Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will continually praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)
Eternal God, our Dear Heavenly Father ~ We lift up our hearts and voices in adoration on this new day even as we ponder over the many uncertainties of this life. Help us to be constantly aware of your abiding presence in our affairs. Give us courage to face up to the greatest opponents of all that is good. Refresh our spirits as we recall that even the darkest hour has a good ending if we will remain strong and not waver in our faith. In Jesus name, Amen.
Photo: A view from our plane window as we land in Lyubyana, Slovenia - a beautiful city surrounded by many mountains and well kept farms.
Yesterday was a day of making fresh starts in our work. We had many details to take care of. In the morning, we met with people in the building where the church meets and worked out some details on when and where we will be conducting various activities for the next several months. The place where the church meets is on the ground floor of an apartment building. Thanks to Nikolai, we have three rooms that we can use for our various meetings. One is an office where we can do our work and meet with people. There is no Internet connection there, so we must do that in the hotel. We hope to move out of this hotel as soon as we find time to locate an apartment. (Can you imagine the apostle Paul grumbling about not having a wireless hookup for his notebook Well, I sort of can picture him wanting a place to broadcast the Word.) Our schedule that we have already committed to for this week and for however long people keep coming is, Sunday: Bible study - 10.00, Worship - 11.00; Monday - Friday: Children's Bible Hour - 2.00, Gospel preaching with Q & A following - 6.30; Saturday: Children's Bible Hour - 2.00.
Yesterday we had many people coming into the facility after the barber shop closed. Yes, the first room near the door is occupied by a hair salon. The lady that runs it gives haircuts to people who cannot afford to pay regular market prices. We began to realize that many of the people who dropped by were really interested in meeting us and checking us out. We told one "grandmother" about our plans to have a children's class, and about an hour later, we heard a couple of boys rustling around outside the door. We went out and spoke with Vitalik and Stasik and invited them to our classes that we planned to begin next week. In a short while, three more boys appeared - Sasha, Sasha and Pasha along with three girls - Maya, . They are all very excited about our plans to have a Bible class along with some other activities. In fact, they could not wait until next week, so we will begin our sessions today at 2.00. (Galina says, like we don't have anything else to do) Galina overheard the kids talking about how they will even come to our classes in the afternoons when they get home from school in the Fall. They have shifts here and they were talking about how they could take morning shift at school so they could be with us in the afternoon. We will see how all that kid talk works out. In any case, we already have a good group of 9, 10 and 11 year olds to participate in our Bible study program. We told them all to ask their parents permission to attend the Bible classes. One girl answered, "I know it is OK, because we are not doing anything anyway - just riding our bikes and walking around."
Please join us in our prayer that this will lead to many parents coming to our church services!
In the evening yesterday, we started our study at 6.30 and answered questions for several hours. We realized that we had not had time to eat anything since our free breakfast at the hotel, and ate a bite at a small cafe on the way back to the hotel. It was way too late for us and we will try not to repeat that tonight - unless the questions keep coming.
Viktor Semikoz and his wife Oksana, along with their two sons, are supposed to arrive next Monday and help us with the children's activities. Viktor will also be doing some preaching and teaching. He preaches at the church in Svyatogorsk, and teaches some classes at the Bear Valley Bible Institute in Gorlovka. We will be very happy for the help of this talented couple and their boys, for all of next week and possibly we can convince them to stay a little longer.
We sent out an urgent appeal to Olga in Magadan to use some of her vacation time and come here and help us with all the kids. She is incredibly gifted to teach Bible stories, children songs and do crafts, etc. We hope something can work out for her to be with us for a couple of weeks. She is also good at teaching women's Bible studies.
Anatoly our dear friend and co-worker, labors for the Lord in the Udmurtia region of Russia. He does much good work among the orphan homes there and in the public schools. He asked me yesterday by e-mail what can he do to help us here in Nikolaev.
It was not my intention to write a book this morning, but the exhilaration sweeps over us as we think and talk about the great prospects for the Lord's church here in the city of Nikolaev.
We hope that our dear brother and friend Nikolai will be back home from a business trip next week. Even when he is not here, he is on the phone taking with us and offering encouragement. Thanks to all of you for the prayers and kind words of encouragement!
