We can’t believe another school year is starting just this week. Please pray for us as we are trying to finish up all preparations... New curriculum, new Bible-reading assignments, new memory verses, new incentive system etc... We have been super busy with that because we had thought that we would have a full-time Ukrainian-speaking (national) helper so we planned accordingly -- leaving all the things that we are not able to do in Ukrainian for him to do. Well, at the very last minute it did not work out and this young man will not be able to work with us this year :( Last year it was the two of us working full time plus we had this young man volunteering couple hours a week which was a huge help, especially with the language side of our preparations. This year we not only have Hannah (which obviously means that we cannot both be working as much as last year) and we are also losing this Ukrainian-speaking volunteer. So please pray for us as we are trying to figure out where else to find some help with the language and also that we would have the wisdom to know what to do and what not to do this school year now that it is obvious that we will not be able to do everything the way we had originally planned it (counting on one more full-time worker).
Having said that, we will keep this update short so that we can get back to work and get everything ready for this coming Sunday.
You can also pray for the fall retreat we told you about in our June update. As we mentioned earlier we believe that this could be a wonderful opportunity for our Lviv youth to grow closer to the Lord or for some of them to get to know Jesus as their Savior for the first time in their lives. Please pray that everyone whom God wants to be there would be able to make it. We believe that we are dealing with spiritual warfare when we start specifically praying for someone to accept Christ at the retreat and right after that, that person starts saying that he/she is not sure if he/she will be able to go.
Thank you again for your friendship and your support.
Blessings,
Tomasz, Miriam and Hannah Chmiel
PS: We also wanted to thank all of you who sent cards and gifts for our Hannah. We sent out thank-you notes for every gift we received so unless you sent your gift just this past week or so, you should have gotten a thank-you note from us. But some people already told us that they did not receive our letters even though we sent them a long time ago :( So we wanted to say that if you sent something to us and did not receive a thank-you, please let us know.
