Thank you so much to all of you who wrote back after our last email. It means a lot to us to see how many of you care and how many of you are praying for us. Thank you!
We are still in Minnesota. We can’t believe it’s been already 17 days since we came. We are enjoying our wonderful temporary home—it is great to have our own place where we can relax when we are not feeling well and where we can have people over when we do feel well. It has been encouraging to see some of our friends again. This week we were also blessed by the opportunity to meet with the East European Missions Network Board of Directors and their spouses. We appreciated all their prayers and their insights.
We really praise God for all the spiritual encouragement we are receiving while here in the States. Living on a Bible School and Seminary campus gives us an opportunity to be surrounded by many Christians. Tomasz loves to be “back in seminary.” He especially enjoys the Greek classes. It almost feels unreal to be with so many Christians again. So different from what it is like for us in Ukraine!!!
As you probably know we have our return tickets booked for March 25. We would still love to be able to return to Ukraine at the end of this month. But things have not been going exactly the way we planned them. We thought we would do some doctor check-ups here and then we would have about three weeks to rest and regain strength before going back. But we are in our third week here and we are still doing a lot of doctoring instead of resting. Actually Miriam had another cyst that seems to have burst on Wednesday. Miriam was in a lot of pain for about six hours on Wednesday so that again set her back a little in trying to get stronger.
Please pray that we know exactly what to do. Some of the EEMN board members and some of our other friends feel that we should probably postpone our departure until we know for sure that Miriam is well and that we have enough strength to get back to our work in Ukraine. We also still cannot get the exact right amount of Coumadin (blood thinner) figured out for Miriam. One week her blood test result is too low, the other it is too high… And that is another thing we would like to have under control before we leave for Ukraine. So please pray again for God’s guidance for us. It feels like lately things never work the way we plan them. But God’s been faithful to always show us what to do. Even though a lot of times (in our human eyes) it has felt kind of “last minute”.
Even though we are here in the States now, a lot of the Ukrainian people are daily on our hearts and minds. It is kind of hard that the only thing we can do for many of them right now is pray. But prayer is powerful! Would you mind joining us in praying for these Ukrainian friends of ours?
- Pavel – a 14-year-old boy (just celebrated his birthday this month). He used to live with his mom who was also the main Sunday School teacher in the L’viv congregation. But recently his mom decided to go to a seminary in Russia so Pavel is now living with his father. It seems like since living with his dad, Pavel stopped coming to church. We know Pavel has been hurt a lot by some of his closest people and we pray that we would know exactly what role God would like us to play in his life. We would love to provide a little more stability for Pavel but it has been kind of hard with us being there, then being sick, then leaving Ukraine… We are trying to keep in touch even now, but for some reason Pavel is not answering his cell phone. We do not know what is happening but we are praying that God would watch over him.
- Mrs. Tanya and her adult daughter Lyuda – please pray for their spiritual growth. We have seen a big hunger for God’s Word especially in Mrs. Tanya. But because they do not feel spiritually fed in the L’viv Lutheran church where they are members, they choose not to go to church at all. When we were in Ukraine, they seem to have really bonded with us and we had opportunities to pray and study the Bible with them. They are one of the people who do not think we will come back to Ukraine. So please pray that in case we decide to go back a little later that they would not be hurt by that and that they would know we really care but have medical problems that need to be taken care of before we can return.
- Serhiy – the massage therapist guy. With him we also see that our relationship changed from a work-related relationship to friendship. We had opportunities to talk to him about God and Christianity in the past and we were also able to get him the Case for Christ book in Russian (Russian actually is his first language even though he speaks Ukrainian most of the time). He seemed really interested and he started reading the book. He even shared it with his wife and they were both reading it for a while. But then he had couple of months when he was really busy with work and he stopped reading the book. So please pray that God would again give Serhiy the time and desire to think about spiritual things. Please pray for Serhiy! Only God can give faith that leads to salvation and that is what we are praying for! We can already see how Serhiy would make a great youth ministry guy.
