The Vision trip
Karlos and Ruslan
I just returned from a trip into Ukraine with my missionary friend Arden and a mission director from a church in Atlanta, GA. It was a "vision" trip for Dan, and Arden and I were opening up some new territories for him. We first met with 2 pastors in Debrecen and discussed ways to enlarge an existing church and then drove on to the Ukraine where we stayed in the guest house of a girl's home. This is a very special ministry, "The Good Samaritan Reformed Church Home for Handicapped Girls". Besides the house for the 70 girls, there is a guest house, a bakery and a bio-farm, a small lake, a swimming pool, horses, pigs, cows, chickens and a "guard" duck.
Marte, the young, anointed "pastor" and Laci-baci the director showed us all around and told us about the wonderful cooperation between the village, the local reform church and the Dutch reform believers who envisioned this place 12 years ago. We were there to see if they could use a construction crew or a group of ladies on a mission and yes, there was plenty of opportunity.
Arden and I had met Marte in a divine appointment getting off the train in Csop on a ministry trip in February. An interesting note, although this village is in Ukraine it keeps Hungarian time (an hour behind Ukrainian time) and everyone in the village (and in the home) speaks Hungarian. It also has 2 names - Nagy Dobrony (Hu) and Velecky Dobrony (Ua).
We then went on to Mukachevo and met with two dear gypsy brothers Ruslan and Karlos. These young men (27 & 28) are the up and coming leaders of the gypsy Christian community. Ruslan is a missionary and Karlos a youth leader and associate pastor of the church. They showed us their newly built bath house. What a great job they did on this. They have men's, women's and family shower rooms all beautifully tiled. Most of the gypsy tabor (camp) is without running water and most of Ukraine only has running water at odd hours during the day. There is an old bath house in the town but these people are not well received there. So, these young men had a well dug and now have an unlimited supply of water! They also sell soap, shampoo, and hot & cold drinks. They have plans for the sauna to be finished and need help to complete the 2nd floor which will be a cafe. They also need some help for their youth center. We then visited their church which was the first built in this region for the gypsies. It seats about 130 and is way too small. (250 kids alone). Earlier this month, I attended a service there which had to be held outdoors to accomodate our team, a Dutch team and the congregation. We were blessed to be able to all worship together and thankful it was a beautiful night. :-)
Arden and Dan are now on their way to Serbia and I meet them again in Budapest on Sunday to show Dan the "potato room", our partly renovated meeting room (with sleeping space) in mid town. Then we travel to Diosjeno and look at the possibility of bringing in a construction team for the retreat house. We are wanting to add a bathroom upstairs and finish off that space. Also, we need to add some drainage ditches to keep the foundation dry.
Please join us in praying that God will give Dan wisdom in which projects to commit to and then the teams and finances to follow through.
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