Newsletter September 2007

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! Exciting things are happening in the Ukraine and Moldova Annual Conference. Two of these directly concern the ministry of Bill and Helen in Kiev.

Street Children Ministry

First is our Street Children Ministry, Dosvitok, which means Daybreak. As many of you know, in July 2006, the ministry lost the half-basement it had rented for 4 years. For the last year, the ministry has been operating “On the street” as we searched for a new place to operate. When Helen founded the ministry, it started on the street, so old skills were put to use again. With real-estate property prices in Kiev growing faster than any other place in the world in 2006 and 2007, it seemed as soon as a suitable place was found, the price was out of reach. But in March of 2007, in answer to the faithful prayers of many, Dosvitok purchased a 208 square meter (2239 square feet) first floor of an apartment building in the same area of Kiev as the former center, this time near a lake and park area. The entrance to the new center is at street level, on opposite side of the building from the entrances that the other residents use. There is a fenced-in paved area in front of the entrance which is for the center’s use only. You can see the outside entrance area of the center by clicking here.

The purchase was made possible by a gift from Blacksburg United Methodist Church, covering 1/3 of the purchase price, gifts from United Methodist Churches in Norway, covering 1/3 of the price, and a loan from the United Methodist Church of Norway covering the remaining cost. Completing the purchase exhausted the reserves held for the ministry, but with the climbing real-estate market Kiev and the inability to find a suitable place to rent, the opportunity could not be passed up. The ministry has been blessed though by new donations coming in which are helping to pay for needed renovations and the day-to-day program of the center. You can see interior shots of the building before renovations were started by clicking here.

Renovations have been moving at a slow, but steady pace. The first floor we purchased was an unfinished storage area, so extensive renovations have to be completed before we can open the center to full time usage. A staff meeting was held in the new building shortly after the purchase using plastic chairs set up in an unfinished room. One conclusion of the half day meeting was that the bathroom needed to be finished first! You can see the before renovation and after result by clicking here.

As the rest of the building consists of private residences, Dosvitok wants to be the best neighbor it possibly can be. Therefore, we wanted to not let the children know where the center was located before we were open on a full time basis so to keep down the chances of them hanging out around the building without supervision. A medical team though, from Central PA led by Woody Wolfe, a long time supporter of United Methodist work in Ukraine through the Central PA Ukrainian Initiative, came to Dosvitok on the 18 & 19^th. With the bathroom complete and the main activity hall at least painted, it was decided to open the center for one day only to hold a medical checkup clinic for the children. Two of the “children”, both 18, are a new mother and expectant one in the ninth month and it was good for the doctors to check out them and their baby and baby-to-be. A hernia was discovered on the almost 2 month old (boy), which probably would not have been discovered otherwise. The mother smokes and probably injects a homemade methamphetamine drug known as “vint”, so we are anxious to get the center up and running so as to have these mothers coming to a controlled environment so we can monitor the development of their babies and help them to care for their babies. Nothing else serious was discovered except for the general hazards of life on the streets such as high blood pressure for the smoker/glue sniffers, scabies and bad tooth decay, serious enough of themselves. Click here for some pictures. Note: We try not to show faces of the children for their own protection and safety. Please do not post these pictures elsewhere on the internet. Thank you.

Monday was a sad day for us in the street children ministry. Sergei, one of the children who has been with us since the beginning, now 18, was on trial for stealing a cell phone. One and one half years ago, while a minor, he also was a participant with another young man in a cell phone robbery. Both were caught and while his partner, 18 at the time received four years, Sergei got 2 years probation. We worked with Sergei to make sure he understood that crime was not the way to solve his numerous problems. Sergei’s father died while he was young and his mother started to drink. She sold their apartment for a case of vodka which put Sergei and his two sisters on the street.

Recently things had been looking up for Sergei and his siblings. His older sister received an apartment (from the government) in the village in which they were born and Sergei’s younger sister had been staying there looking after the older sister’s child. Sergei had gotten a job loading and unloading trucks in Kiev to help support himself and send some money to his two sisters. But cell phones are a status symbol and the best models are hard to purchase on a minimum wage job. The temptation seemed to be too much for Sergei.

