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