THE STEPS OF THE RIGHTEOUS ARE ORDERED BY THE LORD

That particular verse from God was made real in a new way once we hit New York on Sunday. Our flight home was cancelled due to bad weather so we had to pay for a hotel for the night at our own expense because the airline said they could not control the weather. So that was the first test, then we arrived early the next morning to catch our flight home only to find out it was delayed by several hours. Then were told that it was approaching and then next thing we know it was cancelled. So we began the long process of trying to get home on another flight. Anyway, to make a long story short, the airline sent us to Atlanta and then home to Cleveland. The fist flight from New York to Atlanta was supposed to leave at 2 but after we boarded they found a dent in the cargo door so we sat in the plane until after 4 when they finally let us leave. Anyway, we got to Cleveland by 9 p.m. but our luggage did not make it so we are waiting for them to track it down. We do know it made it to New York.
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All in all though this trip was the most fruitful we have had. We have learned many lessons from the Lord the main one being that our peace and joy do not depend on our circumstances or location or whether or not we have our luggage. He has been so faithful the whole time and we could sense His anointing and grace each time we got up to teach. We added up our time there and between us we taught over 44 hours in two weeks in Ukraine and around 25 in Romania. That is more than Wayne preaches in our church for a whole year. Add to that 3 or 4 counseling sessions each day and no wonder we are mentally tired. Thanks again for your support both financially and prayerfully.
*It is good to be home. We will try to post the pictures within the week so be sure to check back.
*Blessings to you all. Wayne and Sherry

Bittersweet

That is the word we would use to describe the end of our mission trip. The last day is always mixed with different feelings. The people become family during the week so saying goodbye is hard. But we took pictures and prayed for each of them and many of them wanted to email us so we have those addresses to add to our collection. The teaching today was good. We dealt with teen rebellion and how to begin the healing process. Many of the kids here rebel and go into the world big time because of all the legalism in the churches. But God dealt with hearts and many of the parents were repenting for the way they have "ruled" their kids instead of loving them and training them so the day was good. After the seminar we had 3 different couples who wanted counsel so we met with them and are finally done. We will go to dinner and fellowship with our friends Vasiko and Tanya and then come home and pack. We will be able to rest tomorrow so we will be ready to start the trip home with rest.
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Please pray for us as we leave that the fruit will be lasting and that lives will be changed and that those who attended the seminar will spread the truth to their villages and cities and God will be honored. We would also appreciate pray that our trip home will be good. Leg room and flights on time would be good. Thank you to each one of you for supporting us through prayer this time. We felt it daily and stayed in perfect health the whole trip.
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Love you all, Wayne and Sherry

The Day That Never Ends

This has been one long day. We started at 6 with prep for our session, taught that until lunch time then met with a couple from Sasha's community. The problems these people deal with are so serious that it is imperative that we give godly advice. This particular couple have been married for 12 years and the wife has epilepsy and is also mentally ill. She has fits of violence and her poor husband is beside himself trying to help her. Sometimes she takes knives and threatens to kill herself or the kids or her mom. It is a very serious problem. We spent almost 3 hours with them and were able to help him see how to minister to her as her protector. Sasha and Lena stayed in the room with us so they could learn and were a great help since they are friends with this couple. We finished with them and then had another apt. with someone we meet with each time we are here to do some follow up counseling. Then ate a quick meal and off to do an evening teaching session at one of the local churches. God is so faithful. The pastor had asked Wayne to teach on the family and picked the topic ways parents provoke their children to anger. Thankfully he was prepared with that teaching so with our busy schedule we were able to commit it to prayer without a lot of study. After the meeting the people had lots of questions. Oh and a lovely woman we ministered to 8 years ago was at the church to surprise us. It was so good to see this sister. She and her daughter were in our first marriage seminar here when her daughter was just engaged. Anyway, it is always good to see old friends and hear how the Lord has used the teachings in their lives. Pray for us as we finish up tomorrow. We will spend the afternoon doing counseling, go to dinner with Vasiko and Tanya and then come back and pack to head home. We will spend Saturday in Kosice Slovakia resting before our trip home. Kosice is a lovely city that is quaint and has lots of parks in the city to sit in and watch the birds and just be quiet. We are anxious to get home and back to our family and the church. Hopefully we will see you all this next week.
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Blessings, Wayne and Sherry

