Our last post from Kiev for while is today's, as Helen and I are traveling to the US for a couple of Conferences. The first is the Living Faith, Seeking Justice Conference in Ft. Worth TX, sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, where we hope to get some ideas and inspirations for the street children ministry. After the conference ends, we will be in the Dallas Ft. Worth area, then going to Georgetown, TX, to visit folks at the First UMC Georgetown, generous supporters of our homeless children's ministry. Then on Nov 14, we travel to Leawood KS near Kansas City to the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, which is hosting the Russia Initiative Consultation, a gathering of all the US United Methodist churches who sponsor UM churches in the former Soviet Union. A delegation of 11 is coming from Ukraine, so I think we are going to lobby for a change in the name to be a little more inclusive of the countries involved which includes Belorus, Modova, Russia and Ukraine. We also hope to visit St. John's UMC in Houston if we have the time, a UMC church of 9,000 - 3,000 of which are homeless or former homeless. We hope to learn some of the unique characteristics of having a church which stretches across economic classes, like the one we hope to plant in Kiev.

So, on our last day before departure, we took a stroll down the main street of Kiev, Khreschatik, which is closed to cars and open only to pedestrian traffic on Saturdays and Sundays.


A popular live broadcast karaoke-type singalong TV show is filmed here on Khreschatik on Sundays. People are picked out of the crowd to try their luck and people were having a good time as we passed by.

Mini-Grand Opening

Today was the first day in the new Dosvitok children's center! As noted before, we are saving the real Grand Opening when the entire center has been completed, but from today forward the center is open 6 days a week from 10:00-17:00. It has been one year and four months since we lost the lease on our old premises and 6 months and 2 days since we purchased the premises we have now. Our and your prayers have been answered and the ministry can move ahead in a more effective way. Here are some pictures from the first day. The pictures as usual do not show many faces as we try to protect the privacy of the children who are homeless.

You will note that we have two pictures of people playing checkers. Ukrainian checkers has different rules. The pieces can only move forward as in American rules and jumps are obligatory, but pieces can jump both forwards and backwards. Also, when you reach the back row and get "crowned" a king, the king moves like a bishop in chess. I claimed I was new to the rules since I lost both games I played.

Our meetings continue. Yesterday was the Financial Committee of the Annual Conference, today the Administrative Council. Here is Sergei Bogomozyuk, pastor from Uzhgorod giving his best fiscally responsible stare. Valerie Fedorov, treasurer of the Istochnik church in Kiev, sits next to him.


I would have some pictures of the administrative council, but Helen took the camera to the Dosvitok street children center where she and the staff are cleaning up for our opening tomorrow. It is not a grand opening, which we will save when the entire center has been completed, but from tomorrow, the center will be open for the children to come every day! The kitchen was finished at the beginning of this week in the Dosvitok center. For those who are interested in some pictures of the completed kitchen, click here. There are also some other pictures of the status of the rest of the repair work. If you want to compare to what the kitchen looked like before the repair work, click here.

This week is our visitors week, as we are having three conference meetings held at the Ukraine and Moldova Annual Conference Office (our apartment). The United Methodist Women's Council meeting will be held today, the Annual Conference Financial Committee tomorrow, and the Annual Conference Administrative Council on Friday. All of the committee members will be getting nice Ukrainian snacks such as these and will be well supplied with pens, some of which actually write.

Our visitors week started off, however, by a visit from Raiya Pinchuk and Sasha Lutsiak from Chernivtsi, a city in Western Ukraine. Raiya is the wife of the pastor of the church, Alexander Pinchuk and Sasha is the church lay leader. They will be attending the Russia Initiative Consultation, which will be held in Kansas City and had their interview with the US Embassy yesterday. Since they had to be at the embassy at 7:00am, (the embassy processes 200-300 visa interviews per day) they came a day early to spend the night with us. Here they are after the interview, with the smiles of those who have just received a visa.


