The Naughty and the Nice

Once again during this Christmas season, we have read many articles and watched TV Christmas specials decrying the commercial nature of Christmas and trying to determine what is the real meaning of Christmas. This morning in Norway, in the Christmas Day worship service in the Kragerø United Methodist Church, the pastor, Harald Olsen, made an interesting comment about that icon of Christmas materialism, Santa Claus. Everyone knows what Santa is about. He has a twice checked list of all the Nice and Naughty Children, bringing gifts to the Nice Children and a lump of coal in the stocking for the Naughty Ones. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? Shouldn’t only the deserving be eligible to be on Santa’s list for a gift?

But that is the exact opposite attitude God has in gift giving on Christmas: God’s gift, Jesus, is expressly for all the Naughty Boys and Girls, to give us the opportunity to reconcile ourselves with God and the world around us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. No one is so naughty, so poor, so lost, so unworthy, so sinful to be ineligible for God’s Christmas list. God seeks us all and rejoicing is heard throughout heaven when anyone of us takes the Gift.

Merry Christmas! And may you be an instrument of delivering God's Gift to the world.

Sergei

We finally heard about Sergei. Sergei is the young man who had been coming to our street children center for a number of years but is now in prison, serving a too long term for minor theft. The story of his trial is in our last newsletter. In Ukraine, if you are accused of a crime, you are held in a holding center for those awaiting their trials. There doesn't seem to be concept of bail. If you are convicted in the crime, then you will continue to be held in the holding center until it is determined to which prison you will be sent, depending on the severity of your crime. You cannot visit or officially communicate with a prisoner (read here about unofficial communication) until they are assigned to a prison. And notification of which prison they are in is only given by letter and the letter at last arrived.

We heard rumors that Sergei would be going to a prison near the airport, which would have been great for visiting often, but in fact, his prison is near Rivno, about 200 miles from Kiev. By Ukraine standards, this is not too bad, since the policy is reported to be to send the prisoner as far away from the place they committed the crime as possible, reputedly to break up criminal connections. So now we await more information so we can arrange a visit.

Busy Fall

Time has flown as we have had many trips outside the Ukraine this fall. Now I have just returned from a 1 week trip to Switzerland and Germany where I was involved in two meetings: One was a 2 day meeting with three other missionaries to look over the new mission initiatives of GBGM which have begun in the last 15 years in order to review their strengths and weaknesses and discuss how we as missionaries could use our experience to help make upcoming mission initiatives better. We met in Interlaken, Switzerland, a very pretty place.

The next meeting was in Braunfels, Germany, where all the District Superintendents of Europe met with their respective Bishops in discussing the future of the UMC in Europe. Assisting us was Bishop Shnase from Missouri Conference who gave us lectures on the Five Principles of Fruitful Congregations: Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-taking Mission and Extravagant Generosity. The discussions were very much in line with the other conferences and meetings where I have been this fall. Now it is time to implement these ideas! It is great to be home in Kiev. Here is the Braunfels town square:

Here are a few more pictures from the trip. But our trips are not completely over for 2007: Helen left this morning for Moscow to attend the Eurasia Episcopal Area Financial Committee as the Ukraine and Moldova Annual Conference representative.