Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! We hope all of you had a joyous time of celebration during Christmas and New Year's.

This past year has been mostly a year of planning and preparation for us. The first five months of 1999, as you know, we spent in the United States: Helen participating in the Preparation and Training missionary course of the General Board of Global Ministries, and I visiting my supporting churches. At the end of the training course Helen was commissioned as a Missionary for the GBGM. Previously, she had been under the designation of International Person in Mission. It was a rough time for both of us, with me visiting 60 churches while Helen was in training, but rewarding as well.

We arrived back in the Ukraine on June 1st, where we spent the month shopping for furniture for the new apartment in Kiev. At the end of June, we went to Norway for Helen's ordination as Deacon in the Norway Annual Conference. While we were there, Helen's 81 year old mother fell ill, so we spent all of July in Norway caring for her and seeing if she could still live at home by herself in her 3 story, 110-year old house. Thankfully, she got better with the help of some new medicine, and is still able to live at home. The Norwegian health care system provides nurses for her 3 times a day and once at night to give her the medicine, a home helper to clean up twice a week, plus "Meals on Wheels" 2 times a week so that she can stay at home. And she is only charged for the cost of her medicine. Not bad for "socialized" health care!

In August we returned to Kiev and continued setting up our apartment/office. More shopping for furniture in a country where the choice is limited, delivery schedules are erratic, and companies can go out of business before a delivery is filled. As the end of August came, we relished the thought of finally getting down to ministry. At the beginning of September, we received word that there were some problems in the church in Kerch, and Bishop Minor assigned us to go and help Kerch for the months of September and October.

New churches in Ukraine and Russia experience the same problems churches face all over the world: "What happens when our church starts to grow? How can we handle all these new people?" "I liked the old pastor better." "I like the new pastor better." "Thank God for all the new people in the church." "I liked it better when the church was small and we were like family." "Bill, why can't you come back and be our pastor: all the problems started after you left." "Bill, if you had been a better pastor, we wouldn't have had these problems, they started with you." "Why won't the longtime members of the church let us new members get involved?" "How can we trust new people in leadership positions? They aren't like us." and so on.

Dealing with the problems in Kerch helped me to sharpen my superintedency skills while at the same time deepen my understanding of the needs of new churches in Ukraine and Russia. It helped me to evaluate our methods, discern our successes and review our mistakes. The "our" in the previous sentence is so very important, because mission work is not the sole proviso of the missionary, but a team effort: the missionary and church together, discovering where God is at work already and where God wants us to work together. As Bruce Weaver, GBGM consultant and head of the Russia Initiative says, when problems arise, it is helpful (and comforting) to frequently refer to I and II Corinthians. Even missionaries who God trusted to write scripture encountered some big problems!

November was back to Kiev for two weeks until we had to leave the Ukraine to renew our visas. During that time, Helen held a planning meeting for the Northern European Central Conference Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse to plan for summer youth camps in Ukraine to educate youth on how to avoid drug and alcohol abuse. Attending were representatives from America, Sweden and our pastors in the Ukraine.

Because of the concerns about the possibilities of Y2K problem affecting Ukraine, we were instructed by the General Board of Global Ministries to stay out of the country until Jan 14, following US and Norwegian embassy recommendations. Ukraine was listed as one of the four most at risk countries in the world forY2K related problems. As it turned out, the cautions were not needed, but we still had quite a long winter break outside the Ukraine. While renewing our visas in America, we used the time to check on my 86 year old father who lives alone in Atlanta before travelling to Norway for Christmas and to see about Helen's mother.

Not wanting to let extra clergy go to waste during the Christmas season, the Methodist pastor in Kragerè, Helen's hometown, allowed us ample opportunity for ministry. I was able to preach twice and give a New Year's meditation; Helen preached once and we both gave a mission presentation to two 10th grade high school religion classes. One result of the ministry was the reception of over 20,000 kroner (or $2,500) in gifts from Norwegian individuals and churches to the work in the Ukraine.

What can we expect for the New Year, Century, Millennium in Ukraine?

