Ukrainian Church Service

In 1992, I preached in a Church in Chernovski, Ukraine.  The church had Russian, Ukrainian, and Romanian ethnic members who got along just fine.  That’s just what Christians do.  They were all brothers and sisters.  As I preached, on one side was a Russian translator, in the middle was a Ukrainian translator, and on the other side was a Romanian translator.  I focused on what I was saying, and let the translators do their work.  I went to the Restroom (outhouse) after church to find no toilet paper.  Twenty squares of notebook paper were nailed to the wall.  But Granny Whitely had an outhouse in West Virginia, so I knew how to function.  I rolled a sheet of paper between both hands until it became soft and pliable.  No problem.  In the church vestibule was a clean bucket of drinking water with a dipper.  Great-Granny Epperly had a spring, and again, I knew what to do.  I got a full dipper of water, took a drink, swirled the rest of the water in the dipper and threw it out.  The dipper was “sanitized”.  Sort of.  That afternoon, I strolled around the church building and noticed the “hymnals” in the choir loft.  They were composition notebooks with the words of the songs meticulously handwritten.  That afternoon, we had the second service.  Since most folk had to walk a long distance to church, they were in no hurry to leave.  We sang every verse of each song savoring each note, and no one worried that the preacher went too long.  They enjoyed church and community.  I knew some of the songs in English (“How Great Thou Art”) and they enjoyed hearing me sing in English along with them.  Although there was a language barrier, we had sweet fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ.  My prayer for the church in the Ukraine is for all of us too: Paul said in Ephesians 6:10, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”  Pray for brothers and sisters in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Coupons

In 1992, we went to the southern part of the Ukraine to distribute 10,000 Romanian New Testaments.  We inserted invitations into the New Testaments to evangelistic meetings that we held at night.  One day, I went to the bank to exchange dollars for Coupons, the Ukrainian currency.  I exchanged the money and stepped aside to count it.  I discovered that the teller had given me too much money, so I got back into line.  When I got up to the front, I tried to explain that she had made a mistake.  She didn’t understand English and didn’t want to admit any mistake.  I shoved the money to her with my receipt, and she grudgingly counted the money again.  Everyone in line behind me was curious about the American making a scene.  When the teller discovered that the mistake was in her favor, she was surprised … along with everyone in line behind me.  Apparently, honesty was rare.  The teller took her money and returned the correct amount to me without so much as a thank you.  But when I turned to go, a man in line pulled out one of my invitations that he had and showed it to me giving me a thumbs up gesture.  And I’m confident that he was at the meeting that evening.  I pray that the Lord spoke to his heart.  Hey, people are watching you … often without you knowing it.  Paul had it right in I Corinthians 4:2, “Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.”

Chernovski, Ukraine

In 1992 we took a group of twenty Americans to distribute 50,000 Romanian New Testaments.  After World War II, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met a Yalta and redrew the boundaries in Europe, and about 16 million ethnic Romanians found themselves in the Ukraine. So, we drove to Chernovski, Ukraine with 10,000 Romanian New Testaments to distribute.  What a joy to hand out copies of God’s Word where it had been banned for over 40 years!  The hardest problem that we faced was to get people to understand that the Scriptures were really free.  No one had ever given them anything, let alone a copy of the Bible!  My wife gave a little old lady a New Testament, but the lady was bewildered.  The translator assured her that it was indeed free and that it was a gift for her from America.  The lady told Kathy (through the translator) that she had heard of the Bible and had hoped that she would someday be able to read it for herself.  She took the New Testament hugging it to her heart and kissed Kathy’s hand again and again.  The little lady’s eyesight was so poor that she had to hold the book within inches of her eyes to read it.  As we distributed the New Testaments in the park that day, we would see the little old lady sitting on a park bench, still reading her New Testament holding it right up to her face.  Hey, are we like that little old lady?  Do we respect and love God’s precious words?  Solomon said in Proverbs 30:5, “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.”