We are so grateful to our Troy family for all of your prayers and the contributions of supplies for this year's Ternopil VBS! We've included a couple of videos in the report below.

The Slavic World for Christ (SWFC) ministry, which is under the oversight of the Minter Lane church in Abilene, TX, asked us to travel to Ukraine this summer to help evaluate how they could continue to support the work and facilitate the transition of Sasha and Olya Kolosha into their new ministry roles. The following is a summary of the report that we provided to SWFC.

Church Leadership

In addition to Volodya Prylyudko and Ihor Derkach, who serve as elders, a number of young men participate in service and teaching ministries. This allows them to have a different person preaching every week of the month. In the current rotation are: Volodya; Taras; Sasha Kolosha; Ihor; Dima Levenets. In addition, Sasha Ozhynskiy, who is 21 years old, has begun to lead prayers and to give short encouragements during the meetings.

Olya Shandruk provides much of the organizational impetus behind the children’s ministries, and Valya and she also help to spur on the women’s ministries, which includes a weekly Monday Bible study. Many of the young people are also involved in the children’s teaching: Lilia Pastushenchyn, Yulia Dzivulska, Dima Levenets and others. These are all young people who themselves were part of the children’s group years ago.

A significant difference on this trip was that I was only asked to preach one time and did not do any teaching during the week (other than the VBS) as I have on other trips. This spoke to me of the confidence that the church has in their own members. It also gave us the great chance to sit in on the teaching of men such as Sasha, Taras and Dima and to hear how God is blessing and leading them in their understanding of the Word.

Sasha and Olya Kolosha

This godly couple has moved from Kiev to Ternopil to work with the church and to begin the transition as Volodya phases out of his leadership role and Sasha takes on some of those responsibilities. Olya is a former member of the Ternopil church and was a good friend of Nadya after they were both baptized in their late teens. She met Sasha in Kiev and they have both been involved in ministry work as a Christian couple.

Nadya and I enjoyed spending time with them. They have passion for the work and have a great rapport with the church. Sasha is easy-going with a good sense of humor, and his leadership is respected. He has a heart for encouraging and mentoring young people. Olya has a lot of ideas for ministries and has initiated the restart of the Saturday Bible Club to begin in a couple of weeks (an announcement was made to the VBS attendees and their parents). She has a heart for children’s ministries and an especially tender place for orphans.

VBS Report

It was a great week and a successful VBS. The theme was the Ten Commandments from the perspective of how they lead us to Christ. We had a little over 40 kids on the first day but were up to 60 by mid-week. It was conducted from 10am – 2pm Monday through Friday. The crafts and “Smile Store” items sent by members of Minter Lane and Troy were a great blessing. Olya told us that even had they been able to acquire all of the supplies in Ukraine, it would have required great effort and a lot of expense. In many cases they would have had to travel all over the city to get the right quantities, and they probably would have had to order additional supplies from “nearby” (within 2-hour drive) cities.

There were many volunteers besides the teachers who contributed to the week’s success. We were really impressed by the whole-church effort. Quite a few of the volunteers also brought friends who helped. This included the considerable setup and cleanup efforts, the daily snack and meal preparations and the frequent errand-running.

Let’s Start Talking

The Ternopil church is really excited about this ministry to teach English using the Bible. They periodically host a team of volunteers from the U.S. It has had great results. I could hardly believe how well Sasha Ozhynskiy (he met me at the airport) could speak English, and he told me that it was a direct effect of the LST program

A couple of parents whose children attended the VBS were asking about English courses. Although there are no plans at this point, Sasha Kolosha has said that they may consider supplemental classes taught by Olya and some of the other young people who know English.

Bulletin and Website

The church produces a monthly bulletin which contains reports on ministry activities and synopses of the sermons preached during the month. They may also include poems or other contributions from members. This bulletin is used in a variety of ways, including as an informative tool to people who may want to know more about the church.

Dima and Taras are interested in developing a website that would be geared toward local outreach, such as information about the church, online publishing of the bulletins, etc. Their observation about the current Ternopil Church website is that it is geared more toward reporting to American supporters and therefore is not an appropriate representation to Ukrainians. The plan would be for the Slavic World for Christ website (slavicworld.net) to have a link to the Ukrainian site.

Prospects

We were very encouraged by the growth and maturity that we saw in the Ternopil congregation and look forward to remaining in contact with them until our next opportunity to visit again. We were able to establish good lines of communication with the Koloshas and can see how God has raised up a group of dedicated followers to continue spreading the gospel in western Ukraine.