We Survived!

It’s been a minute, but yes, we’re still here in Ukraine! Sometimes it’s hard to be a missionary and keep up with telling everybody how it’s going. We’ve fallen behind on reporting, so today I’m posting a whirlwind tour of the past several months. A more detailed newsletter is in the works, but in the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to and what God has been doing in our ministry.

Outreach

The last major update on our blog was about the launch of our new Ukraine Gospel Outreach initiative. That was followed by a major outreach project in October, during which we posted daily update videos as the project unfolded. We have a ton of pictures and stories to share from that trip — stay tuned. In the meantime, you can view those update videos at this YouTube playlist:

Our Good and Evil distributor program is also revving up, and we’re excited about what’s ahead on that front. More details coming soon.

In January, our family and the music team from our church had the opportunity to minister at a local hospital to wounded vets back from the front. It was an amazing experience that we look forward to telling you more about.

Local Church

It seems the war is taking more and more of our men, and as several team members at our church have recently been mobilized, our family has been stepping in to fill the gaps. While we miss our guys, it’s been wonderful to be more deeply involved with the local church here in Lviv. I preach regularly on Sunday mornings, almost our entire family is now involved in the music ministry, and the church recently launched a new Bible school that we’re very excited about.

Family

One reason we’ve found it challenging to make time for updates is the flurry of family activity. We were overjoyed to welcome my dad and our pastor from the States for a visit in September. Our oldest daughter, Abigail, came for about three weeks over Christmas, and we had a marvelous time reconnecting with her. Rebekah celebrated a big milestone in January: her 18th birthday! This also meant a trip to the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland to begin the document process for her temporary residency.

The War

God continues to protect our family, though it brings us great sorrow to see the suffering of the Ukrainian people all around us. Winter was particularly hard as Russia’s relentless strikes on Ukraine’s power infrastructure resulted in widespread, very long outages. At its worst, we were sometimes without power for as much as 18 hours in a day. While Lviv was hit hard, cities like Kyiv and those in the south and east had it even worse. Thankfully, God has provided our family with a power unit called an EcoFlow, and with the extended battery we purchased in January, we can keep the lights on for about seven hours even when the main power is off.

As always, we are so grateful for your prayers and support. More detailed updates are on the way — thank you for bearing with us. Please continue to pray for our family and the nation of Ukraine as we press forward to spread the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.