Today

Today was a good day. I got to be reminded of some of the reasons I was here this year. Got to hear words that remind me to be confident I was here for a reason and you were supporting me for a reason. God worked through me and others felt the impact. I saw a few tears and heard about others. There is a lot I am leaving behind here and I'll probably add my own tears to the pool as soon as I have time to slow down and digest the last few days and the past year. There is also a lot to return to if God calls me back in this direction after a time.

Just wanted to share the joy of seeing God's work and use of His tools and vessels. It's a great thing to be a part of.

Saying Goodbye

Every goodbye here in Ukaine gets a bit harder. Leaving here is not easy. I feel a lot of emotional stress and pressure to get things ready in order to leave. Also, I am up against some strong personal and relational challenges right now. Please pray for me.

Thanks,

Josh

The News

I am moving back to the US on April 18th! It has been quite a process to come to this decision. To summarize in one paragraph I would say God spent some time stripping me of things I thought were relevant towards a decision to stay in Ukraine but in fact were distractions. There were emotions, fears, comfort zones, and assumptions about remaining tied to ministry I have been a part of. I feel God is calling me to go the place I had become a bit afraid to go: Nashville. I was worried it was the easy out, for one. And worried about the "unknown" of returning to Nashville and finding God's calling there. I had a pretty good idea what His calling would be if it was in Ukraine and what my life here would have looked like for the next year. I have developed roots here in Ukraine and they will be hard to give up. But I believe God is calling me to put down roots in Nashville in a way I never did before.

The main thing is that I cannot return to the life I used to have in Nashville. Well, on some levels it will look the same. But I really need to incorporate the lessons God has taught me and experiences He has brought me through during my year in Ukraine. I think God will lead me, if I am willing, to new ministry to be involved in. I recognized this year how satisfying it was to be a part of a team that was doing something great for the kingdom of God. I learned to hold less back from God and this greatly increased my understanding of being satisfied in Him. Seeing two of my brothers working in churches in the US helped me understand that what I experienced this year is not limited to Ukraine. Ukraine was certainly God's kickstarting point for me. But He has shown me that what is most important is to go where He leads and to take an attitude of being open to what He says to do, letting go of the "I won't like doing that" idea that has often been on my mind. He is freeing me.

To all of you who supported me, thank you! This year has been irreplaceable in my life. Even though I am moving back to the States, maybe forever, I have absolutely no doubt that Ukraine is where He wanted me this year. He used your support in the lives of students, worship teams, and friends. And He used it in my life in the areas of trusting Him, learning first-hand that His ways are the ones that satisfy, and teaching me to be willing to expand the circumference of opportunities and situations I will give a "yes, God" response to. And lastly, He has been teaching me a lot recently about pride, having an accurate view of myself, acting out of love, and the need to rely on Christ's love and redemption.

God knew what He was doing with me this year. That only keeps becoming more clear, and I imagine it will become even clearer as more of life passes and He continues to guide me, teach me, rebuke me, and be faithful to me.

So thank you to all my friends for your support of all kinds. I will be back with you soon!

I'm Coming Home For A Visit!

Itinerary:

4:09 PM Thursday, March 22 - Arrival in Nashville
 - lots of time with friends, maybe a birthday celebration on the 30th :)

12:15 AM Saturday, March 31 - Greyhound departure to Dayton, OH
 - two days with my brothers Caleb and Joel who attend Cedarville University
 - visit the church where Caleb serves at worship leader

9:25 PM Monday, April 2 - Arrival in Manchester, NH
 - time with New England family and friends
 - possibly a visit to the church where my brother Jake is a youth pastor

12:22 PM Thursday, April 12 - Depart Manchester en route to Ukraine.
 - return in time for Ukrainian Orthodox Easter (April 15)

All along the journey - much prayer about the future

I very much hope to see anyone who has the time to catch up with me. If you have a tight schedule, please let me know what might work for you. I need you guys. This has been a great year in Ukraine but a very difficult one. Things right now are at the hardest point and amidst what's going on I need a lot of prayer and support to understand and be ready to tackle God's plan for the future.

