These two videos chronicle our outreaches this past weekend. On Saturday, July 3, the team distributed literature in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, then hiked to a campsite in the Carpathians. The next day, July 4th, we had scheduled a film showing in the village of Kropyvnyk.
Archive for the ‘Ministry Updates’ Category
July 3-4: Weekend of Ministry
Monday, July 5th, 2010
Recap of Bukovets and Kozakivka
Monday, June 28th, 2010Watch this video and get the rest of the story of these two Carpathian villages. This report helps to illustrate the kind of religious bondage people are under in the mountains.
Mountain Trip, Day 2
Friday, June 11th, 2010Check out our latest CMO Video Report! This footage was shot last Sunday, but we just got to the editing this afternoon. The video was uploaded a couple of hours ago. This is part 2 of our most recent trip to the Carpathians. Watch this video and see a CMO film showing first-hand!
And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We’ve Got Video!
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010Yes, not to rush things by any means, but we’ve finally got a YouTube channel up and running. Actually, it’s ETO’s YouTube channel. We’ve got a fancy new video camera over here and we’re shooting lots of ministry video! So be sure to stop by the ETO channel and subscribe. Below are some samples of what you’ll find there…
New OFR Posted!
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010
The latest issue of Overseas Field Report has now been posted to our blog. If you’re on our regular mailing list, you should be receiving your hard copy in the next couple of weeks.
Download the latest OFR here » May/June 2010 (1.73 MB)
If you would like to subscribe to receive Overseas Field Report by mail, please send us your name and US mailing address. We appreciate your interest in our ministry overseas.
All Over the Map
Thursday, May 20th, 2010The image below is a picture of the map hanging in our ministry office here in L’viv. Each pin represents a town or village where we have students enrolled studying the Bible. Denise Hutchison recently gathered this info from our student tracking system and set up the map. (Thanks, Denise!) At present, we have 406 students in active enrollment, and with CMO approaching, we’re expecting that number to rise!
A map showing each city/village in Ukraine where we have students enrolled in our Bible course.
Here’s another interesting statistic from our database. We track how every student enrolls in our course: some via pamphlets we pass out, some via the web site, some through the invitation of their friends, etc. Each of our lessons has cut-out invites in the back and we encourage existing students to use these to invite their friends. Right now, this is by far our largest enrollment type – 46%! In other words, nearly half of all our students were invited to start studying the Bible by another Ukrainian student!
Late in last year’s CMO project, we visited a town called Chervonograd (Red City), about an hour or so north of L’viv. We passed out several thousand invites for the correspondence course while we were there. As of this writing, we have 47 students in the city of Chervonograd, and 40 of them (85%!) were signed up by friends!
Passing out CBC invites in Chervonograd
Bottom line: there are lots of people out there who are open to studying the Word of God and ultimately hearing the message of Christ. It’s just a matter of finding them, and breaking through the cultural barriers that so often separate missionaries from the people they are trying to reach. Most people aren’t closed to the Gospel, they’re just closed to what they perceive as a foreign cult trying to convert them to a strange new faith. Find a way to break through those walls, and often you’ll find people on the other side who are starving for the truth of Scripture. That’s what Paul did. (I Cor. 9:19-22)
CMO 2010 begins in just over a week, and we are excited about finding new people this year that we can involve in the study of God’s Word. We are also very excited about the great team of guys that God has brought us this year. In addition to our full-time staff, we will be joined by six other men this summer, three of whom have been here for past CMO projects.
- Bryan Shufelt – CMO 2006, 2009
- Benjamin Anna – CMO 2008
- Daniel Courter – CMO 2009
- Nickoli Morrissey – First time
- Seth Watson – First time
- Christopher Sayre – First time
In addition to our normal excursions into the Carpathian Mountains, our team has also been invited to come and minister in an eastern Ukrainian city called Dnipropetrovsk. We will be putting out thousands of CBC invites in Dnipropetrovsk and several smaller towns in the area. This trip will take place in July. Please pray with us that many Ukrainians would enroll in our course and begin studying God’s Word. Sinners who begin to study God’s Word have the greatest chance of becoming believers, and believers make the best building blocks for churches. “For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” 1 Corinthians 3:9
We’re Back!
Friday, April 30th, 2010At around 12:15pm on April 28th, we landed at L’viv International Airport. To me, this seemed like the shortest and smoothest flight we’ve had yet! The kids did very well (slept a good bit) and overall the trip was uneventful. No ash cloud either. 
That said, I did notice that we were cruising at about 38,000 feet – a good 8,000 feet higher than normal. Maybe we were flying above the danger zone?
Having arrived back at home, we were greeted by a whole crowd of smiling faces. The Beal’s and Nathan picked us up at the airport. When we got to our apartment, we found it clean and the kitchen stocked with several meals and snacks. Our friends Tomasz and Miriam even sent over a French Silk pie! (Am I loved or what?) In short, we want to say a great big “thank you!” to all our dear friends here who made our return to Ukraine such a pleasant one.
I’d also like to express our sincere gratefulness to our friends and family on the other side of the Atlantic who were such a blessing to us while were in the US the past 8 months. Of these, I would like to say a very special thank you to my mom, Cathy, who worked like Wonder Woman to help us get our houses ready to rent. She laid tile, painted, cleaned, hauled junk in the van, made phone calls, screened prospective tenants, etc, etc, etc. After we left, she oversaw the process of emptying our house in the US, returning borrowed items to their owners, and signing the lease with our new tenants. There is no way in the world we could have finished all these tasks without her help. THANK YOU, MOM!!
Here in L’viv, we’re still in the process of unpacking and reorganizing, but are making progress. I’m moving my office over to our ministry center, which will free up an extra room in our house. This will probably end up being the baby’s room/guest room. Once we get our feet under us, we’ll be sending out the next issue of Overseas Field Report with more ministry details. In the meantime, we appreciate your continued prayers for us as we gear up for a full summer of ministry.
VISA UPDATE
For those of you who have kept up with the visa saga, know that our troubles in that arena are far from over. The day we got in from the States, I went with a small group of Americans to meet with a representative of the US Consulate from Kyiv. We discussed with him our concerns and some of the problems we have experienced with registration. He was able to give us quite a bit of information which I believe will be helpful in solving the problems we face. There are still several unknowns, but in a nutshell it appears we will no longer be able to use the Type-K (cultural) visas that we’ve all had in the past. Please continue to pray that the Lord would give us wisdom as we search for lasting solutions to these immigration issues.
