Youth & Children's Service at Perechin--Week #2 Preparing for Special Service With Puppets

We had a very busy day yesterday as we continued to prepare for the special service next Saturday (March 5th), when we will host a time to honor mothers and present the ministry we labor for at Perechin. In the later portion of our time we have been taking some of the youth and children with us to go out into the community to find and invite people to come to the service. Vita had made some very nice invitations that we had printed at a local photo shop on nice, attractive photo paper.
We had told the children to come earlier than usual because we wanted to share a hot dog (they call sausages) picnic with them. So we arrived about noon and Stopia and Tim built a fire on the snowy ground. Soon the youth and children came. We had 14 come, a few less than last week, but we thought it was a good turnout because it is the second week that the public schools have been closed due to a high number of students out sick with the flu. We had a nice picnic--inside! We had hot dogs, bananas, hot tea, and cookies. Because we cannot always read what kind of ingredients are in the food we buy, we had a little humor in our picnic. Some of the boys mistakenly put on huge globs of mustard for their sausages, but did not know (nor did we really) that it was really hot horseradish mustard. Their faces were beet red and tears were streaming! But they were not alone. Tim also was getting a bit red. We knew when we bought that mustard that it contained horseradish, but we did not know how much. We learned!
We continued during the afternoon to build on the wall partition and stage for the puppets. Stopia worked with those youth who will actually perform the puppet drama also.
After we had finished the preparations for next week, we (Stopia, Cheryl, Leah, Tim and 11 youth/children) went out to walk the residential streets in Perechin. Surprisingly, in spite of the cold and snow, we found many people outside, including numerous children. We had so much fun as we had a traveling snowball fight progressing as we went. Some of the boys kept attacking us with those frozen projectiles. Tim got bombarded so much that he warned them that if they did not stop that the next one was going to be licking some snow. They thought it was funny and poor David got to lick some snow. It was all fun and even David was laughing.
We met many kids and even one little, lonely girl was sledding on her steep street. All our kids with us made an instant friend of the little girl and were soon sharing the sled she had. Karolina, one of our youth girls attempted the ride on the sled from the top of the steep street and crashed about middle way in the ditch. But thankfully she was okay. Zhanna is a gifted and natural evangelist in friendship. Soon she had the little girl talking about our services. See the picture below.
Please pray for our special service this next week March. 5. We still must go back in the middle of this week and finish some preparations. But pray this will be an opportunity to touch more lives. The youth and children we labor for have been having a great experience and pray for them that this is a blessing in their lives.

Youth preparations for March 5 special service

Yura, Tim and Stopia building the puppet stage

The traveling snowball fight and inviting in Perechin

Zhana (in the foreground) got beat by 2 boys inviting 2 girls

The best way is experiencing your youth befriending and inviting others. Here is Zhanna at her best. Karolina is the girl pulling the sled and getting ready to go up the hill she came down and crashed.

Test at Practical Christian Class #5--Kamyanitza

Last evening we presented the first test to the students in the Practical Christianity class. We had a total of 17 students/auditors for the class. Fourteen students finished and submitted the test. We thank and praise the Lord for these students and this tremendous opportunity to engage this ministry. We view this opportunity to teach as a wonderful opportunity to build connections and strengthen the faith in these youths. You may see in the photo that most of the students and visitors are youth-aged, but a few come every Thursday that are in the mature category of age. These are just as interested and engaged in the class as the youth but perhaps they are not completing all the assigned studies nor taking the test. But of the 17 present last evening, 14 did take the test.

Practical Christianity students during their test

Continuing Language Studies

We continue to meet with Snizhana, our faithful and patient language tutor, twice weekly. мы повторим грамматику, учим новые слова и читаем тексты. инкогда мы рассказываем о нас жизни. (We review grammar, study new words and read texts. Sometimes we tell about our lives). Our progress may be a little each time, but it is progress! We find that we are able to communicate a little more each day.

Week 5 Christian Ethics Class

Tim met with the students for the Christian Ethics session last evening. The class subject addressed objections to situation ethics found so pervasively in modern society. The specifics are too technical to present here, but objection to situation ethics is fundamentally based against the arrogance of modern man to attempt to establish an ethic without the objective revelation of God. Society is permeated at every level with a purposeful rejection of an ethic based in the reality of the character of God. This rejection, then, permits a man-based conception of ethics. Unfortunately, this leaves mankind with a huge problem because man in finite, thus limited in his ability to distinguish right from wrong in many situations. He/she just does not have all the faculties and data to determine properly in every situation. Instead, he/she many times will chose to determine what is right based on what seems to be selfishly beneficial. It is also very subjective, thus relative to a person's opinion to what is right or wrong. This means that society is left without absolute standards to determine moral circumstances. It's back to the conclusion of Judges: "Every man did that which was right in his own eyes." And we realize that what was being revealed there was the absolute chaos and wreck Israel had become (and would further deteriorate) because of their rejection of the standard of authority God had ordained. Relative, or situation ethics, ultimately destroy a society. There cannot even be true justice since every person's concept of what is right or wrong would be personal and independent of any moral standard. But the arrogant person lobbying for ethics in society at every level without absolutes, and therefore nor pattern for justice, would be outraged to be discriminated against, slandered, violated, robbed, or worse. At this point he/she wants to dispense with relativism and situationism and scream an appeal to a standard of objective justice.
Well sorry to get carried away, but our classes are stimulating for students and teacher as well.
Kolya, one of our students brought a guest with him last evening We were delighted to have Natalia, a co-worker of Kolya's at the Nehemiah Christian Center. Natalia teaches English. We pray that more interested Christians will become curious and involved in our classes.

Not Perechin Ground Level--Uzhgorod Sky Level

We have the opportunity to see some interesting sunsets and sunrises here in Uzhgorod. This is due to the fact that there are plenty of clouds (and moisture) in the sky to make kaleidoscopic views. This photo was a view we had one morning this week.

Youth & Children's Service at Perechin--Preparing for the Puppet Show Service

Today at the service we combined the time we would spend separately with the youth and children and began preparations for a special service March 5th. March 8th is Mother's Day in Ukraine and we are preparing to have a special service that day. We want mother, and even fathers, of the youngsters we minister to to come and join our service. We are also extending a broader invitation to those we are meeting in the neighborhood at Perechin. We were so encouraged to have 16 youth and children come today. Two of these were visitors.
Stephen and I worked with the boys to begin building a blind wall and stage for a special puppet show we will have on the special day. Cheryl and some of the girls began making beautiful colored flowers from paper which we will help to decorate our wall, etc. The puppet presentation will feature a story about obedience. We are praying that the service will not only invite those to participate in our weekly services, but to witness to the mothers what our services are about.
After our time working on preparations inside, we took about eight of the children with us and went on an adventure in the streets of Perechin to hand out invitations Vita had prepared. It was quite an exciting time traversing the neighborhood with eight energenic children.
Below are photos of our time today.

Cheryl and girls making flowers

Tim & Stephen helping boys build puppet partition

The boys getting right on in there!

That's a mighty big puppet in there!

Passing out invitations in the community

Here's a couple of boys in front of the apartment house

Leah and girls lead the way

 

Practical Christianity Class-Feb. 17

Tim met with the students at the Kamyanitza church for the fourth week of the Practical Christianity class. There were thirteen student attending the class this time. Tim presented to them brief topics about the Importance of God's Word and How to Study the Bible Devotionally. The students were taking notes diligently and handed in their first assignment. This consisted of a reflection of their reading and devotional experiences. This was to conclude with the production of a brief lesson they could teach on the things they had learned. In the weeks ahead they will be doing this type of assignment each week.