News from Kagarlyk

Hi everyone!

Sorry it's been a while since the last update. I've been updating our blog regularly and I've forgotten to send out e-mail updates.

So here is what has been going on here in Kagy and what we are planning.

Liese and I are still leading worship, I play guitar once a month or so and Liese leads once a month and sings every other week. In a few weeks pastor Wayne and Olya are going to Australia for two months and while they are gone Liese will be leading the worship ministry.

I'm still preaching every other Sunday and right now we are going through the gospel of Luke. I've also been teaching a series of bible studies about the church on Sunday nights. Last fall we started meeting every other Sunday night for fellowship and to talk about the church's vision. After a few months we thought it would be good to have a more in-depth study of what a church is and so I've been teaching those. Please pray for me as Wayne is in Australia this summer because I'll be teaching a lot. Also pray for my Russian - it seems I've been taking steps backward for a couple months now and I'm going to try to start taking lessons again. Oh, and I'm going to start a bible study this summer with a couple young men in the church to study the foundations of our faith.

We (those in our church who want to be part of our summer ministry team) have started to plan what outreaches we will do this summer. It seems like this year we have less time, less people, and less money than in other years so we are praying about how to best focus what we have. Last year's outreaches were really great and everyone who was involved has seen that the fruit that has remained from those events has been in the friendships that were built. So this year we are praying about how to encourage more relationship building and how we can go out to people instead of just inviting them to come to us. We are praying about how to combine the good things that we've done in the past with more personal outreach and it looks like we may do a lot less this year in terms of events but try to be more active in getting to know people as we play soccer, hang out at the popular hangouts, do vacation bible schools, and invite people to youth group and church. Please keep us in prayer that God would lead us.

Since getting our car we've been able to make a trip to Priluki to visit the church there. It was great to see everyone and I got to teach at their Thursday night service. We hope to go out to Priluki about once a month if we can swing it. We have also been up to visit our missionary friends in Chernigov.

This weekend is a conference for all the Calvary Chapels in Ukraine. It is always a good time to see people from other churches that we don't get to see very often and everyone is always encouraged by the fellowship.

That's what is going on with us. Check out our blog for pictures and more on what we have been doing.

Thank you for your prayers and I'll try to send out these updates more often,


Daniel and Annaliese Foote

a new book

Our third book God is the Gospel by John Piper is going to print this Monday. We had some trouble with our first translation and had to completely retranslate the book from scratch, which was a big disappointment. However, I am really pleased with the new translation and very excited about getting the book in hand.

In two weeks there will be a large international Christian book fair in Kiev that we will be taking part in. We are hoping to get the new book out and are thinking now about some marketing methods.

We also decided to print 500 out of 5000 in hard back. Our mission is to print books that are affordable and available and hard back bindings push the price of the book up a lot so we hadn't considered printing hard back. But after seeing how many of our books were wanted by Seminaries and libraries, we realized that there is a need for hard bindings and we are hoping to meet that need with one tenth of our print run. This of course increased the cost of each book by 3.5 grieven (70 cents) which is going to cost us a bit more, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.

We would appreciate your prayers that the book would be ready by the 23rd, the first day of the festival.

Chris Zurbach's May update from Ukraine

Greetings!!!
I really was hoping to get this out a bit earlier but I have a good reason for being delayed. We’ve had many guests this past month and a few hours ago I just sent off the last crew. I’ll get to that
towards the end but before that I just want to catch you all up on what has been going on here this past month. I ask that you pray for our church as many of the young people have been going through a really hard time. One gal in our church just lost her Dad as he pretty much
died from alcoholism and got sick suddenly and died. It has been a hard time for her so I ask that you would pray for Marina as she is home most of the time taking care of her Grandma who just had a stroke and now needs 24 hour care. Yesterday we were also informed that a very close friend to everybody in the church just lost her mom. We all knew her mom as she came to church sometimes. It was very unexpected and related to kidney stones. All to say it is a difficult time for many and it would be great if you could be praying forthe young believers here that they would continue to grow in trusting God in all things.

May means holidays here in Ukraine. Last week we celebrated May Day which is a big holiday here and then yesterday was Victory Day. Everything kind of shuts down in Ukraine when there are holidays so it was a bit complicated getting things done but the flip side is that everybody had some days off and we were able to get away as a church and spend the night at a camp in the forest 20 minutes outside of Chernihiv. It was a lot of fun to get together a build a bon-fire that would set California a flame in 2 seconds. No rules here means - Big Big Camp Fires made up of entire trees that the guys cut down. Not too many environmentalist in this
part of the world. Anyways it was a great time for us to be together and eat borsch.

Visitors
I was really blessed to be visited by 3 ladies from California whom I’ve known for a long time. Sherry Stupar, Karen Stump, and Jenny Schlenker came out to visit to just hang out, see what is happening here in Ukraine, and bring me lots of presents. The present part was pretty overwhelming as I didn’t expect the Women’s Group at my church to come through with Costco size amounts of everything. I think I have 8 pounds of Craisins and enough heavy duty aluminum foil to make my own space station. It was a huge blessing to share my life here with them and for them to meet the people and see what we get to do. We laughed a lot and ate a lot.