I appreciate you all and I am looking forward to being with you soon!

Josh

Videos of Worship Team

Since I have been speaking about the college/young adult ministry's worship team, now seems a good time to share some videos of worship services. Our usual meetings are Saturday evenings in the basement of the church. We do not have video of those, but we do have video from some Wednesday night services where this team led worship for the main church.

NOTE: For those of you reading this in an e-mail, please click "Josh In Ukraine" at the top of the e-mail to transfer you to my blog page where these videos will be viewable.

Acoustic Worship From January



Points of Interest:

• 6:00 - Music starts
• 22:00 - One of my favorites (“Center” by Charlie Hall)
• 59:00 - Band plays song between first and second block of sermon
• 1:38:00 - Last block of worship starts with another of my favorites (“None But Jesus” by Hillsong)

Worship From Last Spring



I am not sure why the fast forward/rewind feature is disabled on the embedded version of this video. But if you go to the original here you will have the benefit of that feature.

Things Are Happening!

God may be leading me to one of my callings for my second year here! The situation that I asked for prayer for is developing in a good way with a lot of unity from the leadership team. I could use some prayers to make sure I am supposed to step up and participate in the future in some ways that have been proposed to me. I see a lot of wisdom coming into play in how the leadership is planning to address this situation and provide healthy structure and flow of authority in the team for the future.

Please keep praying that this will be an opportunity for one of our servants to not push herself away but to grow inward instead. The plan that is forming has this as one of its very strong goals and I highly respect the ideas and desires our leadership is putting forward. The follow-through will be challenging, but please pray that the individual who stands to gain or lose the most from this will allow God to work and show His love and consideration for her.

Immediate Prayer Request

Guys, there is a situation happening right now that really needs prayer. I will try to explain it in a short version and a long version. Take your pick, but please pray :)

The Short Version

Please pray for spiritual guidance for our leadership team and for myself as we come together to figure out the best way to approach a delicate situation on our young adult worship team. God's work is being inhibited by one individual's tight grip on her reigns of power and inflexibility to accept some changes that are needed in order to foster a spirit of worship and the ability of this team to lead worship. This situation is on the point of eruption. Because it has been so delicate, it has been avoided at all cost in the past. But a few members of the leadership are really struggling under the reality that one individual is allowed to retain an unhealthy role which does not encourage worship but rather stands in the way of it. As a whole, the leadership team discussed this issue in our meeting on Tuesday and now something has come up that steps up the urgency even further.

The Longer Version

There is a situation on the young adult worship team where the woman who has the most authority is making some poor choices in her leadership decisions, ones that do not reflect an understanding of our primary goal being to lead worship or an understanding of how to create an environment in which to encourage the most from the musicians. This situation has been years in the making. But as she has felt threatened by the presence and experience of a few new people who have been involved in worship this year, things have possibly gotten even worse.

This is the woman who's place I helped fill while she was gone a few months at the beginning of my time here. This leader, unfortunately, wants to lead everything except worship because she is uncomfortable leading spiritually. Rehearsals have gone steadily downhill since her re-involvement in the fall. The band is fighting to maintain a sense of their true desire to worship and lead worship for others. Individual members of the team do truly have that as their primary desire. I have spoken to her privately and also made suggestions in front of the entire team in order to help us take steps to have an environment where we are free to worship rather than distracted by stress. Lately she has been making us do too much new material (two new songs per week in some cases) and she makes changes to the songs that are very abstract and make remembering them more difficult. She is unwilling to see that her ways of running things are not encouraging a healthy atmosphere and are not positive for worship. But my suggestions are met with the response, "Am I the leader, or are you the leader?"

There are a lot of things that come into play in all of this on a spiritual and personal level. She has done the church a great service and is a steadfast and dedicated servant. She stepped up a few years ago in a time when nobody else did. She has great qualities as a leader if she is willing to understand that part of that role involves taking all assets of the team and making something truly great out of them by combining ideas and experience that can compliment and add to her own.

