May Report:

 

We want to thank you for allowing us minister in your church while we were in America. We appreciate the chance to share God's Word and what God is doing through our ministry here in Ukraine. We left Tulsa International airport Tuesday, April 29th. We flew to Cincinnati and then New York. Both flights were very nice with good weather. We got to the Days Inn hotel on Manhatten Island in the evening. Wednesday morning the 30th I did some work getting my Bible school material to pastor A. R. Bernard, who pastors the largest church in New York with 28,000 members. He is interested in coming to Ukraine to minister. During the afternoon we went to the New York Metropolitan museum in Central park and then walked in the park. I was surprized by all the rock formations in this park. I thought it was just a flat park. It is kind of a valley that has been mostly filled in. But it has pretty dark gray rock formations and many beautiful red blossomed cherry trees were in bloom. We took many pictures. Thursday the 1st we went to the Clinton battery which is an old fort that protected the bay over 200 years ago. We then toured the Jewish history museum close by. On Friday the 2nd we got up early and took a taxi back to the airport and flew to Kiev.

 

The flight to Kiev was fine with no problems. We arrived Saturday morning after 8 AM. We made it through customs and people from our church were waiting for us and took us home. We got home by 10 AM and cleaned up and Masha walked to church for praise team rehearsal. Masha I worked late into the night getting a slid show ready with over 150 pictures to show our church for Sunday morning service. We had a great service Sunday with excellent attendance. We had a busy week our first week. All of us had a real bad time getting over jet lag.

 

We had a guest speaker, Wilson Burton from Tennessee, the second Sunday morning. He has been coming in and out of Kiev for several years conducting camps to train Christian leaders. For years has transferred his money through me for his ministry. I help him for free and he blesses our church with his preaching. I gave an altar invitation after he preached and we had 3 saved. We went to a Christian Drum concert class with Wilson and took Christian this evening. Cosette stayed with our Nanny. An American man with Wilsons took us and the musician and his family and others out to eat after the concert. On Monday evening the drummer, Americans and another lady in this group ate with us at our apartment. We prepared a big meal for them and had a great time of fellowship. The second week home I got one of the men from church to help me build a closet. Here in Ukraine the apartments don't have closets. We live in a small three room apartment. The past couple of years we've built closets in two of the rooms but the third room still just had an old wooder cabinet over 30 years old in it. We got rid of it and began building a closet for that room. The kids are growing and we need more room for clothes of our newest family edition, Cosette.

 

Sunday the 18th I preached. Every Thursday morning we have prayer service from 9 to 10 AM. After prayer I have a committee meeting for a little less than an hour for our weekly work. These committee meetings have went very well since we've been back. I also had a 2 and-a-half hour finance committee meeting on Monday evening which went very well. We continue to work on our closet. Building even a little closet is a slow process here in Ukraine because it is so hard to get material. But it is getting better. Prices increased dramatically on food and everything else while we were gone.

 

We continue to work on our church building every day. I continue to work and buy matierial, tiles, etc. Sunday morning the 25th I preached and we had a couple more saved in service. The weather is warming up into the 70s and we are well over our jet lag and back into the schedule.

 

God Bless You All,

Phillip, Masha, Christyan and Cosette