Some of you are wondering what life looks like for us these days. No power outages.

But we are careful when we use appliances and how much. Most things in the middle of the night and we are told to use little in the evenings. We have no shortage of food. Anything that has to do with charging electronic devices, lights with batteries etc—rare. Children are back in school in our city, even though Monday we started with sirens. But the past several days have been quiet. At Dan and Pris’s, regular power outages at random times, 2 or 3 times a day. Praise God they got solar panels installed so in their house they can still have heat and water. Vera sits in the dark most evenings. We are trying to get some things to make her life a bit more comfortable. And it is worse the further east you go.

PRAISE

  • A wonderful testimony from our coworker Maria. She is from a small town near Rivne originally and has family there. There is a small church there and as soon as the war started they began having prayer meetings every single evening! And they continue to do so. Not only do “old” people attend, but young people and even non-churched people. No soldiers or individuals from their town have been killed. And more beautifully many people are coming to the Lord. They had 10 baptisms this summer, and many of these have no Christian background. Praise the Lord! What we want to see happen all across Ukraine.

  • Dan and Priscilla had a Thanksgiving celebration and meal with their church this past Sunday. Over 100 people and they had enough to feed everyone. But especially one of the testimonies touched me. When they asked people to share what they were thankful for, one of their Ukrainian coworkers said—he was thankful for the war! Why? Because people’s hearts are so open to hear the Gospel, and if that is what it takes, then he is thankful for the war! Yes, Lord, thank You that You are working good even with a terrible evil like war.

  • We have purchased a generator! It has not been set up yet. It was very hard to find any. The one we got, which is just to keep minimal things going, like computers, microwave and a few lights, cost $900. The next day the same one from the same seller was listed $50 more, and now it is well over $1,000. So we are blessed to have been able to get it, and when we did. Thank you for praying.

  • We attended a 30-year celebration from a nearby church. We saw that church being built after communism fell. The service lasted 3 ½ hours. 😊 Beautiful choir, many, many songs, many, many speakers, including Abe, and several poems recited. And then a full hot meal for everyone afterwards! Provided by the church. Yes, it is good to take opportunities to celebrate even in the midst of war.

Most of the speakers at the celebration. The mayor was also there to speak but had to leave. 

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PRAYER REQUESTS

  • Abe will travel Friday and return very late Saturday night. These are official meetings with superintendents and their teams from 4 or 5 provinces. Over the coming weeks Abe (and Vera) will present the vision of Centers of Hope the next 4 weekends. Pray that he will find open hearts in this area in central Ukraine. Pray also that the meeting would go forward. Russia continues to bomb infrastructure and seek to create chaos.

  • Those of you who heard Abe speak will remember that he talked about how everyone is focused on the physical war in Ukraine, but that in reality it is a spiritual attack. Here is a brief note from a secular website.

TUESDAY, 25 OCTOBER 2022, 17:46
Aleksey Pavlov, assistant secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has said that Ukraine should be "desatanised".
Source: Kremlin-aligned news outlet RIA Novosti, quoting Pavlov
Details: Pavlov claims that Ukraine has turned into a "totalitarian hypersect" where citizens have abandoned Orthodox values, and therefore "desatanisation" is becoming an urgent issue. Pavlov admits that the exact number of sects in Ukraine is unknown, but "the number is in the hundreds."

Quote: "Using internet-based manipulations and psychotechnology, the new government [formed after 2014 - ed.] has turned Ukraine from a state into a totalitarian hypersect. Moreover, the authorities in Kyiv were the first to turn into militant fanatics whose views are directly opposite to those of normal people.

Incredible! The background is that anything that is not the Orthodox church is considered a sect, as are Baptists, Pentecostals, Mormons. By “hundreds” of sects he can only mean individual churches. There are not that many denominations, nor what we would definitely call sects or cults. The reference to 2014 is when Russia’s puppet president here was dethroned. In Russia the Orthdox church and the government are bedfellows. Dear friends, when you pray for Ukraine’s deliverance, as terrible as the physical devastation is, pray that God would stop the forces of hell from ripping freedom from Ukraine. It is the most spiritually active country in all of Europe. Pray for the war in the heavenlies. Eph 6:12. God commands all the heavenly hosts!

From my Bible reading this morning in Psalm 68. Just verses 1-3 but the whole chapter is certainly applicable to what we face now:

Rise up, O God, and scatter your enemies.
Let those who hate God run for their lives.
Blow them away like smoke.
Melt them like wax in a fire.
Let the wicked perish in the presence of God.
But let the godly rejoice.
Let them be glad in God’s presence.
Let them be filled with joy.

Amen, Lord!

This billboard, which is a few blocks from where we live, says, “I defend my Ukraine given by God.”

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