Report #25—Oct. 10, 2018

Above Photo: David is greeted with the traditional Ukrainian welcome of bread and honey. Often salt is used instead of honey but in the western villages it is common to have delicious honey! All on the “Traveling Band” were greeted in this way.

Wednesday was ANOTHER fantastic day in western Ukraine for our group. The superlatives just cannot describe the enthusiasm and feelings of those in our group. The Traveling Band visited several locations. The first was the village Mala Kam’Yanka. We have distributed a number of commodities into this village and the reception was wonderful. We received a special Thank you from the Mayor, given a tour of the school, enjoyed a Q&A with the students at a special assembly, were fed a feast of amazing village cooking (each house cooked a dish of food and brought it to us!). After the village we continued our daily trek and eventually ended at the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional White House in a meeting with the Vice-Governor and two representatives of the civilian defense. We were presented with framed thank you certificates and other special gifts. Then our evening concluded with the final classes in Ugorniky! The hospitality of Ugorniky continues to be one of the greatest highlights of the trip. The Ugorniky team has done a wonderful job in the classes and especially as Ambassadors of Christ. The last adult/teen lesson was presented by Caleb and he discussed Naaman. The topics for classes (Moses; Naaman; Jonah) are totally unknown in the general religious community. They know the 10 Commandments but nothing else. So the discussions on these biblical characters has been a challenge. Some were fearful that such topics were detrimental and thus looked with suspicion on the teaching. To some extent those anxieties were relieved by those attending but overall there remains concern.

Here are some photos from today’s events. Johnny is launching a photo gallery of all photos from Ukraine and it should be accessible soon.