Flexibility

That is the word needed for mission work. We are having to restructure our schedule tomorrow and Friday to accommodate 2 families that are leaving early. So we will be meeting each morning to finish up the teaching time and they will do their excursions in the afternoons. Today was good. We laughed alot. This morning, Wayne taught on the Fathers Mandate from the Growing Families Class by the Ezzos, and one of the things in that teaching is that Fathers are to embrace their children regularly. It was fun to watch the men during the break, we looked out in the yard and all the dads were hugging their kids and kissing them. PTL for such quick application to the teaching. They have lots and lots of questions. Sure wish our daughter and her husband were here to answer them all. With 5 kids they have lots of experience. But the Lord is directing this and gave us answers that were biblical and seemed to satisfy. Children all over the world are the same and parents struggle with the same issues.
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Tomorrow after the meeting, we will meet with a couple Sasha and Lena have asked us to counsel and then we will speak at a local church in the evening on family. The time is going quickly right now and we are so ready to come home. Please pray we stay focused on the work here for the next two days so we give our best to these people.
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We also received another invitation to come to a city in Eastern Ukraine. Three pastors who are here want us to come do a city wide meeting on marriage in the spring of 2009,. Please pray with us about all these invitations. The need is so great but time to do it all is not there. We have to hear from the Father on where and when He wants us to go. Thanks

A Day of Rest....NOT

Today we started off meeting with Sasha and Lena again. We talked with them for 3 1/2 hours about some situations in their church. Big problems with people that they don't know how to solve. The families here are so messed up and they have several serious issues in families. So that filled up most of our morning off. Then we had lunch and met with the young couple we met with last night. After that we met with our interpreter for a few hours, she has many questions and it was fun to answer them. We are now getting ready to go meet with our friends Sergei and Natasha. Sergei is our worship leader and we have known him for 7 years. So we will have some good fellowship with them and then hopefully have a little down time before bed. Tomorrow will be full as well since we teach all day. We are really counting the days until we return home. Pray for any missionaries you know since being away from family is the hardest part of what they do for the Lord.
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Have a blessed day.
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Wayne and Sherry

Today started very early and we have been busy all day. The seminar is well attended with 25 people and they have already started asking questions which is good. We are so thankful for all the Growing Kids Training because it gives such practical help that we can refer to in answering the questions. We have one single guy coming who says he is getting ready so when he gets married he will know what to do. Now what woman would not want a man like that? :>) And we also have a lady here from Moscow. The people are paying attention and making good comments. In between the sessions, we have been meeting with people. During lunch we met with Pastor Sasha and Lena. If you go to the archives on the blog you will see their picture from October. They had some questions about counseling a couple at their church so we answered the questions and then spent some time fellowshiping with them. We will spend a few hours with them tomorrow morning since they are leaving to go home in the afternoon. Tonight we met with a young couple who live near the Black Sea. They are part of the group we did the mini seminar with over the weekend, they have decided to stay the whole week so we will meet with them again tomorrow to help them. Meanwhile we are going to try to rest some and then study for Wednesday. Please pray specifically that we cover the parenting issues that will pertain to this group of people. Thanks so much to all of you for your prayer support and comments. We have really enjoyed getting your comments. We miss you all.

Unbelievable Poverty

That title is the only way to describe the place we visited today. The Gypsy camp we went to has about 170 people. Most of them are related and less than 20 percent attend church and walk with God. We will put the pictures on the blog when we return. Seeing is believing. Shacks and squallor and dirt and bugs and sewage and naked children and depression and joy on some faces are words to describe what we saw today. But inspite of all of that, the church was clean and filled with the people who love God. The worship was wonderful and Wayne preached a message titled they will know you by your love for one another. It was a timely message for this particular group according to the pastor. Please pray for these people who are in such desperate need. After the sermon several women came for prayer. They had serious health problems and have no money to see the doctor so they rely totally on God for healing. PTL that we know He heals. We had dinner with the pastor afterwards and he and his wife talked about the challenges they face in this community.
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We got back to the center and finished our mini seminar with the 5 people who came on Friday. Today we talked about issues for singles since 3 of them are singles. We will meet with the one couple tomorrow who are married. So all in all it was a good day. We trust things at home were good and we know that Bill preached a good message since he always does. We are starting to count the days until we return home to our family and congregation. We would ask that you pray for us this week especially that we would be able to find time to spend with each family that wants to talk. We have several friends coming to talk with us on the off days so we will be very busy.
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Blessings, Wayne and Sherry

