We Were Looking for Little Boy Dove

While in Ukraine back in 2007, Zack and I spent time with our American friends who work in Ukraine. One Sunday morning they took us to their church - a beautiful, well-furnished building with a good-sized congregation and rather comfortable seats. Great music, great messages (yes, SEVERAL sermons were preached!), and great people.

Later that day, we rode the rough roads to a nearby village. We went into a small music school building that the local congregation rents for Sunday services. We sat in a room without heat (it was about 35 degrees F outside). Most of the congregation either walks there or asks for a ride from one of the few members fortunate enough to have a car.

Just a few days earlier, their seaside town was hit by a strong hurricane. Much damage had been done to their meager dwellings.

And yet, when prayer time came, a few things stood out to me: 1) Before anything else, they asked if they could prayer for us and our adoption. 2) They named so many reasons to praise God before asking for prayer for how they would rebuild after the storms. 3) Some looked weary. Some were in desperate need of a bath. Others had probably never seen a dentist. And yet, each and every one was so obviously filled with joy that can only come from our Savior. 4) They were being ministered to by a man & his wife, both whose backgrounds were steeped in traditions and political themes common to the area prior to Ukraine's independence.

How had this couple come to know the Lord? Years earlier, a group of evangelical workers came to his town to show the Jesus film. They were looking for translators and his wife signed up. In the midst of her translation, she realized that she wanted to know this Jesus. She surrendered her life that very night. And the next night, she brought her husband. The same thing happened for him: that night, he turned away from his former life and embraced the cross. He became a pastor, and began sharing Jesus in small villages through this area of Ukraine.

We walked away from that experience, our eyes opened to what it means to be on mission. We saw the domino effect of ministry work. We saw what it means to die to self, to leave everything you've known behind, and to wholly surrender to God. Through our American friends and through this Ukrainian pastor, we saw a picture of the Great Commission in action.

And we began to wonder, albeit in a very small & almost insignificant way, that maybe there was something we could do...