A common joke about the strictness of the visa application process to get a US visa is that the last Soviet institution in Ukraine is the US Embassy.

Raiya's husband Alexander spent 7 years in prison because of his faith. Actually, it was about 3.5 in prison and the rest in a mental institution. He refused to serve in the Army (Ukrainian Christians from the Soviet period have a strong pacifist tradition) during the Afghanistan war and was asked was it because of his faith. When he answered in the affirmative, he was then visited by psychiatrists. They asked him the standard question in cases such as this, "Do you believe the Holy Spirit speaks to you?" When he said yes, the diagnosis of schizophrenia was immediately given, backed up by the admission of the patient of hearing imaginary voices. He subsequently was committed to a mental institution. Hard to believe this happened only 15-20 years ago in Ukraine. Now Ukraine has one of the best statutes and application of the statute regarding religious freedom among the former Soviet republics.

Yesterday we traveled with Jim Dwyer to Poltava for a worship service. As you might recall from the last post, we were going to have to take the bus back, because there were no tickets on the Express train from Poltava, almost directly east from Kiev. The express actually starts in Xarkhiv, Ukraine's second largest city, so they reserve most of the tickets for people starting from Xharkiv. We found if we bought the ticket from Xarkhiv, even though we would board from Poltava, THEN there were seats available. Tricky, eh? We discovered this from the woman in front of us while waiting in line to see if any tickets were available. We couldn't resist taking our picture in front of a famous persona from Ukraine's Soviet past.
Jim was the guest preacher at the service and we welcomed a new lay missionary who will serve in the pastoral role in Poltava, Irina Malchenova. She has been serving as an assistant to the pastor in the church for the past year and with the departure this September of the former pastor, she has now begun this new position. A native of Poltava, she looks forward to helping the church grow. A few pictures from the trip are here, along with the name of the above persona, if you did not recognize him.

James Dwyer, our Regional Executive Secretary from the General Board of Global Ministries of the UMC came to visit us this weekend. It is always nice to have guests, as we break our routine and enjoy the beauty of Kiev.

James and I are here discussing deep missiological issues in front of the new chairs we have purchased for the street children center.
Tomorrow, we leave for Poltava, one of our churches in central Ukraine in the city where in the early 1700's, Peter the Great of Russia defeated Charles the XII of Sweden, starting the decline of the empire of Sweden, at the time known as the Great Mistress of the North. James will be the guest preacher. Another train ride is involved, this one leaving at 6:30am tomorrow morning to arrive by 10:30 in Poltava. Due to people commuting to Kiev to weekly work from Poltava, we will have to take a 5 hour bus ride back, since the express train is full.

This Ukrainian building technique near our new center caught our eye.

Back from Kerch. Total time in Kerch: 39 hours. Total time on train (round trip): 46 hours. As you can see from Helen, it is important to get nice and settled in on these trips.

It was very nice catching up with old friends while in Kerch for the annual Charge Conference (Methodist lingo for yearly business and planning meeting). Kerch was Helen's and my first appointment in Ukraine and therefore especially dear to us as we lived in Kerch for a little over 2 years. Kerch is the oldest city in Ukraine and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the continent of Europe, around 8,000 years old! We stayed with some friends and right across the road from where they live, a 7th century BC cemetery was recently uncovered, the time when the city was a Greek colony known as Panticapaeum. Our friends were sad we had not been there earlier as during the excavation, when all the skeletons adorned in jewelry were readily available to see. We enjoyed worshiping at our old church and pastor Evgenia Kozarenko was especially proud to show off her first child, Versavia. Here are some other pictures of the trip to Kerch. Be sure and put your cursor on the captions as they expand so you can read more. Also use the "slideshow" option for the best view.

