Fall 2021 Mission Trip

   Greetings to our amazing friends back home who are praying and fasting for us and waiting patiently for a Blog update! I'm sorry it has taken so long! After meeting with our friends at the airport we’ve had a packed schedule during our first five days in Ukraine. We start early in the morning and usually don’t finish until midnight or later. 

We left Seattle September 29th on an overnight flight to Germany, stayed the next night in the Frankfurt Airport, and boarded another train the following day headed for Kiev, Ukraine. God did one miraculous thing after another as we travelled from Seattle to our final destination on the other side of the world. Upon arriving, it was a joy to have 4 dear friends waiting there for us - Sergei and his wife Lessa and Max and Nastya. We went to dinner together and walked around the city a bit before boarding an overnight train (14 hours!!!) to Chernivtsi. We arrived feeling very weary - but also very blessed by our gracious, loving God and feeling so covered in prayer by our dear friends back home!

We had just enough time to freshen up a bit and then head to Max and Nastya's church to do a young married couple's seminar! And what a joy that was! Jerry shared with the whole group and then we divided up and the men went to be with Jerry and the ladies stayed with Sue for a wonderful time of sharing and fellowship. We thought we would take about an hour, but they wouldn't let us quit for 3 hours! It was a beautiful Spirit filled time! 

Sunday, we started early again.  Jerry was invited to the church leadership meeting and then preached a wonderful sermon. It was a great time with friends in a church that was new for us. After the church service, we met with Zhenya’s family for lunch. It was a difficult meeting because of our heaviness of heart at his passing. Zhenya had advanced leukemia that appeared terminal. God called us to lay hands on him for his complete healing when we were there this past June. Within two weeks, all of the cancer had disappeared, and the doctors were amazed to see that they could not find one cancer cell anywhere in his body and announced that he was in complete remission. We have a video of this miraculous gift. They allowed him to go home, he had a great celebration with his family, and then went on a fishing trip. The doctors could not comprehend what God had just done, so they called Zhenya back to the hospital and introduced him to a severe regimen of cancer drugs that caused his body to begin to bleed internally. Then to address the internal bleeding, they gave him additional medication that caused his blood to clot in the lungs so that it was almost impossible for him to breathe, and he developed pneumonia. At this point they put him in the ICU which was full of covid patients, and after much suffering, God graciously took him home. I don’t believe that Zhenya needed to pass at the young age of 14. In my opinion, this was bad medicine at it’s worst, and for me it is a severe reminder about what happens when we fail to trust God and believe in what He’s already done and what He can do. I know that our young brother is in the Savior’s arms but it is a tremendous loss for all those who loved him.

Monday and Tuesday were filled with meetings that we had with our leadership team here, members of various ministries in the city and longtime friends. Tuesday morning, we flew to Kiev. Feeling a little sad that our time was so short in Chernivtsi and that we were not able to meet with as many friends as we would have liked, even then our dear Lord was SO sweet to us! Standing in line to board our plane to Kiev, we looked up to see the former governor of the region who is a dear friend! God arranged a meeting for us when we couldn’t figure out a way!

Heading from Kiev to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, we are on a high speed, Chinese built train, that will take us to our destination in 5 hours instead of the10 hours on the old Soviet trains. We will be speaking at a regional Pastor’s Conference. Before we left home, Kevin and Sue Hughes gave us several copies of a spiritual warfare book called Pigs in the Parlor that we have used with leaders here, and will be part of our presentation at the conference. God has used this to great effect already.

Thank you again for the fasting that many of you are doing and for blessing us with your prayers! I know that God has so much more in store for this trip – so please stay tuned!