I have talked about things recently with the leadership of the young adult ministry and two of the three are completely on the same page. They see the same things and have seen them even before the time that I arrived. It would have been nice to have the luxury of some more time for us to all come to a better understanding of how to approach this and to all be completely of the same vision.

However, this person really played her power hand this evening by putting three new songs on the setlist. We will not have our usual Thursday evening rehearsal this week, but rather only rehearse on Saturday before the service. I have great respect for our musicians and what they are able to do, but I recognize when too much is too much. These are not professional musicians and they have busy lives. I can also put myself in their shoes and remember what it feels like to struggle to wrap my mind around too much new material and have it ready to "perform." And approaching new songs this way does turn it into a performance. The musicians have to try very hard to focus on what they are doing, not in the sense of worship but simply just to get through the music.

I have addressed these issues personally with this woman over the last few weeks, but she has stepped things up a notch rather than cooling off and accepting reality and remembering the pinnacle goal of the team. Since the ultimate cost of these desicions is worship, the very thing we are supposed to be doing, I sent her an e-mail in response to the setlist. I readdressed the issues I have spoken with her on in the past and asked her if she is willing to try some new things and to view leadership as a responsibility to "benefit from your own experience and from other people's experience and put it all together for something really great and very powerful."

This situation needs prayer. There are many of us involved and we need wisdom. We need to know what God is saying for right now and what maybe needs to wait. He knows how He wants to work, and we don't until He tells us or guides us with the right words to say at the right time. That's what we need at this point.

This individual also needs your prayer. She needs to know she is being held tightly in God's arms at every moment and that He loves her. To understand that this love does not call for fear or protection of oneself but rather enables open eyes and a responsive heart.

I hope to be able to meet with this person tomorrow to discuss things that have been coming up. I guess I will find out tomorrow whether or not that is a possibility for her. That conversation is another specific aspect to keep in prayer.

Thanks for helping. God can really use this situation for His glory. He can do great things and I know that He finds great pleasure in seeing them through.

Couldn't View The Videos In Yesterday's E-mail?

If any of you received the e-mail version of my blog post yesterday and were disappointed to find that you couldn't view the videos, just visit the blog page (http://joshinukraine.blogspot.com/). The "Josh In Ukraine" text at the top of the e-mail or the blue text just under that will always provide you links directly to that page. I will post some more videos soon. By clicking on the links at the top of the e-mail you receive, you will be able to visit my page where the videos are viewable!

Media!

I want to give you guys a chance to see what this year has been about and know what you have been a part of over here. I can't think of any better way than "showing" you some specific moments!

From His Holy Hill



This first video is of a song I helped one of the guys in my Bible study and guitar group finish writing and add music to. He is the one sitting in the video next to me. He started his relationship with Jesus this summer at our church camp and it has been a joy to be involved in his fresh new life. His friend shot this video on a phone so that they could remember how the song goes and learn it with their new worship band.

First Sermon!

This year has been a year of many firsts for me. I had a chance to give preaching a try. There is lots of room for improvement but I felt that the most important thing was to let God speak through the message He gave me and leave the presentation--with its strengths and weaknesses--to Him!

The sermon is on Ehud as part of a series for our college and young adult ministry: Heroes, or "Герои" in Russian (watch the "trailer" for this series here). I felt very fortunate that the man I was assigned to preach about was one whose story defines the things God had been putting on my heart for the month previous--how it is important to truly be willing to be God's tools, to give Him every situation in our lives 100% rather that to count on our strengths. We often want God to fix just the part we can't seem to get right on our own and leave the rest in our control. But God's plans are unexpected and, if we follow them, much much better!

I wanted to communicate that the first thing we need saving from is ourselves. Once we give God ourselves, we can truly give Him our situations. Our goal must be to have God's goal in mind, to seek it and be ready to follow through on it no matter how different it turns out to be from our own goals. It was interesting how God has been showing me these things in my life and then provided an outlet to share them. I need to continue living by these words daily as I figure out what lies in store for me soon!



