Chmiel's First Weeks in Ukraine

THANK YOU so much to all of you who prayed for us, emailed us, sent us text messages to our cell phone and encouraged us in many different ways during our time in Ukraine!! Thank you!!

We spent our first Ukraine days in Odesa. Odesa in Ukrainian (or Odessa in Russian) is a major seaport on the Black Sea but it is also where the German Lutheran Church headquarters is. Pastor Bill Moberly, director of East European Missions Network, traveled with us and one of the main purposes of his visit was to sign an agreement between EEMN and the German Lutheran Church. You can see more pictures from Odesa and read more about our days there if you click here: http://www.chmiels.com/gallery/firstdaysukraine

When we were in L’viv, it was great that we were able to connect with many people from the local congregation there. We were able to meet with the church council, be part of their Friday night Bible Study, see their confirmation class, be at the Sunday Worship service etc. Tomasz even got a chance to help Pastor serve Communion on Sunday which was an interesting experience as it was all done in Russian plus a lot of the customs were quite different from what we are used to from the AFLC. But we enjoyed the congregation and we are eager to start our ministry alongside these brothers and sisters. If you would like to see and read more about our days in L‘viv (including how we found a “pepperoni” pizza :) ) go to: http://www.chmiels.com/gallery/lviv

If you would like to know more, please ASK! You can email us at chmiel@eemn.org or send a short email to chmiel@vodafonemail.cz and we will get that as a text message on our cell phone. As we have already said many times we LOVE it when we hear from you! And we will try to write back too. We did not have good internet access when we were in Ukraine but now we are in Prague (Czech Republic) again for a while so we should be able to write back when you write to us.

God bless you! Keep in touch!
Tomasz and Miriam