With us in the temptations…

Don’t fear times of trial and testing.  Don’t fear the wilderness.  God knows what you can handle and won’t let you be pushed beyond that (1 Cor 10:13).  He wants to use those times to grow you in many ways (James 1:1-4).  Remember that He will be with you in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4), and you, in Christ, never are forced to sin (Romans 6:12-14).  Christ has already walked through the temptation (Mark 1:12-13, Matthew 4, and Hebrews 4:14-16), and He will help us (Hebrews 4:16).

– Mark 1:12-13

Growing in Faith

So… these past two weeks have been amazing. I’ve been hanging out with the CCBCi students from Indianapolis, and we’ve been doing outreach. It’s been great in many different ways, and I’ve grown from being with them.

The CCBCi guys and I hanging out in Kharkiv
One of the ways I’ve grown is in my faith. Now, I’m a planner. I like to think that God’s given me the gift of administration, and I’ve seen Him use that gift in my life many times. On the opposite side of that, I also have a tendency to freak out a little bit if things aren’t planned well, or, if they were planned, if things aren’t going according to plan. God’s used the Bible college students to hone that a bit during this trip.
Adam Tudor… being Adam… 🙂

One day, Mike Pratt, my pastor here in L’viv, asked me to get the students organized to pass out as many church invitations as we could. It was a holiday, so there were literally tens of thousands of people walking around the streets of downtown L’viv, and we had printed 10,000 fliers to pass out. As I began to arrange everyone, I got a little frustrated. To say it briefly, order was lacking and time was against us. I began to fear if we would even get a quarter of our fliers passed out. However, by the end of the day and without much personal effort, we’d passed out about 6,500-7,500 fliers. God reminded me that this is His ministry and He’s the one that takes care of it.

Playing games at the pizza party

Another example of this was today. We were planning a pizza party for the students we’ve met at the L’viv Polytechnic University. We’ve been helping to teach English there for the past few days, and we’ve met many students from the university. One thing after another stressed me out, even up to me almost getting run over by a car about a half our before I arrived to the church for the party. The worship team and I prayed about it when I got there, and we just trusted God.

Honestly, I don’t believe tonight could’ve gone better. People were ministered to. I believe lives were touched. The topic I taught about was dating, and four people came to me afterwards and asked me questions. Please pray for those folks. It’s three girls and two guys, and they were all asking about whether or not you should have sex before marriage.
The Bible college students did great. They did skits, played games, and just hung out with people. I suppose the only thing that would’ve excited me more tonight is if we had done an altar call and everyone in the room got saved. They did all hear the Gospel, though, and some of them heard it twice.
Thanks, God, for exceeding my expectations. You are an amazing God, and I am super happy that You allow me to be a small part of Your plan to that Your Good News to the world.
Thanks God,
David Snead

Important Prayer Request

Please pray for a homeless friend of mine that I met on the street about a week ago.  I’ve seen him almost every time I’ve been downtown in the last four or five days, so I’ve gotten to talk to him a little about God and stuff.  I think he *might* come to church tomorrow, but the chances are slim.  Let pray him in!

A Friend on the Fence

It’s pretty cool how God can open doors in different ways.  A few months ago, I joined a website that helps you learn different languages by hooking you up with native speakers of that language.  A guy messaged me on that site, and we’ve been talking and helping each other ever since.  He’s from Ukraine (pretty close to where I live, actually), and he speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and a little English.  He wants to learn English so that he can move to Australia to study and be an architect there.  That is his dream.  I’ve been helping him with his English and he’s been helping me with my Ukrainian.

The other day, he and I were talking, and we started talking about what I do for a living as a missionary and the different religions in the world.  As the conversation progressed, he came to the point where he admitted that he was a sinner and that he knew he was going to hell.  He said that he knew that God was giving him a choice, and that half of him wanted to choose God while the other half wanted to continue in his life of sin.

Please pray for him.  I believe he’s so close to where God wants him to be.  He let me pray with him at the end of that conversation.  I prayed for his studies, his travels, and his relationship with God.  Thanks a lot!

The Two Andrew’s

Please pray for two guys I met Saturday while coming home.  Both are really nice guys, and both are named Andriy (Andrew is the English version of their name).

One’s a Jehovah’s Witness and he works out at the gym that’s across the street from our church.  I met him while we were both walking toward our bus stop.  He was just asking me if I knew where one of the buses go, and then we started talking.  Later in the conversation, he said that he’s actually a teacher in his church.  I’ve been praying since I met those other two JW’s on the street for some opportunity to share the Gospel with them.  Please be praying, ’cause this could very well be my chance.  Imagine – how many people in a very Catholic city like L’viv want to have ANYTHING to do with the JW’s?  I want to be one of the few that reach out to these guys.  Now, there’s a lot of different things that could go wrong with this relationship, but imagine if this guy got saved…

The other Andriy is just a nice guy on the bus that we met as I was struggling through having a conversation in Ukrainian.  He randomly translated a word for us, and I later asked him, “So, you speak English?” and we started talking from there.  He’s a programmer, and I’m hoping he might be able to help me with the website, but, more than that, I’m praying for an opportunity to share the Lord with him.  He did seem to flinch a little when I told him I worked for a church, but he kept on talking with me and gave me his card.  He might start coming to our Thursday night English film club.

Please be praying that the enemy won’t hinder the work that God wants to do with these three instances on Friday.