Category: David’s Posts

Have you ever thought about how advertising could be a good thing? It could be just me, but the current wrap I feel from pop-culture about advertising and marketing is that it’s an evil corporate infrastructure that certainly couldn’t ever be used by God…

I don’t think that’s true, though! Yes, there are some definite a-moral practices in that industry (and in every industry), but just because you have a degree in marketing doesn’t mean that you’re a servant of satan!

Why am I bringing this to our attention? One of my main ministries here in Ukraine is the Web-Ministry. In a way, you could say that I’m in charge of e-marketing for our church. Another way that you could say that is: my job is to let people know what our church is doing. That’s all marketing is!

This week, we ran an advertisement (shown right) on Facebook to let people know in our city about a baseball league our church put on. And look at the results we got! 8,400 people saw this post! Our Facebook reach (seen below) was almost 15,000 for this week! Almost all of the people that came to baseball practice last wednesday were there because they heard about it on Facebook. It’s proven to be just as effective (and sometimes more than) handing out fliers!

We are gearing up to do another Facebook advertising campaign, which will be much bigger. Please keep praying for our Web Ministry and our church in general. We have a LOT of plans this summer.

P.S. – If you’re a servant-leader at a church and want to talk with me about how to use the internet / Facebook as a tool for the Gospel, I am always ready to give some pointers. You can shoot me an e-mail below:

There are a lot of things going on right now in our church and in Western Ukraine, so much so that it can be easy to forget that just a couple hundred miles away in the same country there is a real war going on. I can only imagine what it’s like for you guys in America, because you’re even further away. It’s almost like God saved this little corner of Ukraine for us so that we and others could have rest from the strange and brutal reality that just on the other side of the Dniper River.

I had a harsh reminder this Sunday of what’s going on on the other side of this beautiful nation. People from Slov’yans’k, Donets’k, Luhans’k and Crimea have been settling in L’viv and Western Ukraine ever since Russia invaded Southern Ukraine. Katya and I believe that one of the reasons it’s so hard to find an apartment for us right now is because of all of the refugees. We even have a few families from over there in our church. A friend of mine from Eastern Ukraine’s dad just died a few days ago while watching their house.

Another friend’s brother was called up to be in the army. His mom has started going to our church, which is a wonderful thing. It’s another example of how God uses suffering in our lives to draw us closer to Him, but she’s really worried for her son.

Please pray for us as we continue to minister to Ukraine in the midst of a time of war. Please pray for our friends from Southern and Eastern Ukraine as they look for apartments, find jobs, and rebuild their lives in a completely different place.

Picture Credit – By US Army Europe Images (Flickr: Field and Situational Training Exercises) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Katya and I have officially been married for 1 year!!! Yahoo!!! We celebrated by eating the piece of cake that we saved from our wedding cake:

Please keep praying for us as we keep looking for apartments. We are supposed to go out and look at a couple more today. These actually look like they would be good options for us except for the price being a little higher. Please pray for favor and that they would negotiate on the price. Please also just pray for wisdom and discernment. Apartments sometimes can look awesome when you go to see them, and then once you move in you find the problems… 😛

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support!

Hey, guys! It’s been a really, really busy few weeks. I got through 2 classes worth of lectures at seminary. Please pray for me as I am working through the homework (I actually took a finally test completely in Ukrainian) as I have a couple of reports to write over the next month and another test to complete by the end of next week.

Today, we are starting to look for apartments. We are working with a local realtor that has worked with us many times in the past. Please pray for us as we search out the right one. I’m hoping to have an office at home this time – that will actually give me an additional tax break at the end of the year, and allow me to speed up my workflow a lot. Right now, living with Katya’s parents, we feel pretty cramped with all of our stuff, and it’s pretty hard for me to work.

Please also just keep praying for us as we start new ministries here. I’ve had some unexpected setbacks with the web-ministry that slowed down the implementation of our web-strategy.