NEWSLETTER FOR JULY 2003

GENE AND MARY PARKER

DONETSK, UKRAINE

Dear Supporters, Family and Friends,

            July was an incredibly cool and rainy month here. The rain was not any heavy kind but just showers, mostly light ones. If I must do without air conditioning, this is the way to do it. Mary and I are both well and hope this finds all of you the same.

            Things have continued to be good with the two congregations. This is always the time of year that our attendance is down but we began to see a rebound yesterday (Aug3). And it will be up and down until after school starts the 1st of Sept. Then it will settle down.

            Budyonnevski has finished their remodeling and their building looks much better with the new coat of paint. At Proletarski we are in the process of adding brick and tile to the outside of the building. We have had trouble on top of trouble getting plaster and paint to stay on this old building. We believe this the brick and tile will stay.

            Our helping the invalids and destitute pensioners continues to go well and grow with 30 now on the roll. Ray and the teen class plus some others, especially one member with a car to distribute food to some far out individuals, do a great job with that. We had two visitors from that program in our worship yesterday, so hopefully it will produce fruit with a harvest of souls as well as providing some very needed help with food for them.  

            We have wanted for some time to have a class for young adults. We have about twenty members who are potential students for that class. We had it for a short period last winter but a shortage of teachers and space for it made it necessary to drop it. Our auditorium is in an ell shape so we had a sliding partition put in to make a class room that we can open for worship. This gave us space and we have asked Alexander Maluga, a very talented second year student we are supporting in the school to be the teacher of that class. He recently married one of the secretary-translators at the school. So we believe they will do a good job leading this group. We have a number of young people in the teen class that are 17, 18 and 19. We are looking to the future for them to have a class other than just the general adult class to go to.

            (The highlight of the month was the teens camp. Ray and Lynn did a great job with them and I am letting them describe the experience. as well as the baptism of Radick and Rita)

            July 6^th was a great day.  One of our young men, Radik, celebrated two birthdays on the same day.  He turned 10 years old, but, more importantly, he was baptized into Christ.   His father, Oleg, was baptized in May and grandmother, Tamara, in June.  We are praying that the three of them will have a good influence on Radik’s mother, who came to witness his new birth, but has not been willing to attend otherwise.  She seems like a very nice lady, but has no interest in God, yet.  By the way, Radik is the reigning Ukrainian Karate Champion for his age group

We had originally planned to have a week at camp with our teens the week of July the 6^th.  A few days prior to departure, the camp notified us that they would not be able to accept us.  In spite of the delay for our camp, we finally found a place and left Donetsk early on Monday the 14^th of July.  Because of some schedule conflicts with the date change, our number was smaller than expected, but we still ended up with 19 teens and four adults.  Since Ray was the only adult male, we had to put one of the older teen boys in charge of part of the boys.  That worked out fine.  The facilities in camp here are more like an old college dormitory.  We had part of one floor, five rooms with three to six people in a room, with only beds and a closet.  None of us had ever seen this camp before arrival and our first impression was to return to the bus as quickly as possible and head back for Donetsk.   Nikka, Tanya and Ray made a list of important things, such as curtains for the windows (we were on the first floor), light bulbs and locks for the doors.  Nothing could be done about the uni-sex bathroom, except planting a guard or yelling loudly, “woman or man here” when the door opened.  Jumping ahead, I am happy to report that by the end of the week, the kids were begging to stay another week. 

Each day after breakfast, we had a devotional and split classes.  This gave the girls a chance to have some experience at teaching, as they had the first 15 minutes for a short lesson.  Lynn also had a chance to talk with the girls, as Ray talked with the boys, about some things which we felt were important for them to hear at this time.  The girls did excellent jobs in their lessons and the boys prepared good devotional talks for morning and evening.  Each evening Ray spoke to the combined group.

Each day we planned games, swimming and fellowship time.  The scavenger hunt created the most excitement as teens ran all over camp hunting all kinds of items from the signature of the cleaning lady to a live frog.  We ended the week with a “shashleek” (shisk-a-bob) picnic, a talent show and skit presentations. 

The highlight of the week was the addition of a new sister to the Lord’s church.  Rita, who has been attending Budjonovsky congregation for some time, was baptized on Wednesday afternoon.  She has been to camp with us every year and we were thrilled to see her desire to serve the Lord.  A big thank you to all who helped finance our camp.

We are so thankful for all your prayers and financial support. With it and God's help we are supporting or helping support three men in the school, one graduate working with the congregation and his wife attending the school, orphanages, also other  benevolent works, making improvements to our buildings, and our personal needs.

In His service.

Gene and Mary Parker