Sergei was always the first one to greet us when we came to the old center. Laughing and playing around he constantly had his arms around our necks, reaching out for the contact he did not receive much in his life on the street. But today those hands were in handcuffs as he was led to the “cage” in the courtroom, the place in a Ukrainian courtroom where the accused is locked in. He was crying and so were we as the judge asked him, “Where is your father?” “Dead.”, Sergei replied. “I notice your mother was recently released from prison. She broke probation as well.” “Yes…”., mumbled Sergei. “Anything to say for yourself?” said the judge “Please, I’ll get a job, I’ll do better..” The judge gave Sergei a long look, then said, “Sentencing at 2:30pm”, and the courtroom broke for lunch. The guards handcuffed Sergei and led him out, sobbing as he went, but glancing our way under the stern gaze of the three guards. No communication is allowed between a prisoner and anyone else. We came back at 2:30, waited for 20 minutes outside the courtroom, but then a guard walked by and said, “Oh, it is already over. Judge took a quick lunch; he got 4 years 2 months.” So we didn’t even get to wave goodbye. This term was especially saddening when we read in the Norwegian newspapers how a man charged with being an accomplice to murder got 4 years in prison, while a young man Sergei’s age, also a repeat offender, convicted of robbing a cell-phone kiosk in a mall was sentenced to counseling and 58 hours of community service. Sergei will be held in Kiev for one month as they decide to which prison they will send him. After that, once his prison is known, we can visit. Prison in Ukraine is a tough place, over crowded and disease ridden, with no effort to separate young offenders and hardened criminals. In a newspaper article this week about the processing center jail where Sergei is staying until his prison is chosen, the HIV infection rate was said to be 20-25% of the inmates.

After having done the ministry “on the street” for over a year, the negative difference can be seen in the life of the children to whom we minister. The lack of a building has made it difficult to give the children structure and specific Christian and basic elementary educational programs. It is hard for us not to think that if we hadn’t been on the street for this past year, perhaps Sergei could have avoided his prison term. Pray for us as we now have this new center to even more effectively do ministry which positively impacts the children’s lives. Two of our priorities are to develop a program for young mothers at the center and to establish programs which we minister to the whole family, not just the child who shows up at the center. Our staff needs to expand to take care of the increase of children we expect with the opening of the new center.

New Church Start Up.

Bill has been appointed by the Bishop to start a new church in Kiev which will at first meet in the Dosvitok Street Children Center. The vision of the church is to be one which will be open to all, especially without regard to economic class. As any church growth expert will tell you, sociological factors are against mixing economic classes in a church, perhaps even as difficult as having a multi-racial or multi-ethnic congregation. The new church is to be named St. Luke’s UMC and with the inspiration of the gospel of Luke and the call of Christ, there is hope to overcome these natural barriers with the supernatural love of God. This church is being sponsored by the partner church program of World Evangelism and the World Methodist Council in cooperation with the Russia Initiative and special help from Ted and Kay Reissing of Peach Tree UMC in Peachtree GA.

Conference News

One of the biggest events of 2007 in the life of the United Methodist Church in Ukraine has been the Leadership Institute in Kiev put on by the Church of the Resurrection (COR) in Kansas City. COR is a 11,000 member United Methodist Church which holds this seminar on building church leaders and helping local churches reach people for Christ every year in Kansas and attracts more than 1,500 pastors and church leaders from around the United States. We were blessed to have this valuable seminar in Kiev for all our pastors in Ukraine and up to 3 lay leaders from each church completely sponsored by COR. Concepts learned in the seminar were followed up by “homework” for the pastors and their churches, turned in at Annual Conference in July. Every church now has a purpose statement and a pastor with a 6 month preaching plan designed to grow her/his congregation. Other ideas learned at the seminar were also implemented. Continued follow-up will be done as Bill leads the annual Charge Conference in every local church before Annual Conference 2008.

Annual Conference 2007 was highlighted by the entry of a new church into our Annual Conference: The Great Commission Church UMC of Kishinev, Moldova. The church passed their probationary period which is required for all existing churches which desire to become United Methodist with good reports from their mentoring church in Chernivtsi and Bill as District Superintendent. Congratulations to the church and their pastor, Leonard Chernoy. Many thanks for the prayers for our pastor in Sevastopol, Illya Boroxov who was having kidney problem symptoms. The problems turned out to be a cancerous tumor of the prostate which went into the bladder, but an operation removed the tumor and no trace of the cancer has been found elsewhere in his body. Pray for his continued recovery. Two announcements of joy for the Ukraine and Moldova Annual Conference were the birth of the first child of Pastor Evgenia Kozarenko who had a girl, Versavia Denisovich Kozarenko and the birth of a son, Adam Lyubomirovich Rudko, of the associate pastor in Lviv, Lyubomir Rudko.

Prayer Concerns:

Dosvitok: (Street Children Ministry):

- Sergei, for safety from disease and violence in prison. The chance of being infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis and AIDS is high in prison.

- Mortgage Payment - Though we have very good terms on the loan from the United Methodist Church in Norway, we still need to pay it off, pay for the renovations and keep up the daily budget of the ministry.

- Young Mothers Program

- Acquisition of new staff members who are both called by God and qualified.

St. Luke’s UMC in Kiev (new church plant)

- Core leadership group

- Organizational planning before start of public worship

New Church plants which are being planned in the Uzhgorod region and Chernivtsi

Alexander Pinchuk, pastor of Chernivtsi UMC, continuing debilitating back problems

Elections in Ukraine on Sept 30, 2007.

Thanks so much to all our supporters. May God bless you as He blesses us through you.