Here we are with our March update. It feels like it was yesterday when we started working with the youth here in Lviv and also found out that we were pregnant (September 2008). But all of a sudden our school year with the youth is almost over and our Baby Girl is getting ready to be born in just about a month! Time flies!
We praise God for both the good seven months of learning God's Word and building relationships with our youth and for an easy pregnancy that Miriam's had so far (except for needing a blood-thinning shot every day, Miriam has not really had any major pregnancy problems and for that we are really thankful!).
In our last email update we were telling you about some of the results of our Thursday Youth Bible Study meetings. We want to thank you for continuing to lift up our students in your prayers. As you probably remember, we have been going through the whole Bible looking at the big picture of God's plan of Redemption. This month we came to the events of Pentecost and we spent couple of weeks talking about the Holy Spirit and His work in the lives of us Christians. Even thought this is such an important topic, for some of our students, this was the very first time they heard that every Christian has the Holy Spirit (...if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. Romans 8:9) and about the different roles of the Spirit in our lives (He teaches and reminds us - John 14:26, He convicts us concerning sin - John 16:8, He guides us, He speaks to us - John 16:13-15, He empowers us- Acts 1:8).
It was a joy to see some of the students really "getting it." Please join us in prayer that we all (both us and our students) would give more room to the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us.
This past Sunday we talked about the "four pillars" of Christian church as we find them in Acts 2:42 - "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." We talked with the youth about how our group is or is not like the First Church in these four areas. You can pray with us that our youth group and our church here in Lviv would grow to be more and more the way God would like us to be.
Here is a picture from last Thursday… (review, working with a Bible timeline)
One of our students, Pavel, enjoying a little birthday celebration at our house. We offered to take him out for his birthday but he said he’d rather come to our house. So he got to enjoy some homemade cake and homemade strawberry shake and got to play chess with Tomasz.
For more recent pictures, you can go to our gallery (http://www.chmiels.com/gallery) and click on "Spring 2009".
We also thought you might again enjoy some short videos from our ministry:
TO SEE VIDEOS IN BETTER QUALITY, PLEASE CLICK ON THE "HQ" BUTTON THAT APPEARS WHEN THE VIDEO IS PLAYING!
- Typical Sunday Meeting:
http://www.chmiels.com/video_sunday_meetings.htm
- Talking about God's plan of Redemption:
http://www.chmiels.com/video_plan_of_redemption.htm
- Thursday Bible Study Group - Review:
http://www.chmiels.com/video_timeline.htm
- Thursday Bible Study Group - a fun game at the end of our meeting:
http://www.chmiels.com/video_nerviky.htm
- Thursday Bible Study Group - a "counting-fingers game":
http://www.chmiels.com/video_counting.htm
For more videos, you can go to
http://www.chmiels.com/videos.htm
As you know, in just 8 days we will be traveling to Poland for the delivery of our Baby Girl. For those who like pregnancy pictures, you can check out our baby page at http://www.chmiels.com/baby_chmiel.htm :-)
Please pray for us as we travel to Poland. Pray for a safe delivery and for a quick process of getting all the needed documents and a passport for our girl so that we can return back to Ukraine soon.
You can also pray that, if that be God's will, that we would be able to find a car that would work well for both our family and our ministry. We have been looking since October 2008 but so far we have not found anything that would be both a good reliable car for the bad Ukrainian roads and also would fit within our price range.
Thank you so much for standing behind us! We appreciate you so very much!!!!!
Tomasz, Miriam and Baby Girl