Today we leave for Kerch for their annual Charge Conference. Kerch is where Helen and I began our ministry in Ukraine and our married life. The city is located on the eastern tip of the Crimean peninsula, on a little strait of water separating Ukraine from Russia, and separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. Click on the maps to see them slightly larger. It is also the church the farthest away from us in Kiev, entailing a 24 hour train ride. Kerch does not have its own separate train in the fall and winter, but just two cars which are attached to the Kiev-Sevastopol train. When the train stops in Djankoy, the city at the top of the Crimean peninsula, the cars are detached and wait on a side track for 4 hours until they are picked up by the Djankoy-Kerch train, which tears up the track of the remaining 200 km (124 miles) in 5 hours.
But we enjoy the leisurely pace, it is nice to have time to read, talk and be disconnected from electronic media for several days. The two train rides, up and back can almost be little mini-retreats. We will stay in the home of Olga (not her real name), a good friend of hours from our Kerch days. She has been through a hard time recently as her husband died of cancer last year (only 5 weeks from diagnosis until death) and she now must live with her mother 5 hours from Kerch on the other side of the bay in Russia, who has Alzheimer's and cannot be left alone. Nursing homes are not available. She is coming to meet us as we arranged for some home care so she could have a respite to be in Kerch to see her house and son who is in the seaman's university in Kerch. Pray for Olga and her situation. More on Kerch when we return on Tuesday.

We heard from Sergei today, the young man we wrote about in our newsletter who is in prison. He called Svetlana, our daily director of the center from a cell phone. What? Called from a cell phone? In prison? Yes, Ukrainian prisons have some conveniences. Apparently, a cell phone is made available so prisoners can call quickly to ask for the person called to call them back. Sergei was greatly appreciative Helen and I were at the court during his trial, he didn't expect anyone to show up, thought everyone would be angry or wouldn't care. He told us to tell all of you who are praying for him a big thanks, as it means so much to him. Sergei also related that he wished he had listened to Svetlana and us and realizes he made a big mistake. We can't visit him until he is moved from the holding center to one of the regional prisons. We hope it is nearby Kiev; it could be anywhere in the country, depending on the type of prison (strict regime, light regime) to which he is assigned. At the holding center he is in a cell with 50, yes 50 other men. But this seems to be a normal practice in the prison system. Continue to keep him in your prayers, especially so he will not get the drug-resistant TB very prevalent in the prisons and of course, to be safe from violence.

I (Bill) went to a Children-at-Risk Coalition meeting today, a group of Christian ministries that work with troubled children, primarily in Kiev. Helen was having a staff meeting with the employees of our center and couldn't go. Ministries include those to street children, work in orphanages, independent living dormitories for older teens, etc. The director of a ministry named Child Rescue is now the head of the Ministry of Children's Affairs in Kiev. In contrast to previous suspicions about non-governmental orginizations (NGOs) working with children, the government in Kiev is wide open to cooperation with NGOs, secular or religious. This openness is a direct answer to the prayers of our coalition and others.

One statistic that was shared and particularly troubling is that of all homeless children who have been processed through government shelters, orphanages or other institutions, 10% are found to be HIV+. Pray for us as we will encounter this situation more and more in our work.

Helen and I just returned from Lugansk, a city in Eastern Ukraine which has been known for its mining industry. I am starting my yearly circuit of the United Methodist churches in Ukraine to hold what is known in United Methodist lingo as the Charge Conference, or a yearly business meeting where reports of the previous years work of the local church are given and future plans are discussed. Here are some pictures of our trip.

Today is Helen's Birthday! We celebrated by taking the kids out to a cafe nearby in the grand Norwegian tradition of throwing your own birthday party. We deviated from tradition a little bit because we had the celebration on the exact day of her birthday, while Norwegians seem to celebrate their birthday on most any day of the year except the exact day. And more than once. I must admit though, Helen disputes my interpretation of the date(s) of celebration. Here are a couple of pictures. By the way, Helen also blogs for the Norwegian United Methodist Mission website. So all you Norwegian readers, enjoy.