The lovely lady teaming up to translate for me is my talented girlfriend Lesya. She has done this translating thing many times before but she couldn't help but get a bit nervous for me. Oh and yes, I think I did make her job a little harder by mixing up my left and my right at some point in the sermon.

What I Know and What I Don't

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

Matthew 9:35-38

Looking Back

I would have to mark this year as a year of confidence. I have learned to trust God more than ever before. I have been reminded of and forced to take upon myself the experiential reality that my satisfaction and purpose come ultimately from God. Sometimes He sends the memos of His love in the form of suppressed levee waters blasting into open caverns at their first chance of freedom; other times as gentle outlets trickling into commonplace situations, carried on through the underestimated blessings of friendships and relationship where time and familiarity carry off years of unnecessary sediment to form clear channels for fulfilling life’s work and calling.

This year has been crowded with daily lessons to grasp myself for who God sees me to be, to love and appreciate other people for who they are, and to help them do the same for themselves. For my own part, this is a struggle and often goes against my nature.

Going to a different nation—and one that still lives and breathes palpably under the domineering hand of generations of Soviet lack of accountability and intolerance for dissimilar ideas—stretches my understanding and acceptance of God’s vision to see the crowds, have compassion on them, and help the harassed and the helpless. But this is what Jesus preached in the Gospels, and this is what it means to give the “good news” feet—to spread the light God has shown me in my Christian life, my socioeconomic life, and in my cultural life, and to share all of those experiences of God’s love with people in the gentle voice that will touch them through their differences. I was learning to do this in the US before I left, and now I have to practice new methods and break through language barriers in learning to do it in a strange place amidst foreign philosophies.

So it has been a big year and a good year. In the end of my last blog post I explained a little of how God is pushing me into ministries and friendships that push forward His kingdom. I will begin uploading some media soon that will help show God’s gospel feet in motion.

Looking Forward To…?

Now I am scared. Coming here ten months ago was not very difficult compared to this. I knew I had God’s calling and I knew things would be okay because of that. I knew I was supposed to bring God’s hands and feet here. But I don’t know what I have and what I’m called to after the next two months, when my first year here ends.

And without knowing God’s plans, every option and idea has an element that frightens me. To stay in Ukraine, to go back to Nashville, to teach English, to teach third graders in a missionary school, to be in ministry through worship or through countless other ways—all of these are possibilities but all of them would be empty if they are not the right one.

Last night I had to push through some emotions while I sorted through what I’ve left behind. I left friends in Nashville that I still go to when I’m in trouble and need to talk. But it’s not the same being here. I miss spending time around the game table or the TV or the fire pit with them. I miss my church where sermons and worship are in my language. I miss impromptu lunch meetings and casual evenings out. I miss my work. I miss knowing what I’m doing. I miss being good at it. I miss things being easy. And maybe what it comes down to is I miss being in control. And the greatest lesson of all may be to learn to not miss that.

Not Just About Me

And the other fact is, I can't make a huge decision—such as what country to live in—without taking into account the most precious person in my life. Those of you who are married or dating, you know what I'm talking about. We don't live in a vacuum. Our decisions change the lives of people around us, and the closer those people are, the greater the impact.

Thankfully, I believe I serve a God who knows His plans and is big enough to put the pieces together. If His plan is for me to be with Lesya for the rest of my life, then His plan is to include her in my ministry and mesh the two into one. He is not a God who will say, "Lesya was the perfect girl for you. But too bad, because you'll never see her again." God doesn't have the limitations that we face and His plans have been in order for thousands of years. He has "known" us since before our planet was set orbiting around the sun and before we were sent scurrying around it.

Prayers, Please Please Please!

I do not know what the rest of this year holds after March. I don’t know my calling, my place, my ministry. I’m not sure I even know the gifts that are at God’s disposal, although this has been a year of cultivating some and realizing new light in others. Many of you know how this uncertainty feels, and I would appreciate your help in not going through it alone.

