Ukraine Update 1

Members of the Baptist Church eat their own children. It sounds like the headline from some sort of April fools day newspaper edition, or the title to some horror movie but it isn’t. It is a statement that was made by the Russian propaganda machine during the days of communism. And while those days of the communist Russian government are gone (at least for now) the result of that propaganda still has an effect on church growth today. It’s just one of the obstacles that churches face in trying to win new members to Christ these days.

I’ve been in Kiev, Ukraine now for four days. Dave and I have been attending an ECC conference for the European and Asian leaders. There are 25 participants representing the countries of Spain, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Estonia, and Kazakhstan. As always, I’ve been taking lots of photos and running the electronic equipment for the conference. Today I compiled all the presentations and handouts that have been given and put together a computer CD for all the guys to take home with these electronic documents on them.

I’ve also been video taping testimonies from the team members. I came in thinking that maybe the testimonies might be a little less dramatic here than they are in more impoverished countries like India, Burundi, Mozambique, etc… The perception being that God seems to work more in countries that have less. That’s not been the case, however, and I’ve been amazed to hear what God is doing in this region of the world. In my next post I will share a couple of those testimonies.

Yesterday our group of 25 people attended a local church in downtown Kiev. I think we were slightly overwhelming to the small congregation of 40 people. After church our group went to lunch and then wandered the streets of Kiev doing some shopping and sight seeing. As soon as we stepped out of church it started snowing. Having packed only a light weight jacket because of luggage restrictions, it seemed a bit cold to me. The snow was beautiful, but made picture taking kind of difficult. All in all though, it was a great day.