Saturday

Today has been very busy. We started early with prayer and then at 10 met with two couples and a single woman to do a mini seminar on marriage and prep for marriage. The time went well. We taught on the differences between men and women because they said that the conflicts they have are centered on these differences. Anyway, we did that and ministered to them until 3 and then had to leave to go to our friends house for dinner. Now believe me when we say you have not eaten until you are invited to a Ukrainian home for dinner. You start off with what we would consider a full meal, meat, potatoes and salad and assorted juices. They encourage you to eat seconds and if you do not know better you do, becauseeeeeeeeeeeeeee when you finally finish and are full they bring out another full course dinner with a different meat or cabbage rolls and potatoes. Finally you are finished with dinner and huge platters of sweets are brought in for you. Today we had homemade pastries called Napoleons. They are phillo dough stuffed with rich cream. Also you are given coffee or tea and then when you finish that a huge platter of fruit is brought out to you to cleanse your pallate. We are very full. But the fellowship was wonderful and we were shown several DVDs of family pictures plus an album. It is very important to the Ukranian culture to look at pictures.
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We stayed for 3 hours and have just returned to our apt. so Wayne can study for preaching tomorrow. If you are reading this on Saturday, please pray for us before you go to bed tonite. We have a very full day tomorrow with preaching, dinner with the pastors family and then a meeting with the people we met with today plus preparation for our seminar beginning on Monday. It is so good to hear from so many of you
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Blessings, Wayne and Sherry

Our steps are ordered by the Lord...

Thursday turned out to be busy. We were able to rest most of the day and study and pray then our one evening apt. turned into 3 apts. and we did not finish until after 10.
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Today was the last day of our seminar. Our interpreter came in late and was not feeling well, she stopped in the middle of the first session and said she was sick and had to leave, soooooooooooo we had to find the other interpreter, we ended up with Olya who did a great job but has never done it before. At the end of the time Tanya showed up and took over. Then in the middle of the next session the power went off. What a day huh? Life on the mission field is very unpredictable. But it all turned out well. Today we taught on actual steps to Resolve Conflict, Sex, Peace and Joy principle, Process of change and Biblical finances.
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Oh and I forgot to add that 5 people showed up after a 30 hour trip here and did not realize they had come too late for the seminar, so Tanya asked us if we would do a mini seminar for them tomorrow and Sunday. We will start at 10 am. and then teach until around 3 and then meet again on Sunday afternoon when we get back from preaching at one of the gypsy churches. Please pray for us since we are very tired both emotionally and physically. But God is ordering our steps so we know He will give us the grace.
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The next group of people will start arriving on Sunday and we will start the parenting seminar on Monday.

Wednesday

Well today was the second day of our seminar and we realized we did not update  yesterday. So we will start with that.  We met Valodya and Oxana for lunch and spent 4 hours with them catching up. Valodya was one of our original interpreters 8 yrs ago. We worked with him until 2 years ago when he went with another organization, but we have remained friends. He will most likely go with us to Zhitomyr next spring to do the interpretations.  We  got back and then met with a couple who wanted counseling. It was  good productive time with this pastor and his wife.  We of course cannot give details but  you can ask God to bless them and help them to obey Him in the marriage. 

Today was fun.  Sherry taught on the role of the woman this morning and then did a short teaching for the single man and 4 women who were present.  This afternoon Wayne taught on Biblical love and then started the teaching on  causes of conflict. We will finish this up on friday morning.  The time has gone quickly and we have seen God do wonderful things.  We also received two invitations to come to other cities to do the seminar. One invitation was to a bible school in Kiev with 1500 students and the other was to a city near the black sea.  Both were issued by Pastors and we are asking you to pray with us to see if this is what God wants us to do.  The need is so great here that we need to discern which invitations are really from God for us to accept.  Tomorrow we will meet with couples who want to talk and we will get some rest in between. God bless you all. 

Oh and thanks to those of you who are making comments and writing us, it really makes the time go faster. We also want to thank the people who gave us money to give away, we have been able to bless several people so far and they are  blown away by the Lords provision for them.  You all are part of what we do in a great way whether you pray or give.  

Hi everyone, Day 1 has gone well. We have a diverse group of couples of all ages and 4 single women and 1 single guy her with his fiance. They were attentive and excited about what they were learning. It is amazing to us that people here have not heard the truth of the word on marriage. In the U.S. we have so much available to us and we don't' realize how blessed we are as a people. Wayne taught on the purpose of marriage today and the role of the husband as a servant leader and lover. Sherry will teach on Wed. and will cover the role of the woman. Please pray for each couple. WE have already started counseling them and have an apt. tonight as well. Today, Tuesday, we are going to meet with our dear friend Valody and his wife for lunch and then will come back to our apt. to study and prepare for tomorrow.
On a personal note, we apparently had a wee beastie visiting our bed each night and we would wake up with bite marks on our bodies that were swelling, but when we would turn on the light, no beastie. So we prayed last night before we went to sleep and wallahhhhhhhhhh no bite marks last night. PTL and we got a good nights rest.
Thanks for all the prayer.

