works with computers and volunteered to be our website administrator. He updates our website every week. Vitaly is a faithful Bible student of mine and loves the word of God. He was also baptized by me the first week of December 2016 along with Maria Peace. We are praying for him to grow as a good gospel worker and Bible teacher. At the moment we have six Bible teachers: myself, Maria, Rob, Natalia, Yana, and Yulia. We are praying to raise 12 Bible teachers for next year.

Third, ownership of the ministry. When we began our preparation for our Thanksgiving service and dinner, we realized we could only fit 30 people in our Bible center. So we told our members that they could not invite many people. But the week before the Service there was a sewage leak in the basement right underneath our meeting hall. The smell was overwhelming. We decided to move our service elsewhere. M. Peter allowed us to use the Kyiv UBF center. After we decided this and informed our members, the next day the sewage problem was resolved and the smell went away. Through this we realized that God wanted us to expand our vision and ministry and not to put limits for his work. When our members invited all the friends they wanted—42 people came. The word of God was on Luke 17 the healing of the ten lepers and one came back to give thanks to God. After the message, the men’s prayer group and M. Peter Kim prayed over Mark from Odessa to go out as a missionary to the Philippines and establish a house church with Gemma who came to Ukraine as a Short term missionary in the beginning of our Podil Ministry.  Several non Christians came up to the stage and reflected on their lives and saw how God had been with them and thanked Him. We were all mutually encouraged. They liked it very much because it was their first Thanksgiving experience in their lives. They even wrote us after several days thanking us for inviting them to our Thanksgiving. They asked when the next event will be. Afterwards during our Wednesday prayer meeting our members said we could have done it better. Before when we had less people one person could do all the planning and preparation but this time it was too much. We realized that God wants us to accept his vision for expanding our church so we should be ready and organized. Therefore we decided to delegate the responsibility to other members. Someone should be in charge of food, greeting, offering, translators, music, games, clean up and presentation. We realized with more co-workers we can do more and serve God’s flock better. We decided to do this for our Christmas Service. We thank God our students and young people are taking ownership of our ministry.

Prayer topics:

• To raise up 12 Bible teachers.
• For Shepherd Mark Vitaly to be an English Bible teacher and establish a family of God with Shepherdess Gemma in the Philippines.
• For our sisters and daughters to establish house churches in 2017.
• God’s blessing to continue Matthew’s gospel messages in 2017.
• For the war to stop in Ukraine and God give us peace.

One Word: Raise workers for the harvest field

 John Peace