Well as most all of you who would even bother to read this know, we have returned from Kiev in one piece. We are a tattered and torn bunch of missionaries. Despite a rampantly spreading bronchial infection taking out member after member or the team, we saw God move in amazing ways and the willingness of each person to work hard for the greater cause of reaching the people we came in contact with.
I think I can suffice to say that the trip was not exactly as any of us would have planned it, but exactly what needed to happen and undoubtedly a part of God's greater plan. Each day brought challenges of being in a foreign, underdeveloped country in ministry. Whether the difficulty was electrical, the language barrier (we could not even read it to pronounce words due to the cyrillic alphabet) or simply the stress which accompanies working with a team of 14 people (everywhere you go) we consistently saw God move and touch the lives of people we were interacting with.
Our partnership with Nikolay Sychev (a free Pentecostal pastor who oversees 40 curches in the Ukraine) and Andrew (the youth pastor of the church which Nick is personally overseeing) was certainly strengthened and the relationships they were hoping to form and grow with strategic schools' faculty and students were successful.
I think we all learned a great deal about ourselves, how we each operate as leaders and in a group setting and also where we all need to grow and submit our lives more to God. Living in close community with so many people in a foreign country is one of most trying times and rewarding times of my life. I could not have asked for better people to join in the trip.
As a brief overview of the trip, we stayed at an old Soviet hotel owned by a factory. While we were there it was playing host to a few hundred Ukrainian children who live in the Chernobyl "hot" zone - each year the government gives these kids small vacation as a repayment for their families living through such tragedy. We interacted with these kids on a daily basis, and hopefully were able to show them some of God's love, I know they showed that to us. We played four shows, one of which we needed to learn all new "secular" songs for. We were playing at a high school full of English speaking students and the words God, Jesus, Savior, Lord etc, could not be uttered in song. I think we came fairly close to achieving this goal. Our other venues included Nikolay's church for two events, the seminary across the street from our hotel and two outreach events on the street and in the metro tunnels of Kiev. At each indoor event, we had video and art accompanying our times of worship which I think spoke powerfully and added to the message we were trying to convey to the people who would listen. We also were given the honor of speaking at various churches on topics that varied from scriptural sermons, to making healthy lifestyle churches, to American culture.
I hope to post some pictures soon as we are compiling an exhaustive DVD of each photo shot on the trip. I know the Kinney's and my roommate Tim alone had more than 700. I think I will try to narrow it down to 3 or 4 which tell some of the story of this trip.
Until next time, keep praying for God to move in great ways in the Ukraine!
