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“God is good all the time”
Before we left the USA our good friends Dave and Cindy Bargerstock who attend Rivertree church in Jackson Twp. Ohio informed us about a team that Dave was going to be leading over to the Crimea area of Ukraine one week after we would be arriving in Kharkiv. The church has connections with a ministry in the Simferopal (spelling?) area and they were going there to do construction on one of their buildings. Being that Dave and I have been friends since our high school days we thought how cool it would be to come see him when he was there and also to be able to observe the ministry there also. It remains to be seen here why we felt all of this, but let the story continue!

Trip from ????? You can guess!

Well we finally arrived after our trip from ????? you know where!
Just a few details here about our trip to Kharkiv Ukraine from JFK in NY. Just so happened that the day of our departure from NYC somebody flew a small plane into an apartment building in Manhattan. We never received the details about what happened and have not gotten any news since we have been here about it either. But that incident along with bad weather in the area, delayed our flight from JFK to London by over 2 hours. Needless to say we arrived at Heathrow airport in London over an hour after our plane had left for Kiev Ukraine! Well let the nightmare begin. Since the recent problems in London the government has passed a law that lets you carry on the plane at England airports only one piece of luggage. So no laptops and a carryon or no purse and a laptop etc sooooooooo we had to go thru customs and go thru the whole check-in process all over again including making new arrangements for a flight from there to Kiev Ukraine. The only way to get there the same day was to fly to Munich Germany and then catch a flight from there to Kiev. Of course we had our friends meeting us at the Kiev airport that afternoon at 3 pm their time and we would not arrive there until 11 pm. But thanks to those that helped us out we were able to make contact thru USA to someone’s cell phone in Kiev, and were able to get a message to them. So to make a long story short we arrived in Kharkiv on the morning of Friday the 13th rather than Thursday the 12th in the evening. From the time we checked in at NY and arrived in Kharkiv Ukraine it was right around 36 hours or a day and a half! Just a little longer than planned but we arrived safely so praise the Lord! Oh did I mention that one of our bags got left in Munich :-) And oh yeah we went thru security 4 times on this trip including twice in London. We decided next time we fly we will wear our bathing suits and sandals to make it easier to go thru security checks! We did receive the bag on Saturday so all was well that ended well!

God is hiding in plain sight, teaching us to look for him in a different way. God is unpredictable but completely consistent. We always know where we are with God because He never changes, but we seldom know what He’s going to do next.” ~Graham Cooke

We have been pondering this statement since we read it. How true it is!! We think this is what we do not like about God to be honest. He is unpredictable!! This stretches us, challenges us, tests us, and scares us. We like comfort. We like security. We like control. None of this is what we are called to. We are called to obedience. We believe that Obedience is the call of all of us.

Hello everyone
We would like to start this update with a story from Christine about her time of ministry to a woman in the town of Yalta. This lady had come to Kharkiv to get some ministry and while this was going on Christine felt like the Lord was telling her to go there (Yalta) and spend some time with her just loving her and helping her in any way that she could. The following is how this happened in her own words;

We spent 3 days ministering and NOTHING. When I was praying for her at my home in my quiet time, the Lord showed me that she has a block. The block is that she does not believe that He is who He says He is and that she cannot receive love. He showed me that I need to be Jesus made manifest. I need to go be with her. Love her. Do not just read the bible to her; do not try to heal her emotionally, just to love her. When I told her this she just wept. She said that no one had ever just loved on her. So I am going to do, what? I do not know. I will pray and get to know her. When I was explaining to her what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it I found myself saying something I did not understand. But I do now. I totally felt the Spirit on me when I was talking to her. I began to share with her about Gods love. The real love of God that we all have at one time or another had a hard time receiving. I told her about how if she were the only one on this earth God still would have sent His Son to die for her. How it is not about the masses of people. That if our whole life was spent helping, healing, and loving only one person that the Lord had called us to, that it would be enough. It is enough because Jesus character is like that. He cares about each of us so much. Here is what I said that I did not understand until now. I shared about me not being able to have a baby and all that goes with it. I said to her you know if I had kids maybe I would not be here (in Ukraine) and then I would not have met you. You know what. You are worth not having kids for. When I said that I meant it!!! It was only after that did I realize the extent of Gods love in my core being. I really got it!! My life is not my own, my dreams are not my own. My life is the Lords and IF my whole life is about doing or saying or being what ever He wants me to be to that one person then my life is complete. I mean we do not really believe that at all!!!! We are all about the masses. Do not get me wrong the masses are great but what if we only have ONE convert or ONE person completely set free from bondage? Do we think that that ministry was successful? Do we feel like we have accomplished anything? This is not personal against anyone, I am just asking. We do not really believe that one person is that important, do we? It is time we see people with Gods eyes and stop viewing people and ministries in numbers. The Gospel is not a numbers game!!!