As you may read this note this morning in Naples you may note I am far far away in a distant land know of as The Ukraine. When you get home today, you can go online and ‘Google’ ‘Calvary Chapel Ukraine,’ and you will have some idea where I am and what I am up to. (I am traveling with Bill Goodrich, who is Senior Pastor of Horizon Christian Fellowship (a Calvary Chapel ministry,) in Indianapolis, IN.) www.horizonindy.org
We have traveled here for a leadership conference, and for the opportunity to visit each of the missions teams presently located in The Ukraine. They are: The Morrisons, Chubiks, Pomeroys, Pratts and Wardens, along with Nate Medlong, Marilyn Gibbs, Vanessa McElroy, Jonathan Markey, and George Markey’s remaining family, among others, I’m sure. Some of you may know the name ‘George Markey.’ George was led by the Lord and proved instrumental in the founding and growth of the Calvary Chapel missions movement in the Ukraine and Russia, and all the missionaries here today are a result of the groundwork he laid by the power of the Holy Spirit. George Markey originally came out of Bill Goodrich’s church in Indianapolis.
We are visiting such cities as Svitlovodsk (the Morrisons,) Zaporozhia (the Chubiks,) Kharkiv (Nate Medlong and the Pomeroys,) Poltava (Marilyn Gibbs and Vanessa McElroy,) Kiev (the Markey family,) Dnepropetrovsk (the Pratts,) and Simferopol (the Wardens.) There may be more or less, but rest assured, we are moving our entire time here.
As you read this, I’m not sure where I’ll be – save for somewhere in The Ukraine, a vast bread-basket of a land bordering Russia and Belarus, Poland, Hungary and the Black Sea. This was the land Hitler invaded and destroyed, crossing victoriously until miraculously stopped at Leningrad, by of all things – the severe weather. (God.) The Nazis were frozen, tired, and hungry before they were finally militarily defeated. Some of the greatest brutalities ever perpetrated on mankind happened here in The Ukraine, as two gruesome and godless societies faced off.
What am I doing here, instead of being where I belong – there with you? Well, by the time you read this, I may be wondering the same thing. But our mission is to serve and encourage, and I have come particularly in a servant role, whatever that may be. I am certain to enjoy the fellowship, and the presence of the Lord, which is notable in parts of the world which were formerly behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, and have suffered so greatly under the heel of nationalistic atheism. Can the ‘fishing’ possibly be good here?
I’m here to find out - and to answer this scripture passage, (which interestingly we covered in church last Wednesday evening,) Mark 10:29 … "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel's, 30 who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time--houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions--and in the age to come, eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first." - Pastor Bill
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