Warm Greetings to you from Ukraine,
We are
thankful to have this opportunity to send you a warm greeting from
Ukraine. There has been an
overwhelming amount of happenings in this Region since
our arrival in September. Some pleasant
and some not so pleasant; but we are thankful for all of the experiences thus
far.
The people in the region have been kind,
welcoming and extremely generous to us.
There is a universal language called family and children. The people seem to understand and sympathize
with the difficulties we face being foreigners with many little children. Kindness abounds. For that, we thank God.
Our family has settled quite nicely into the local Baptist
church here in this village. We work
together nicely as the Body of Christ should.
The church is willing to help us with our ministry needs and we want to
help in theirs. This is, of course,
because we all have the same goal which is to glorify God and advance His
kingdom. The Body is our true family
and may God’s will be done. Without the
cooperation within the Body of Christ there could not be any effective
ministry.
The Transition Home is coming along and steadily progressing in completion. We have had an abundant amount of visitors. We have people from all walks of life. There have been American missionaries who have found their way to where we live. Also, there are many Sunday afternoons with brothers and sisters in the Lord who come and discuss the past, present and hopeful future of Ukraine. There is also the new Christian brother who seeks fellowship and direction in his young walk. (please pray for him, Andri)
Of course, our most precious visitors are the older boys and
girls (age 18-19) who are aged out of the orphanages. By God’s grace, these young men and women
find themselves at home in our presence.
Although we try to always love them unconditionally, we do find it
spiritually draining and sense the spiritual warfare going on due their long
life in darkness. However, there is
great news to report….The Lord is good.
Here is what the Lord is doing……From almost the beginning of
our time here, Mike and I and our older children have been asking God
to only send those whom He wants at the Transition Home, and to keep all others
away from this house (similar to the way Fran and Edith Schaeffer prayed at
L’Abri Ministry in Switzerland). Because
of this, we believe we see clearly at times how God is working in the lives of
those whom He is sending to the Transition Home. For example, the boys have stopped using foul
language in our presence. There is open
discussion regarding the filth they watch in movies and on the internet. They come to church with us regularly and are
finding themselves involved in the discussions during the sermons. The sermons that are preached are at times
even relevant to the topics we discuss with them at the T. Home. The boys are developing relations with the
Body in the region. As I am
sure you will agree, it is always a joy to see Christ working and weaving His
creation.
There is so much more to say but we do not have the
time. Mike and I and all of our
children, however, want to convey to those of you at home that we came here not
knowing exactly what God wanted us to do.
We were afraid at times and now are still a bit scared of what the
future holds. There were times when we
doubted our decision to come. Yet as
for today, we can all say, we see so clearly that it was the right thing for us
to do. Sometimes God only gives us a
little bit of knowledge to send us in the right direction and we need to trust
that He will show us more as we keep moving along. He is still giving us a little bit of
knowledge at a time, but now we all agree that we realize we trust Him more
than we did 5 months ago. It can
sometimes be difficult to follow God in this way but the relationship it builds
with Him is priceless.
In closing, our family is in agreement that we are glad that
we took this step as a family and we all want to keep listening to Him. We agree that our Great God knows what is
best for us far more than we can ever imagine.
We are making mistakes along the
way, but His grace is sufficient.
We encourage you to seek God and ask Him to give you
spiritual discernment as to what he may want for you and/or your family.
May God’s peace envelop you,
The Murmylo Family
