Chris Zurbach's April update from Ukraine

Happy Belated Easter!

We have just finished a very busy week of pre- Easter Sunday activities and are really thankful to the Lord for how much He blessed us in all that we did. First of all I hope you enjoy the pictures that are scattered about that include a couple of this weeks activities of our Easter service, Easter sunrise gathering at the park at the edge of the city, “Krepost” Kids Club, and egg decorating.

“Miracle Maker” film showing

We were able this past week to show the film, “Miracle Maker” in an elderly living center, a school, the children’s mental hospital, local internaught, and the museum where we have our Sunday service. I was so excited to be able to go to the Elderly living facility where there are about 650 residents. It is an enormous territory that is very reminiscent of Soviet times as the buildings are large gray brick structures and it is decorated just as it had been 30 years ago. We were pleased to see that it was clean and people seemed to be well taken care of. About 80 people came to watch the film and we were able to talk with them and share about how much Jesus loves them.

Some of them were very touched by the film as I think seeing what Christ did, even in clay-mation, is so powerful. Some of the women came up after with tears and said, “thank you”, even though it was hard for many of them to speak. There are also about 20 residents who
are physically/mentally challenged as there is no facility in the Chernihiv State to care for them. After 18 years old this is where they are sent. We are praying that God would open more doors for us to be able to help out there.

Besides showing the film in all those different places we also prepared an Easter puppet show to perform at “Krepost” and the internaught. Two girls in our church, Oksana and Mira, wrote a little scenario and did a great job performing it for the kids.

Easter Sunday
As Chernihiv Church tradition goes we met at the “stronghold” of the city at sunrise to celebrate Easter, drink tea, and eat special “Pasxu” (Easter) bread that people only bake and eat on Easter. There were many people out eating “Pasxu”, eggs, and sausages at 6:00am as
many Ukrainians gather outside the churches there to eat the food they just had blessed by the Orthodox priests.

Our service was later in the day and we were so excited to see neighbors and family of people in our church come. We are now meeting in the larger hall of the museum which is much nicer as it is much lighter than in the movie hall we were in. The lady that works there is now able to see the service from where she sits on the second floor and she was so excited to hear the music and the sermon. She shared with us how amazed she is to see young people that love God and one another. We also had two other women in their 60’s who came and loved hearing the Bible read and taught. We so want older people to be a part of the church as we know that is God’s desire for there to be older and younger people.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about Easter here. We have much to do this coming month as many guests are coming and we are helping house 7 refugees from India as the police have asked for our help in that. Please take note of my new email at the top.

Thanks and Blessings to all of you.
-Chris

chriszurbach@gmail.com

Stowe's Update for March

Hey everyone, I just updated our blog with pictures and info about our recent retreat for Carnaval. It was a great weekend! Our church had a great time together and really deepened some relationships with each other. It was a blessing. Please pray for more maturity, humility, and intimacy with Jesus for our church, especially for our young people.
Check out and blog and don't forget to make comments for us. We really value hearing what you have to say.

In Christ,
Tom and Luciana

stowe.wordpress.com

March update from Balázs and Leah

Our Family

This month has been a very difficult month for us but we can sit back as we reflect with joy and peace knowing that our God is a good Father, He is gracious and so faithful and blesses our lives in more ways than we can number. The delay in the newsletter and lack of photos is due to our computer dying this month. Please pray that somehow we can retrieve all of the data from the hard drive as there was many very important things including all of Ellie’s baby pictures. Please also pray that the Lord would provide a new computer as is it a great need at this time.

Praise God! We were able to get the paperwork we needed and the American Embassy granted Ellie her citizenship. She now has dual Hungarian-American citizenship. We visited Balázs’ mom and step-father this month and had a great time seeing them with her as she is the first grandchild. She is of course continuing to amaze us each day as we realize what a gift she is. One of Balázs’ brothers and sister-in-law is pregnant after trying unsuccessfully for years! Please pray that the Lord would protect her womb and the baby as she has lost three previous pregnancies.

Church

On April 15^th, the head of Calvary Chapel Reaching Europe as well as the regional overseeing pastor will be coming to Pécs to pray for us as Balázs will be taking over the church that day. Please continue to pray for us as we walk on this new path. Also please pray for the pastor and his wife as they pack and prepare for their next steps. The church has had some great times of fellowship this month at our regular potluck and at several other times of meeting.

