David & Katya

Some people might be thinking, “Why are you going back to Ukraine? Why aren’t all of the missionaries pulling out of there right now? Isn’t that place a warzone??!??” I understand. The only answer we really have is, “It’s harvest time.”

Before we left, Katya and I were talking with a friend, and she showed us a section of the book “No Longer a Slumdog” by K. P. Yohannon. It was very encouraging in what we were doing. The quote really speaks for itself:

Someone once said, “Harvest is a fixed time.” In my village in India, there are hundreds of farmers. My own brothers are farmers. When harvest time comes, no one goes on vacation. No one says, “Let’s go away for a month and enjoy life; then we’ll come back and do the work.” Why?

Because within a few weeks time, the rain will begin to fall. The season will change, and the entire harvest will be destroyed if it is not brought in. We must never say, “Later… tomorrow… next month… two years from now I’ll be part of the harvest.” The opportunity will be gone.

That quote is exactly what we are feeling about Ukraine – now is the time to be there. Now is the time to go! We were at a church a couple of weeks ago that was considering scaling back their missions to Ukraine because of the risk… I understand! I don’t believe anyone should go and throw themselves in front of danger just because it’s a rush or something. We, as Christians, are commanded “not to test the Lord thy God.” However, as Jesus said, as long as we have light, we need to be at work. In other words – as long as we have the opportunity to get the Gospel out to as many people as possible, we need to be about that work.

Please be praying for us. We just got done with the first leg of our trip – we’re in Chicago – and it’s already been an adventure. 1 canceled flight, 2 redirections, 3 delays, and 1 aircraft maintenance later, we’ve FINALLY arrived in Chi-town, and we’re pretty excited about it. Katya and I are learning to treat things like this as an adventure. That’s not to say that we’re never disappointed, but we’re learning to trust God more with these things.

Some stuff you can pray for:

• Katya’s and my backs / necks already hurt from carrying all of our stuff… 😛 We didn’t sleep that well last night, so that’s probably contributing
• No more redirects / changes in flights… We’d really like to make it to Ukraine on time.
• Our time in Kyiv (the capital city) – we’ll be there for 3 days before we go back
• Just time for us to be alone and rest for a day or two… We’re pretty beat from traveling around the U.S., and we’ll be staying with family when we get to L’viv.

Thanks!

LATER EDIT – Once we flew to Frankfurt from Chicago, we spent an awesome time with a missionary girl we met who was serving in South Africa. She was on her way home to America. We got to buy her some coffee and play Skip Bo with her. After that, we discovered that the Frankfurt airport is a lot like a huge labyrinth. It took us about half an hour to get from our arriving gate to our departure gate, and we had to go through security again.

Finally, once we got to our gate, they discovered that our tickets to Ukraine had been CANCELED! Katya and I just laughed and laughed, taking it in stride. They rushed and rushed, trying to find us another seat, and eventually got us one. My guitar even had its own personal seat in business class. Friends then met up with us in Kyiv and took us to the Calvary Chapel church office where we would stay for a few days before going to L’viv.

Haha… I (David) just realized that I wasn’t very clear as to what church we are going to in our last e-mail newsletter – I’m sorry guys! We are going to Horizon Christian Fellowship Indianapolis. There are a couple of churches that we haven’t been able to visit this trip, which is really unfortunate, because we have good friends at those churches. Please pray that we’ll get a chance to go there next time.