Khust

I had just finished working on a blog post, for almost an hour, with wonderful pictures and a complete update on our time in Khust, but when I went to post it I was told by one of those little boxes that the cookies had made an error and I could not post it. :>(((( I have no idea what that means. So here is our report without pictures. I will post pictures as soon as I get the problem fixed.

Monday we traveled by car for 2 hours on the worst roads you can imagine to the city of Khust. Bumpy ride took on a new meaning as we traveled. Khust is in the mountainous region nearby.
The church there surprised us by providing a beautiful hotel room that was paid in full. Pastor Vitaly and his wife are ministering in the states right now so we were met by his associate Valerii and his wife Murusa. I don't think I have spelled these names correctly but it is the best I can do at the moment. Anway, they provided wonderful hospitality for us while with them.

At dinner, my jaw was still hurting and I could not put my teeth together because they would not fit. So I was not able to eat much. I had mashed potatoes and soup while everyone else feasted on the best looking food I had seen so far this trip.

Monday evening we met with around 40 people (couples + singles) who came to the marriage seminar. PW taught on 10 values for a successful marriage and then we answered questions for 35 mins. The people are so teachable in this church and they love to ask questions. We answered quite a few during this time. We originally came to this church in 2001 when the pastor was only 20 and had just been there for one month. We come here once a year to minister. They always want teaching on the family.

What are the chances that a dentist would be sitting in the meeting? Well with God all things are possible. A dentist who specializes in jaw problems is a member of this church so when the service was over he took Sherry to his office and fixed her jaw. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. She was then given strict instructions not to eat anything that had to be chewed for the rest of the week so that the jaw could heal fully.

Tuesday was a full day with counseling from 11 - 5;30 and then the meeting with the youth at 7. There were almost 40 young people attending. We had a list of questions that they had sent us so we started by answering those questions and then had planned on a teaching. God had another plan. The kids kept passing papers up with more questions about relationships. The questions were pretty deep and showed a lot of thought. They wanted to know about dating, broken hearts, loss of purity, celibacy, divorce etc. We ended up spending the whole 2 hours answering these questions (over 20 in all) and finally the pastor had to tell them we did not have time for anymore. As we would take them to the word for the answers, these young people would lean forward to be sure to get every word. Many of them were taking notes. We saw a real hunger in them for truth. God is so good.

We left for Uzghorod around 9:40 and arrived back here at Nehemiah at 11:30. A long day for sure.

This morning we had an appt. with a gypsy lady whom we had counseled in March. At the time she had been seperated from her husband and wanted a divorce. Of course we counseled her against that and gave her some biblical solutions to reconcile with him. Well today she showed up with her husband because they wanted to share with us how much we had helped them. They are now working on their marriage and are very happy. Praise God, he gets all the glory. It is stories like this one that keep us coming back. Because this lady is in ministry and she will not use the principles we taught her to help others and it goes on and on.

Please continue to pray for us as we minister. Tonight we will be at another gypsy church doing a marriage and family teaching and then we will go to an English school to converse with the students so they can practice English.

Please pray for a lady in our church who had brain surgery yesterday to repair an aneurism.

With Love,
PW and Sherry