Our February prayer update is a little late because there is a cold-bug going around Lviv and it has not missed the Chmiels household either… :( Please pray that it’s over soon as we have a busy week ahead of us. Not only ministry-wise as usual but we also promised to watch two little girls (3 and 1) for our fellow missionary friends, starting on Wednesday. The parents have to go to Poland to renew their Ukrainian visa. So please pray that we are healthy and full of energy by Wednesday, ready for these two little ladies :)
In our last update, we told you about the Youth Bible Study we started on Thursday afternoons. We are really excited about this!!! Even after just two months we see big changes in some of the students who come to this Bible Study regularly. It almost feels like some kind of a breakthrough. Last year we had moments when we felt like some of the oldest teenage students were almost immune to what we were talking about at our Sunday meetings. It felt like they have been coming to church for so long that when it came to God’s things, they could not care less.
But something dramatically changed just recently and we praise God for this change!! For example, one of the older teenage boys in the past never responded to anything we talked about… When we gave them homework or Bible reading to do at home, he never did it… When we had worksheets with spiritual questions, he left it all blank… etc etc… But recently, he is like a different person! He is one of the most faithful students to come to the Thursday Bible Study meetings, he seems eager to learn and seems to be open to what we are learning from the Bible, he completes all the Bible reading assigned to be done at home and he just responds completely differently from how we used to know him. When we discuss our Bible lessons, he always tries to find answers in his Bible. The change is so obvious that some of the other students even told him that he should be a pastor!!! It’s so amazing to watch God at work!!! Thank you so much for praying for these students.
Last week our Bible Studies were moved from the church to our home because the gas bill for the church was high (prices went up) so the pastor does not want to turn on the heat for just a small group on Thursdays. But we actually like it better in our home (we don’t have to finish at an exact time for someone to lock up the building after us etc…). So we count this also as a blessing and a step in the right direction!
If you’d like to see a short video of our group playing Skip-Bo after our Bible study, click here: http://www.chmiels.com/video_skipbo.htm
As we already said, we very much appreciate your prayers for these students – both for those who come only on Sundays (a group of about 10-14 students) and the ones who also come to our Thursday Bible Studies (about 4 students). This month you can pray specifically for a brother and a sister whose parents are in the process of getting a divorce. Unfortunately having divorced parents is very common in Ukraine but nevertheless it’s very sad and we pray for God’s mercy in this messed-up situation.
Besides working with youth, we have also had opportunities to build relationships and talk about Jesus with other people this month. For example a lady from our church, Tanya, came last week to show us how to make Ukrainian borsch (for those of you who like cooking, you can see a video here: http://www.chmiels.com/video_borsch.htm). This time of borsch-making was also a time of sharing and she said that if we started a Bible Study for adults, she would very much like to come. So that is another thing to think and pray about it. Maybe next school year…
We also have a new opportunity to meet weekly with a girl (young adult) who was confirmed in the German Lutheran church here in Lviv but who does not come to church any more. Right now we meet to help her with her English (she lost her job and knowing English might help her with finding a new one) but we hope that maybe she too might later be interested in a Bible Study.
So as you see, many new ministry opportunities are opening for us here in Lviv. And we are praying for wisdom and guidance to know which ones to pursue.
Even though we know it is going to be hard to leave now, we will have to leave for Poland in about a month to deliver our baby. After our Ukrainian hospital adventures last year and with Miriam’s blood disorder and blood thinning shots and everything else, we do not feel comfortable delivering our first baby here in Lviv. Krakow (Poland) is the closest “non-Ukrainian” big city where we can go to deliver our daughter plus that will probably also be the place where we will take her for check-ups and vaccinations in the future. So it seems to be a good choice. The only disadvantage is that we have to leave soon enough to prevent having our baby on the train :-) Right now we are planning to leave sometime around April 6th. We would love to come back to Ukraine really soon after our girl is born but we know that there will be paperwork that will need to be done before she can travel (she will need a passport) so we do not know how long that is going to take. Hopefully not too long.
<-- starting eighth month of pregnancy
As you probably know, we do not have a car so we are planning to travel to Krakow by train. It will be quite the trip… Miriam in her ninth month of pregnancy… bringing all our stuff for living in Poland for about two months plus all the needed baby stuff (incl. a stroller etc.)! You can be praying for that too! We have been trying to get a car for about half a year now but it is very difficult to find one when we have to do the looking long-distance – as foreigners we are not allowed to own a car registered in Ukraine so we are trying to buy a car probably in the Czech Republic. So that’s another prayer request…
If you’d like to see more February pictures, you can go to our gallery at http://www.chmiels.com/gallery/winter20082009/?g2_page=6
Blessings,
Tomasz, Miriam and Baby Girl