Many Ukrainians will greet the new millennium without much hope. A peasant Ukrainian woman born on Jan 1, 1900 in a small village in the Western Ukraine, having lived all her life there, celebrated her 100 birthday on Jan 1, 2000 having seen her government forcibly overthrown more than 20 times, lived in at least seven different countries without ever having moved, survived 4 major wars on her homeland and the worst nuclear disaster of the century in Chernobyl. There has been at least 3 country wide famines during her life, including one artificially created by Stalin to break the power of Ukrainian peasants. She has lived through Stalin's purges of the thirties with at least one member of her family imprisoned or executed. She has often been forbidden to read, write or even speak her own language, and told her culture was inferior. She saw a little improvement in her life after the WWII, during Krushchev's reforms, and then peak sometime during the Brezhnev years. But starting with Gorbachev, she has seen her standard of living steadily decline, accelerating when Ukraine became independent. The last 5 years, when she needs the most assistance from her government, she has witnessed a 30% decline in the GNP of Ukraine and the collapse of medical service, pension fund and most all social services. Of all countries in the former Eastern Europe, Ukraine has a economic growth rate greater only than Yugoslavia, which was devastated by war in the early part of last year. What, then, is there to look forward to in the new millennium?

One bright light in the last eight years of Ukrainian independence has been the growth of the Church, flourishing under the relatively good climate of religious liberty in the Ukraine. Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist and numerous independent churches have grown at tremendous rate.

As always, hope for the future lies in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With Ukrainians searching frantically for some meaning in their lives, it is a wonderful opportunity for the spreading of the life changing Good News.

New Projects in 2000:

Student Work in Western Ukraine.

Fred and Stacy Vanderwerf, just commissioned missionaries with the General Board of Global Ministries, will start Feb. 9 to start their first term in Lviv, Ukraine. Their assignment for the first year is Ukrainian language learning, but their main assignment is to start work with college students in Western Ukraine. This is the first major outreach by the Russia Annual Conference to the Ukrainian speaking part of the Ukraine. Both Fred and Stacy have had extensive experience in student work, and will open up many new opportunities for ministry.

Church Planting in Kiev

At this year's annual conference, we hope to have a pastor assigned to plant a church in Kiev. Bill will assist the pastor while not travelling for Superintending duties.

Evangelism

Due to several generous gifts by Blacksburg United Methodist Church, in Blacksburg VA, we are able to fund several evangelism projects. Already in 1999, we were able to fund an Evangelism through Small Group Ministry seminar in Sevastopol attended by our pastors and church leaders. In 2000, we will have several evangelism teams from Estonia and Finland who will come to Ukraine to put on Faith Weekends in our churches. These were very successful last year, and our Northern European neighbors are eager to help again. Other projects will be planned by the Ukrainian District Evangelism committee.

Youth Camp

Helen, in her work with the Northern European Central Conference Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, has planned for a summer youth camp for teens aged 12-16 in The Crimea near Sevastopol, mentioned above. The theme of the camp will be a Christian approach to drug and alcohol abuse prevention, using the UM program, "Revival of Hope", and Ukrainian material.

Methodist Heritage Conference

This summer, the Ukrainian district will sponsor a Methodist Heritage Conference in Kiev. Attending will be all the various Wesleyan-related denominations who currently are ministering in the Ukraine. We hope to have representatives from the Wesleyan and, Nazarene churches the Salvation Army as well as the United Methodist churches in Uzhgorod, Ukraine that belong to the Hungarian Annual Conference.

Communication

Ah, the project you have been waiting for. When I first started sending newsletters just 7 years ago in 1993, the Internet and email were still somewhat exotic playthings for the computer geek set. Now, they, especially email, are an essential part of business, church personal life. We want to improve our communication to our supporters in several ways:

1) More frequent newsletters, at least 3 per year.

2) Email updates. Promised three years ago, we would like to fulfill the promise this year. Starting in February, we want to start a short, two or three paragraph bi-monthly email update for everyone, especially our supporting churches. This venue will be able for everyone to keep more up to date with the work in the Ukraine.

3) Web Site. One of our supporting churches, Latimer United Methodist Church near Greenville S.C. has been kind enough to give us quite a bit of space on their website. Our plan will be to move this information, setting up a website in the space offered by the General Board of Global Ministries with the help of the Latimer's pastor, Alex Stevenson. We hope this website would provide instant access to the current state of our mission work.

You can help us with the above by providing your email address to us for the email bi-monthly updates. Please send me an email with: Subject: Update First line of the body of the email: Ukrainian District Bi-monthly Update.

This email will assure us we have your current email address, and will let us know you want these email updates.

Thanks again for your support and especially your prayers. Pray for the people of the Southern/Ukrainian district of the Russian United Methodist church as they are praying for you. Pray for us as well!

C Bogom, (with God) Bill and Helen Lovelace.