Author: David

Testimony: Why it’s important to talk to your friends about missionaries

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Katya and I support a local missionary named Oleksandra Andriyashyna, who is pretty well-known among Calvary folks that have been to Ukraine or have some connection with missions in Eastern Europe (she’s the one on the left in the photo). She often writes to us to let us know when she has some kind of need; however, we cannot always meet that need, because we have been having some financial difficulties ourselves—some of our supporters have had to either cut back or stop giving in the past few months, and we have had unexpected or emergency expenses (please pray for those).

One of the cool things, though, is that, when we cannot support and give to her ourselves, we will take the request to our small group Bible study (the picture above), and they have often raised money for her to be able to travel to the front lines in Ukraine to minister from town to town and on military bases. It’s really cool to be the bridge, to see God use someone else to meet a friend’s need and to be the one that He used to connect those two dots.

I say that because we have a need—like I said, we have had some financial difficulties these past few months, and, at least at the time of my writing this post, things are getting worse. Over the past fifteen years as a missionary, I’ve never been in debt for an any extended period of time—we try to be as fiscally responsible as we possibly can; however, there are things outside of our control.

If you would like to help, there are four different ways you can do that:

  • Praying for us—please always do this first!
  • A fast, friendly gift via PayPal (contact us for info on that)
  • Giving online (this will get to us about a month later)
  • Telling others about us (“Testimony”)

If you would like to get my (David’s) personal contact info to pass on to someone else, please click here and send me a quick message—I’ll give you an intro letter and other information that you can pass on very easily.

God bless y’all!

Apartment Repairs update video

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Hey, everyone! Thank you all for praying for our different ministries over the summer. One of the things that we haven’t talked about much that also affects ministry a lot is where we live—for the past several months, Katya and I have been renting an apartment, because our home is under MAJOR repairs (basically a full remodel). The apartment is in a solid building, but it needs major work, as the place was built in the 80’s at the end of the Soviet Union. We started the process at the end of last year, and we’d hoped to be moved in by this month; however, because of delays and lack of funds, we have been set back several months. Here’s a video about where we are now:

Please pray for us, as this process will give us a better place to work, minister, live, record worship songs, have guests over, create ministry materials, etc. Every decision we made about where to put this or that thing had all of that in mind. Please also consider becoming a regular supporter to help us finish, as we have lost some support recently. Here are a couple of links, just in case you’re considering that:

P.S. – We also have a private Telegram group specifically for supporters that we will add you to once you become a regular supporter, so that you can be updated with prayer requests weekly—we try to keep in close contact with everyone that is on our Support Team.

Thank you guys for watching and for praying for us!

Follow Summer Camp 2025

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Thank you all so much for your prayers and support for the camp here in the summer of 2025. As usual, Follow seeks to serve entirely unchurched and unbelieving youth, and I’m amazed every time at how God brings so many every year, primarily through advertising on platforms like Instagram. We basically just put it out there that we are doing a camp in the mountains or at a lake, and God does the rest.

The Follow Summer Camp Team
David roasting hot dogs for some of the campers
Katya and her friend Olya at the art class
David giving a boxing lesson
Another boxing lesson
David preaching on the problem of sin
David playing guitar with the camp worship band

Katya helped with an art class, I helped with English lessons with a guy named Thaddeus from Slovenia, and I even got to give a couple of basic boxing lessons with some practice pads that I recently bought. All of those things were catalysts towards trust and opportunities for conversations about God, truth, and the Gospel. I was also blessed with the opportunity to preach on one of the evenings and to help with worship both during the big evening program and around the camp fire. It was really cool to see how they responded to Christian songs talking about Jesus and His sacrifice.

Katya and I had many meaningful conversations with several different youth there, but the ones that were probably the most impactful were with Vlad, Oleh, and Oksana. Please pray for them and for a girl named Sophia, who actually gave her life to Jesus while serving at the camp!

Looking forward to camp next year!

David and Katya after one of the camp fires

Russian air strikes

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We set up our beds in the hallway when we see that drones or missiles are flying—it won’t save us from a direct hit, but it is much safer for us if one of the surrounding apartments was destroyed.

The past several days have been a bit scarier, because russia has been launching over 400 (sometimes 500+) drones, missiles, or bombs in one night throughout Ukraine. The night of June 28-29 was one such evening, just a few days ago. Russia seems to enjoy launching cruise missiles and suicide drones and attacking the general population around or on national holidays—June 30th was “Constitution Day”, which is akin to the Ukrainian Independence Day. The fact that Ukraine has its own separate constitution apart from russia is offensive to folks like putin and his followers.

Please keep praying for our safety and that we will win this war. As I’ve said many times before, every day we survive, we are winning, as their goal is to wipe Ukraine off the map; however, there are many of my friends that will never see their homes again unless we take back parts of Ukraine that are occupied by terrorists and russian regulars—Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, and Mariupol for example. We have friends or family from each of those areas, and they have had to build new lives from scratch, sometimes multiple times, because of how russia has taken everything from them.

Please also keep praying for the will and spirit to keep fighting and that God would bring national revival to Ukraine both spiritually and socially.

Thank you all for sticking with us and for praying for us! We do see God moving—someone got saved and another got baptized from our small group just a week ago! There is a lot of other fruit in other ways as well—the worship team is growing, we have more opportunities to minister to wounded veterans, and we are exploring ways to serve active military, especially those that are serving and protecting us from our church.

God bless you all!