A Day of Rest

Hello everyone,
Today we have had a lovely rest. We spent the morning with the Lord and studied and prayed and then around 2 Tanya and Vasiko came for a visit and brought Wayne a birthday present and sang Happy Birthday to him. They are good friends and it was fun to catch up on what is new since October when we last saw them. Maria their little girl is now walking and is so cute. We said goodbye to them and Sergei our friend from Khust was walking in the door so we took him to the cafe to share an ice cream sunday with Wayne and me to celebrate his birthday and once again we sang Happy Birtday to him. Then to make the day complete we were in our apartment and the phone rang and it was our daughter calling from church and the WHOLE congregation sang Happy Birthday to Wayne and then applauded and whistled why the two of us sat there with tears running down our faces. You will never know how much that meant to us, thank you to our precious church family, it is an honor to serve such wonderful people. Tomorrow we start our seminar at 10 and would appreciate you praying for us throughout the day that we hear clearly from God on what to teach each session and that the people who come will be blessed. So far there are 40 preregistered and more will most likely just show up. That is the Ukranian way. God Bless You all. Wayne and Sherry

July 6, 2008

Glitterfy.com - Glitter Graphics

Happy Birthday, Pastor Wayne!!!!!!!!!!

A country of contrasts

Romania is a country of contrasts. You can be riding down the road and pass lots of new modern buildings and then right in the middle of one is a shack or a family riding in a wagon with a donkey pulling the cart with cars passing them by. Needless to say the country is in major transition with becoming part of the Europeon Union. The economy is going crazy and the people are really struggling to make ends meet. Costs are soaring but pay stays the same. Pray for these people. While the country is in transition, so is the church. The Hope of Life church where we have been ministering was founded with young people under the age of 18. The growth a few years ago was amazing as over a 100 young people came to Christ. Now those same young people are getting married and having babies which is changing the church in many ways. Our main mission this past week has been to help Pastor Mihai and Eliza plan for these changes and train them to counsel etc. It has been a rich week of fellowship with them and the other friends we have made here. Gaby and Adina were a delight to be with also. They are working with the new teens coming to Christ. We have been asked to come back again in the spring to do more training in counseling so that they can help the couples have strong marriages. Thank you all for praying for us.
We arrived in Uzghorod today after sitting at the Slovakian border for over an hour. We will begin our marriage seminar in on Monday. We need a bit of a rest right now since we have worked non stop since leaving home. Soooooooooooo tomorrow which is Waynes 61st birthday, we will rest and start our prep for monday. We will try to update every few days at least so please keep checking back for new posts.

Ukraine

Mom and Dad should be travelling to Ukraine today and will arrive tomorrow, the fifth. It looks like the weather will be a little bit cooler. Good for Dad. Mom LOVES the heat. Please pray for strength and clear direction from the Lord. Constant counseling can be very tiring. They love it, but it can and does drain them.
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Dad's phone that was dropped in a puddle (wouldn't you all have loved to have been there for that!) is working again. Thanks to those who prayed and praise the Lord for answering.
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Blessings,
Jen

Romania

Hello everyone,
Praise the Lord this is the first time I am able to post. We have been so busy but are really enjoying our time with the saints here in Tirgoviste. Pastor Mihai is a blessing and is so teachable and hungry. We have spent each morning with He and Eliza while they are asking lots of questions on how to minister to their congregation. Most of the questions are dealing with how to counsel the people they care for on a daily basis. We have been able to share from our 23 years of ministry experience, be assured that we are sharing more from our mistakes in ministry than from our success :>) . In the afternoons and evenings we are meeting with other leaders in the church doing some marriage counseling and giving other advice. It has been productive and encouraging to be with these young men and women. Gods family is the same everywhere and we are so blessed to be able to be a part of equipping His servants. Continue to pray for us as we travel around also. The drivers here are crazy. The other day we were almost in a head on collision and daily driving on the streets is a challenge. They do not have the same laws here as we do in the states. For that matter we wonder if they have any traffic laws.
I will post again as soon as I can. Blessings to you all. Wayne and Sherry

Dad and mom called today via Skypes. Apparently, Dad dropped his cell phone in a mud puddle last night and it will not work now. They are waiting on a new battery. Please pray that it will be working soon. They got out of the traffic jam within 7 minutes of calling home for a check in/prayer on Monday. I am sure God can fix the phone as well!
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Things are going well and they are having a good time with the people. Please continue to pray for safety, health, divine wisdom.
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Jen