Thursday, August 6, 2009

WORD OF THE DAY - Wednesday 05 August 2009











For this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge self-control; and to self-control patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-6)




Most Holy and Righteous God, our Heavenly Father ~ Thank you for the very expensive gift of eternal life on this new day as we consider all that is in store for us from your bounty of provisions available for your people. Give us an abundance of courage, strength and wisdom so that we will be able to be sincere and untiring in our efforts to be more Christ-like each day. In Jesus name, Amen.





Photos: Tuesday was another exciting and productive day in the Lord's service here in Nikolaev. The children continue to invite their friends to join them in the Bible studies. Some of the boys come reluctantly, and several kept hanging around outside as we sang songs and did some hand work activities. With a little coaxing, they finally came in and participated. Hopefully they will come again. One of the boys, was overheard to say when we were taking the group picture, "I hope none of my friends see me in this picture. During the day we rode one of the convenient 'marshutka' (a van converted into a route bus/taxi) to meet with a broker and apartment owner. We found an apartment to rent for the 4 more days that Viktor and Oxana and the boys will be with us. They will be better off with a place where they can cook their own food. While we were making the arrangements with the broker and owner, they had lots of good questions about our work here. We gave them invitations, and later the owner's husband dropped by and expressed his own interest in our activities. Of course since they are all involved with the local real-estate market, which may be why they want to cultivate friendly relations with us. In any case, we have some new acquaintances. During the day we spent time going around to various shops and picking up a few items that Oxana and Viktor need for classes, as well as stuff we need for the kids and our apartment. This gave us a good opportunity to meet more nice people who gave us much encouragement about our work with the children, as well as the promise to attend our services. During our evening services, several of the kids surprised us by coming in for our time of prayer and songs. Most of them wanted us to pray for the grandmothers (babushka). One wanted his babushka to become a Christian and start coming to church. We had the chance to meet babushka Maruse who normally stands watch out in the courtyard of our large building. She thanked us for being here and said she was seeing some improvement in the children's behavior. Elvin, one of our 9 year olds came late because he had been in a championship boxing competition. He was the winner for all the Nikolaev region in his age bracket. He and his little brother are regular attendees. Akinrinde and Afolabi stayed behind to talk with us after the evening services, so we had another long day that ended with satisfaction that we had done our best to share God's love with many people.

No comments:

Post a Comment