This week we are at a youth camp in the Czech Republic. As we mentioned in our earlier updates, we are organizing this camp together with a youth group from Oldrichovice (Czech). At first we were really disappointed when instead of ten students from Lviv, we ended up bringing only three. But we are very grateful that those three can be here. What a blessing to see the Oldrichovice youth witnessing to our students!!! What a mature group of young people they are! It is so exciting for us to see our three girls from Lviv being part of this healthy group for a week. 
We pray that God would use this camp to do big things in their lives and that they would then pass it on to the other students in Lviv.
The three girls from Lviv that were able to come (from left to right): Ira, Katya, Yulia
Here we are presenting a little bit about our Lviv group during Oldrichovice worship service
A short video of the youth playing a game (one person is trying to get a seat and everybody else is moving trying to always fill the empty seat) http://picasaweb.google.com/chmiels05/HannahDvacatyctvrtyTyden5Mesicu#5397957801580929058
The hard thing about our last couple of months is that it feels like we are traveling all the time. In the picture below Hannah looks happy helping Daddy drive to camp but it is not always easy for her to be traveling all the time, not to be home when it is her bedtime, to be passed around from one youth group girl to another because they all want to hold her etc. But we praise God for His protection during our travels and for helping Hannah deal with all the constant changes fairly well.
Before going to the Czech Republic for the camp, we traveled to Odesa to a youth ministry conference. It was Hannah’s first time on a train and she did really well during those 12 hours of travel.
The conference was for people interested in youth ministry from all the German Lutheran congregations all over Ukraine. It was good for us to be there because we wanted to meet these people to see what our role could be in the future, how we could help them in their ministries. We would love to see healthy youth ministry grow in the Lutheran church in Ukraine. Right now there is not much youth ministry going on in the German Lutheran church at all. Pastor Gross (from Odesa) told us that there are really just two functioning youth groups in the whole denomination, one is in Odesa (where the denomination headquarters is) and one in Lviv (ours). The rest of the people who came to the conference were somehow connected to working with youth but they did not do this on regular basis (they maybe go to a camp as counselors in the summer or help prepare a Christmas program or something but they do not work with the youth regularly during the school year).
These were some of the conference participants. The guy in the blue shirt (third from left) and the guy in the yellow and black T-shirt were speakers from an organization called “Youth For Christ”. They were not Lutherans but we really enjoyed their seminars. It was all Bible-based and Christ-centered. We pray that healthy seeds were sown. It would be wonderful to have people like this, on fire for the Lord and excited about youth ministry, also in the Lutheran church in the future.
At the beginning of October, “Thanksgiving Day” is celebrated in the Lutheran church in Ukraine. Here is a picture of our youth group in Lviv singing and sharing Scripture during the Thanksgiving worship service. If you would like to hear the students sing, you can click here http://picasaweb.google.com/chmiels05/LetoAPodzim2009#5388740701017138338
In our last email update, we asked you for prayers for our visa renewal situation. At first it looked like it would all go really well this year. We submitted all the needed things and the lady in charge kept telling us that it would not be a problem to receive a one-year visa renewal and registration. So even though they charged us almost three times of what it cost last year, we were really thankful that it would be done quickly and without any problems. But then when we went to pick up our passports with the renewal stamp, the lady told us that it was all complicated, things had changed and blah blah blah... In short, we did not receive the visa renewal. What she did was she registered us for three months to her own home address (without our knowledge or consent!) and told us that we need to go to a Ukrainian embassy somewhere outside of Ukraine and again try to apply for a religious visa there. So after we come home from camp, we will again be gathering documents and then we will have to travel to Krakow (Poland) to apply for a new visa. And only after that we can again try to register... It is really disappointing but we guess those are some of the “joys” of missionary life. :(
We cannot write more now because we are still at camp and there is not very much time for email or anything else besides camp program.
Thank you so much for all your prayers.
Blessings,
Tomasz, Miriam and Hannah