I would also like prayers specifically regarding my relationship with Lesya. As I've said, everything is intertwined. She is a marvelous helper, encourager and friend. She has been the single most steadfast source of my sanity through many trials here. Just this evening she reminded me again of the ways things are changing, the work she sees being done, and the impact I am having here. Also, the ways in which she is trusting God and learning to see herself will unite contagiously with her heart for others and carry on into every job or friendship or ministry she participates in, whether I am around to see it or not. I like to think I will be around. However, we both realize that this relationship works only as long as God says it does and we are both recognize we are deficient of His final "yes" at the moment. That said, this is an area we would both appreciate prayer for knowing God's direction.

To summarize, I don’t want to run away from anything. I want to run into it… I just need to know what “it” is and I need the open-mindedness to accept it when it comes and the courage to follow God’s path where it leads, how it leads.

This is a verse that both Lesya and I have been making the most of over the last months as we have each made steps to give up everyday security in favor of God’s eternal security:

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

Winter Greetings!

Hello! Winter greetings to you all. Weather here in Kiev is "brisk." The recent snow at least makes it feel more fitting! So far I am enjoying winter, though I think I am together with most of the city in anticipating spring already!

Visa Status 

Challenges don't come and go with the weather.  It is time to begin tackling Visa issues again. The temporary solution that enabled me to return from Poland to Ukraine at the end of December will reach its end in late March. $250 of traveling, $150 of visa application, $75 for required paperwork to present with this application, and two week's worth of hostel stay and food doesn't make for a cheap three month's stay!

Hopefully by now the government has sorted out the new laws (Visa laws have gone through three revisions since August) and will be ready to accept the religious paperwork that they could not be bothered with in December. A missionary couple that I had become friends with had to give up ministry after seven years here and leave the country on Wednesday because of many complications that arose out of the government's lack of information and consistency on how to apply the new laws. After one agency granted them extended stay while they sorted things out, another found an issue with the extension and deemed them illegal in the country unless they payed $2500 to turn eyes the other way.

Prayer Requests Regarding My Future

There are some big questions I am facing and would greatly appreciate prayer over. For those of you who don't know, I came to Ukraine on a one year commitment but with the knowledge that I might stay here long past the first twelve months. God has shown me that anything I do requires a calling. The calling is what gives the location or job or ministry purpose and value and success. I came to understand about six months into my time here that returning to Nashville would require a calling. My ministry is here for the time being. God can change that in an instant, but it is here for now. I can't go until He says go. So where will He call me to next?

Through partnership with New Life Church and with an established self-supported missionary who also volunteers with the church, I have gotten to have a unique place in shaping the lives of students. I get to help create the environments and activities that lead young people into relationships with Jesus and then keep them connected and growing with other believers. The main "faces" this ministry has taken so far are camps, English discussion groups, church services, Bible studies, guitar playing and hanging out. One of the biggest encouragements I experience is to have someone approach me and say, "Can we find time this week to meet and talk and hang out?"

What forms will ministry take place in when my initial year here comes to an end after March? I really don't know yet. And that's where I need lots of prayer. I know I have the tendency to write lots of words and drop lots of information all at once, so I think I'll save something for later in the weekend. I am looking forward to "discussing" the openings and options I have and I ask for your prayer through all of the decisions that are coming up.

Wrapping Up For Now 

As always, thank you for your support and vision for me and for God's kingdom around the world--that is truly what has gotten me this far. God's work has been going on in Ukraine through many dedicated individuals. Of course, it will go on if my time here ends. But I tell you with confidence that your support has played a close role in the salvation of multiple students this summer and in their growth this winter. These guys are standing up in church and sharing their testimonies, writing songs and forming worship bands in the church, and witnessing to friends and family who don't yet understand their desire for Christ.

God is with them powerfully and their lives are a reminder of how powerfully God is with us. Be blessed in that knowledge!