The Lord is continuing to build friendships and offer healing to those who have been wounded before. Tracy, Leah’s former roommate in Ukraine came to visit and shared with the ladies one afternoon. All of the women were encouraged by her sharing with them and enjoyed the time together.

The college group continues to be a huge joy for us as we see these students desiring to be in fellowship and to study the Word together. Please pray for Balázs and Leah as they individually disciple these students to be ull of wisdom and love. Pray for Balázs as he teaches this group.

We really see a need to have another building to meet in as the toddlers and babies have no where to be during service causing the parents to have to watch them in the halls and miss the studies every week. Please pray for God to provide a place for us to use for church that meets the needs of the body. We also would like to see the church burdened with hearts to pray both individually and corporately at our weekly prayer meetings. Please pray that God would move hearts to pray for each other and beyond.

Outreach

This month Balázs continued ministering at the prison. He is weekly burdened by the depravity of the youth there as well as their seemingly hopeless situations. Please pray for these boys to find hope in our Savior and for Balázs as he tries to show them the way to Him. We were asked to share our testimonies at a coffee shop this month in a sort of forum type setting. We were blessed to see people so attentive and stay after to talk with us. The night was made into a DVD which is now being distributed in Hungary for free! Please pray that God would use this for His glory.

We had an outreach team come from the bible college in Vajta this past weekend and were very blessed to have five Hungarians and two Americans stay with our church body. The team helped in practical ministry as well as building up and encouraging our church as we spent a great deal of time together. What a true blessing the greater body of Christ is!

Other

Balázs continues to lead worship a couple of nights a week and is working with other musicians to raise them up to lead as well. Please pray that God would stir up these people as well as the church as a whole in worship and praise. We and the elders in the church have a vision for pouring our lives into the lives of those in our church, discipling them and allowing them to then disciple others. Please pray for wisdom, direction, and most importantly the Holy Spirit to fill us as we see to do this.

Balázs continues to be challenged as he teaches at the Catholic school weekly. He has a great time but desires to remain faithful in preparation for this time each week. Please pray for his faithfulness. God has been faithful to provide a teacher who can meet weekly with Leah for Hungarian lessons. Please pray that this time would be fruitful, for the Holy Spirit to enable Leah to learn quickly, and for her to be faithful to study and use what she learns.

Update from the Footes

Hello everyone!

We've been in Kagarlyk for a little more than a month now and are back into the swing of things. We've been leading worship together which has been nice. I've been teaching every other Sunday which has been a little rough after being out of practice speaking Russian.

After we got back from America we started looking for a car to buy and finally a couple weeks ago we found one. In what seemed like a whirlwind. We bought it and got all the papers and documents done in about a week. That alone is a small miracle but the fact that we have a car now is a huge miracle. God answered our prayers that we had been praying for about a year now because we would like to be more mobile and be able to visit the churches in Priluki, Nezhyn, Chernigov, and others more often. (we posted pictures on our blog: http://footesinukraine.blogspot.com/ )

Next week is Easter and this year it falls on the same day as the West celebrates it - April 8th. Easter in Ukraine is the one time of year when almost everyone is in some way or other thinking about Jesus Christ. They greet each other all week after Easter with "Christ is risen - Truly He is risen". Our prayer is always that God would use this time to turn people's hearts to Him and that they would understand the meaning of their Easter greeting. Please join us in prayer for the lost in Ukraine this Easter.

Last year we tried to print up an Easter letter and then mail it to every house in Kagarlyk. The first part went well, but the mailing part fell victim to the soviet work ethic; therefore not very many people actually received the letters. So this year we decided to write a small article about Easter and its meaning (the death and resurrection of Christ so that we could be forgiven of our sins and receive eternal life) and buy an ad space in the local paper for it. I've been going around to the other churches in Kagarlyk asking them if they would like to be mentioned at the end of the article as a place where people can come and learn more about Jesus. So far all of them have said yes. Our prayer for this article is that people would read it and be drawn by the Holy Spirit to come to church and find out more about the life Jesus offers, and that they would see the believers of the city united behind the resurrection of our Lord and not divided over small doctrinal differences. Again, please join us in prayer for these things.

Soon we will begin to plan our summer outreaches so please pray that God would lead us as we plan and that this summer more people would know the love of their Creator. Please also keep us in your prayers that God would give us wisdom and strength as we serve, that He would protect us and guide us, and that He would use us to further His kingdom here in Ukraine.

Daniel and Annaliese Foote