Highlights of the month

Some of the highlights of the month are;

We got to see my sister and family (David's) in the process of adopting a child here in Ukraine. I won’t go into all the details but we were able to meet them in Kiev before we went to Yalta for the conference. It was good to see them and be the first ones to welcome them to Ukraine. Then on the way home to Kharkiv we were actually able to see them again and meet my new niece whose name is Arianna Renatta Schlabach at an orphanage in Simferopal. She is 8 years old and a little giggle box and lots of fun to be with. We are so happy for them and it will be really cool for us when we go to the states and get to see here in her new home.

The Yalta Conference which is not the one that happened at the end of WWII! Look it up in your history books, but this was the one we did at “Fathers Love Church” in Yalta. There is an update on here about it so I won’t repeat ourselves but it was an encouraging time for us. Stressful but a blessing all the same. This does seem to be the way it is for us when we are obedient to God. It is tough but always good and the reward is always more than the sacrifice. Doesn’t really make sense to our natural minds but these are God’s ways and not ours.

We will be having our first “outreach” group on Wednesday of this week which will be the end of January. We felt that it was important to start this month and as you can see we are making it by the end of the month. We should have somewhere around 10-15 people in attendance. We decided to start out small and have this only by invitation for the first couple of meetings to see how it goes. We have been afraid that we would get overrun by people wanting to come and not be able to handle that many people in our small apartment. Due to some recent events that I will not get into here, we believe that other places etc will start to become available for a larger type of outreach. Good things are happening and we are grateful to God that He allows us to be a part of it.