Greetings, dear friends!
We want to glorify God for His wonderful works in Ukraine and abroad, in which you are also involved through your prayers, heartfelt sympathy, financial involvement, and other ways and interweaving of the Body of Christ from all corners of the world in one common cause of evangelizing all peoples. Please read the short news below about the Christian Mission Hope to People!
«In His name, the nations will put their hope»
Mattew 12:21
Evangelism Through Sports
God has blessed the SKY Christian Sports Team with an eventful summer. At the beginning of June, the floorball club participated in a tournament in Lviv. Then the coaches and some children from the teams took part in the children’s day camp Power Camp, which was held on the territory of one of the Rivne secondary schools. In July, the long-awaited Christian summer camp SKY Summer Camp and a leadership trip of the club team took place, and in August the pre-season meetings of the senior team started.
God also blessed the summer break of the Christian soccer team Nadia. In June, in the village of Krupets the Rivne region, young players had a wonderful time at the sports camp on the theme “Church – God’s Army.” They took part in several competitions, held a charity tournament in support of their graduate who serves in the Armed Forces, and went to spend some time on the lake. Wherever our soccer players went they prayed along the way, had a joint study of God’s Word, and a warm fellowship as the team.
Evangelism to Students and Teachers
Our Christian Ethics Department has had a really hot and busy summer. Arkady Slyoza and Ruslana Kovalchuk gathered a team of volunteers with whom they organized and held four outreach camps. Two of them were devoted to working with children and youth – students and graduates of educational institutions for orphans and children in difficult life circumstances. The theme of these camps is “Ignite Your Love for God!” A Bible study seminar was held for the teachers. In one of the camps for the first time, teachers, who work with children in Christian secondary schools of Ukraine, were brought together. These people, like all others, need spiritual growth, moral support, and rest for the soul and body, in order to start the new school year with fresh strength and to form biblical principles of worldview in their students. In addition, Arkady and Ruslana held mobile exhibitions with reproductions of paintings by famous artists “Jesus
Christ – Savior of the World” in children’s camps and a church camp for people with disabilities.
Evangelism to Children and Youth in Church Camps
A great blessing for our children was three summer day camps on the property of the Bible Missionary Church Community of the Good Shepherd in the city of Rivne. The members of the church dedicated a whole week of their holidays and vacations to spending time with the children. In total, 70-80 children every day had the opportunity to hear the Good News in an understandable language in various forms, as well as to spend their free time in an interesting and useful way. The camps were held in June, July, and August and were verymuch liked by the children and their parents, some of whom started attending church services, Sunday school, and children’s sports teams.
From July 8 to 13, the church held a Christian youth camp Lost in the village of Oleksandria of the Rivne region, where 50 participants reflected on the change of habits and lifestyle in the light of the Bible.
Evangelism to Children in the Churches of our Association
The service of summer outreach camps also continued in the Light of the Gospel Church in Kyiv and the Dolyna Bible Church. Their teams held camps for the children of the village of Lyubartsy in the Kyiv region and organized a children’s Christian camp in Transcarpathia. The church from Kyiv serves in its daughter church and helps to attract new and new people from the village through such day camps, and the newly established church in the city of Dolyna has concentrated its efforts on serving children, youth, and displaced people, who are now most open to hearing the Word of God.
Evangelism through Paintings
Our employee Mykola Nikitin and a team of brothers and sisters from different churches had a blessed trip to various cities in Ukraine with a mobile exhibition of reproductions of paintings by world-famous artists on the theme “Life of Jesus Christ.” In each city, they had the opportunity to encourage the Christians living in the frontline areas, to inspire them to preach the gospel, to testify to non-believers about our Lord, and to distribute some humanitarian aid.
A great blessing was preaching the Good News to many refugees who attend local churches in Poltava, Balaklia, Kamiansky, and Irpen. In Dnipro, they had a special time of evangelism in the city and warm fellowship with our friends who serve in the local church Hope and the volunteer organization On the Shield. Making another trip, they visited the cities of Zolotonosha, Cherkasy, Odessa, Voznesensk, Bila Tserkva, and Kyiv. Many brothers andsisters were encouraged by the Word of God they heard during the exhibition, and after all, the participants themselves benefitted from the trips they made and were greatly enriched with many spiritual blessings.
Evangelism to Military
To support our brothers in Christ who serve in the Armed Forces, as well as to help, encourage, and evangelize our defenders, monthly trips were made to the Donetsk region during the summer. Vyacheslav Arterchuk, Arkady Slyoza, and other brothers took part in them. We continue to pray for victory and peace, but the grief that war has brought remains a pressing issue and the need of Ukrainian society and a challenge for the churches. We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to this ministry, as well as to the widows and orphans ministry that our mission workers participate in. We especially want to mention two brave sisters, Dorothy and Katun, who personally visited Ukraine from the ABEJ church in Tours, France, to support these ministries and encourage Ukrainian Christians.
Mission Service
We became familiar with this French church, namely through the family of our missionary, our Moroccan employee, who is currently serving Arabic speaking people and Ukrainian refugees in France.
Our Arab ministry in Kyiv is also developing. Pastor Rafi is working on the formation of an Arab cultural center, which would become a center for meeting and serving people from the Arab world. Pastor Rafi also continues to serve by preaching the gospel through YouTube and other platforms.
Social media is actively used by our brother Mani for evangelism and training to build up faith in Christ. Through his media platform Face to Face, the brother broadcasts to Iran and several other Persian-speaking countries. In particular, Iranian Christian communities in Turkey and Armenia continue to grow and develop.
We are glad to hear from brother B., our missionary among the Uyghurs in Turkey, who is now successfully learning a new language, getting to know people, and studying the Word of God with them. Their animated discussions go on almost until the morning, and the Muslim men either want to beat up the evangelist because his teaching is against Islam, or they laugh at these things together because they have come to love him and cannot hurt him or do anything bad to him.
In Armenia, our missionaries who serve the Armenian, Assyrian, and Kurdish-Yazidi people also worked fruitfully this summer. Thank God for the first Kurdish Christian church Dawn, in which God raised an ordained Kurdish pastor, brother D., and other ministers. It is not easy for them to bring the light of the gospel to a pagan nation with strong religious traditions, but the Lord is gradually doing His work, saving people from the darkness of their unbelief. Three more families are also serving in Armenia, who took an active part in camps for children and youth, day camps, church outings, and trips to the mountains to the shepherds who live there in summer in tents next to their herds.
By the grace of God, the health of our brother T. improved, and after a short rehabilitation, he was able to return to serve in Central Asia. Praise God for this! Please pray for the adaptation of this elderly missionary couple in a new country.