They were bearers of huge blessings for Reenie and myself. Because of some generous people that sent over money we are now able to buy a new djembe for the church and some more needed sound equipment. We were also able to visit Priluki to goto a church service and visit Luba and her grandson, Anton (check picture above). Luba was so thrilled to have guests and
just fellowship as she pretty much does not leave the house anymore having become completely blind because of the brain tumor. We also visited Halavin (Children’s Mental hospital), the internaught, our Kid’s Club, and the school where Tracy and I teach English to show the ladies some of the different ministries we’ve involved in and give them a chance to meet people. God really blessed our time with the teachers in the local school as we talked about life, God, and Ukraine.

Up and Coming Events
Please be praying as we have many events in these next couple weeks. We will be traveling down to the National Conference for Calvary Chapels in Kiev then heading over again to Priluki for a wedding of two young people in our church. We also will be finalizing plans for beginning our summer Kids’ Outreaches so please be praying that will be allowed to meet in one of the local parks. We also are planning a conference for singles at the end of July. It will be for all the churches in our region but we will be having it in Priluki since they are centrally located and have the biggest building. Please pray for wisdom as I plan that with Conor and Reenie.

I am also getting ready to go to America for a few weeks to go to a family wedding. I am really excited that my parents bought me a ticket to come back for the wedding as I was not planning on going back till next November/December to visit and touch base with churches. I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I was last back there. I will only be there for a short time so I will most likely not see a lot of people but I am excited to be with my family at my cousins wedding in Tennessee. I think of so many of you often and do pray that God is blessing you and I hope you know how thankful I am for your prayers and support.

Thanks again - Until next month...
Chris

Balázs & Leah & Joelle Stanzel May, 2007

Our Family
The Lord is good to us! We are so blessed to have each other and to have our little girl; each of these relationships make us more fully understand our relationships with and the character of God. Ellie is so much fun to watch as she explores the world (mostly with her mouth!) She, like her mom and dad, loves to be outside and is having a great time now that it is spring. As a family we have had some great hiking adventures as we are so blessed to live in the part of the country where there are hills and trees. We have also enjoyed the outdoors with some of the families in the church- playing soccer in back yards and taking the kids to a farm near us. We are really happy that we have such great friends in the church body.

Church
We had our annual sunrise service for Easter on a mountain top over looking the city. It was cold but very fun to meet together to worship the resurrection of Jesus. We went to one of the families in the church and had a traditional Hungarian Easter food, it was very tasty.

On April 15th, the head of Calvary Chapel Reaching Europe came to Pécs to hand the church over to Balázs. He encouraged the church through Moses and Joshua’s lives about how to respond to this change and he challenged Balázs in his new role. After church, we had a big Mexican food celebration (the day before several of us from the church got together to hand-make 120 tortillas!), it was a great afternoon.

The college group continues to be a great joy and challenge to us. The group is made up of people from a very diverse church background but everyone comes together for the single purpose of knowing God, it is amazing. The group is weekly bringing new people, roommates, classmates, workmates, and we are encouraged by their excitement. Please pray for Balázs and Leah as they individually disciple these students to be full of wisdom and love. Pray for Balázs as he teaches this group and encourages the students to be men and women after God’s own heart. As we have said before, 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. We are planning on meeting with the landlord of our current location to ask if we can have a third room each week. Please pray for them to agree to this and for a new contract to be signed.

We met with the girl who is currently serving as the children’s ministry teacher and addressed the needs in the children’s ministry. She and her fiancé will continue to lead the ministry but they need more helpers to come alongside of them to teach the kids. Also, once we have a third room, we would like to be able to offer child care to the parents during service. Please pray that the Lord would raise up people to serve in these areas.

Outreach
Balázs continues ministering at the prison, he has been burdened for these youth not just now but especially once they are released. Please pray for these boys salvation, and for Balázs as he tries to love them and show them who Christ is for them. Also, please pray for Balázs as he seeks to build relationships with the pastors of other churches so that after-care may be provided to these teens as a unified effort in the city. Balázs was asked to share at one of the university’s Christian clubs. After he shared his testimony, he stayed for almost two hours answering their questions about our lives and faith in the Lord. Some of the students expressed interest in wanting to come to college group for teachings, please pray that they would be encouraged by the Word to follow Christ fully.

Balázs was able to visit a gentleman who used to come to the church but is now in an old folk’s home. He was able to encourage the man and he asked for us to come and read the bible to him whenever we could. Please pray for this man to remain strong in the Lord and for some in the church to have a burden to minister in that place. Leah was able to continue ministering to a woman who is struggling in her walk with the Lord and who is afraid to come to church. Please pray for Viktoria to love Jesus and welcome the body He provides.

Other
Praise the Lord for the elders in the church who are completely behind and desiring to labor with Balázs in leading the church. Please pray for wisdom as they define roles in the leadership and for these men as they seek the Lord for the direction the church should go in. 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.

Upcoming month
We have another team coming from the bible college this weekend. Please pray that they would encourage the church and that the women would be blessed and fed during our girl’s day. There is a youth conference this month that we are sending a couple of our youth to, please pray for them to be challenged in their walks and encouraged by the teachings.