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John 13:34,35: “A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love another.”

We thank God for your love, prayers and support for us.  God has been blessing our ministry through English Club (EC).  Through EC students learn English and about the Bible also since we discuss life matters from the point of the view of the Bible.  We also pray before and after the lesson.  We began with only 5 members to our worship service but through EC we now have 15 to 17 members.  Since EC is the main resource of attracting new students I would like to explain it further.  First of all, people interested in EC must register on line.  In this way we can screen those who want to attend.  For example, if a person is too old, not a student, we can inform them that this EC is not for them.  But if they are students we advertise an attractive EC for them with native speakers.  We advertise that we are BESTatPodil—B Bible, E English, S Sports and T travel.  Since our EC has grown we have had to divide it into two groups: one led by Maria Joy Peace and the other by M. Maria.

As mentioned earlier we started with only 5 members: Maria, Sarah, Johnny, M. Gemma from Philippines and I.  M. Gemma had problems renewing her visa and had to return to the Philippines.  But God sent the Korean Ambassador’s family with 5 members as coworkers. So we thank God that his mathematics is wonderful--one went away and five more came.  We also thank God for our daughter Sarah who took a gap year to help start our church.  She practically ran the ministry with praise, arranging the worship service area, leading EC and being a friend to our Ukrainian Bible students.  Now she is studying at a community college in Chicago.  But again God showed that his mathematics is wonderful.   When one daughter left two other daughters came back.  Maria Joy graduated from her university in Turkey and decided to help us at Podil.  Christy also took a gap year to help our ministry.  They are a tremendous help serving the ministry with praise songs, computer help, EC, message writing and teaching the Bible.

God also raised up Ukrainians as coworkers for our ministry: Sergiy, Natasha, Julia, Lena, Marina and Mark.  God even sent one of them, Tina, as our first student missionary to Switzerland where she is studying as a Ph.D. student.  Another Ukrainian sister Alyona is also our missionary coworker who studied the Bible with M. Maria.  Now she lives in Miami, Florida and translates our English messages to Ukrainian each week and she studies the Bible with her roommate.  Maria Joy, Christy, Natasha and Julia share a sister’s common life in Podil.  They rent an apartment which we also use as our Bible House for one to one Bible study. In the future we are praying to have our own Bible house in Podil.  Sergiy stays in our home since we want to use it as a brothers common life.  As of now, we are renting a hall at Podil for our Sunday service.  We pray for a Bible house so that students can freely come and go and we can have a place for Worship Service.

In the spring of 2011 we had an EC conference in Odessa.  By the help of M. John Lee we could find a beautiful conference site that also had the most amazing swimming pool.  We learned about the resurrection of Jesus and 15 members from Podil attended, as well as, delegates from Odessa UBF.  In the fall we had a Ruth symposium and sisters in our church shared messages including M. Josephine, Natasha, Maria Joy and Christy.  We thank God for these faithful prayer mothers. Here are our prayer topics:

1.  20 members to SWS
2.  Luke’s Gospel messages weekly
3.  To have our own Bible house in Podil
4.  Raise one Moses of faith from KMA
5.  Ukraine--a missionary sending nation

One Word: Love one another