05/09/2009 - Like a blur

The past 3 days just whizzed by so fast that I can't even recall fully what I did Thursday.

I typically meet my friend Zhenya on Tuesday/Thursday mornings before he goes to work and we talk over some tea at a restaurant in the center of town. It is always a great time for me because it is good to begin the day discussing what God is or has been doing in our lives. He's also a big encouragement to me and helps me when Satan is annoying me like the punk he is!

Christina usually goes shopping for groceries so I spend time with Leah after I get back. We decided, as a team, to have our team meeting at our favorite restaurant so lunch was great. The rest of the day I worked on websites while Christina prepared a bit for Leah's birthday party which is tomorrow (Sunday).

Yesterday was a busy day too with worship practices and the lovely revelation that I bought the wrong return tickets for the upcoming conference. Thankfully though, it all worked out so that 4 of us will be traveling home together which is always safer because 4 people fill an entire train compartment. We're also coming home a bit earlier.

That night we had our weekly prayer and praise night. A friend of someone in our church has been coming for the last two weeks and I've been getting to know him. He is a believer, but has a lot of hard things going on in his life right now so it's been nice that I've been able to encourage him a bit - though this is not my gifting, conversation and encouragement.

Today was pretty cool. We had our Jehovah's Witness seminars today and surprisingly 40-50 people came, of which a good 30 or more were from other churches. I personally learned a bit more about the JW's and how their doctrine compares to the Bible. The guy who came from Kyiv to teach this seminar is also teaching tomorrow at the main church service.

After the seminars, we went out for our weekly evangelism, but when we stepped out the door we heard someone crying/moaning. Come to find out, an elderly lady had fallen in our entryway and we tried to help her the best we could. Thankfully, our neighbor showed up after about 5-7 minutes and took over, calling the ambulance to have her checked out and being able to talk to the lady a lot better than us. I pray she was ok - she might have broken her hand/wrist/arm since that was where she said the most pain was.

At the outreach, we had an awesome time again this week with bigger crowds of people who appeared genuinely interested in the testimonies and such. Today there was a threat of rain, but God took care of that and we had more of a structured event with testimonies and different stuff rather than just doing worship. It is truly amazing how open people are here in Ternopil.

Just now I also got off the phone with my parents. It is my dad's birthday today and of course tomorrow is mother's day so we talked for a bit while I worked on the bulletins for tomorrow.

But now I'm too tired to do anything else so I'm going to bed :)

Sorry, no pictures from the JW seminars or outreach.