Kiev, Ukraine December 2000

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! Merry Christmas and God's joy for you in the New Year.

This past summer was a very busy summer for us. We have been to the Russian Annual Conference, hosted a Wesleyan Heritage Conference in Kiev for Wesleyan related denominations, organized a Youth Camp in Sevastopol and the fall has not been less busy. A lot of positive things are happening in the church now days. The economic situation for Ukrainians has not changed too much during the last years. Finding a job is still very difficult. Pensions for retirees are not coming on time, and if people should be so lucky that they should receive their pension it is less than they were promised.

Usually it is not difficult to get a job, but people get paid very rarely. Does this sound strange? Let us tell you the story of two of our young friends here in Ukraine.

Marina is working as a translator and secretary at a computer firm. She has been working there for a year. The last time she received her salary was in May of this year. This situation is common for a lot of people in Ukraine nowadays. If she continues to work here she can at least hope that one-day her salary will be paid. If she finds another job, the salary situation will most likely be the same and she will lose the possibility of receiving the back wages she has earned in the firm she is working for now.

A young furniture maker named Sasha we met at the Wesleyan Heritage Conference in August told us his story. He moved to Kiev to try to get a job. He is making furniture, window frames, and staircases. We have seen some of his work. He is a fine craftsman. He found a job on a work crew and was very happy. The crew made a staircase with Sasha doing most of the design work. Everyone said he had done a good job One day, the boss of the work crew came and said the crew had done a bad job, the firm was unhappy, so no one would get paid. The results of this job was no salary to our friend and a nice profit for the boss, since he didn't pay his workers. With so many people looking for work, the boss can hire a new crew next month, and repeat the same process. Ukrainian law does not have a comprehensive set of worker and employee rights to protect people. For Sasha, the same thing can happen at his next job. He can only hope he will find an honest employer. Unfortunately for many people in Ukraine, they can tell a similar story like Sasha's.

The Russian Annual Conference, in Moscow, in the last part of July was a good experience for all of us. The Annual Conference is starting to find its way of working. The discussions and meetings are going easier and are more constructive than before, even though there are still some problems and a lot of questions about the church and how to lead a church. For example, what does it mean to be a democratic church, a connectional church? But growing pains always accompany growth and we are happy for them and together with them.

The two biggest events at the Annual Conference were that Bishop Minor nominated as a candidate to be re-elected as Bishop for Russia for 2001-2005 and that we welcomed 16 new congregations, a lot of local pastors and pastors in probationary membership into the UMC. When the vote was counted for the election of candidates to be Bishop, Bishop Minor received the unanimous support of the Annual Conference delegates.

In our district (Ukraine, South East Russia, and a part of Moldovia) we said welcome to 3 new congregations Odessa (Ukraine), Pyatigorsk (Russia), Tiraspol (Moldovia). We also welcomed the additional appointments of several new pastors, one of whom is going to start a congregation in Krasnodar, while another is going to work with a Bible study group in Kharkhov. A Swiss couple, Andreas and Ruth Froesch, have been appointed to start a church here in Kiev.

We have also started to work with three UMC congregations in Uzhgorod area, in Western Ukraine These three congregations are members of the Hungarian Annual Conference, belonging to another Episcopal area, but we hope to have a closer ministry relationship with them in the near future.

After this Annual Conference we have ten congregations in our district, besides the three congregations that belong to the Hungarian Annual Conference. In addition, there also several UMC congregation in US who work together with different institutions and organizations providing humanitarian aid and other services to various cities in Ukraine.

A couple of weeks after the Annual Conference, our district hosted a Wesleyan Heritage Conference in Kiev. One hundred thirty persons from UMC, Salvation Army, the Nazarenes, Wesleyan Bible Collage and Evangelical Bible Mission (mission arm of the Bible Methodists) came together to share our faith, our experiences, our work; to sing and worship together. We had different workshops about Sanctification, the United Methodist social principles, youth work, work among drug and alcohol addicted persons, European Methodist history and John Wesley’s view on ecumenicalism. Bishop Heinrich Bolleter from the Southern European Central Conference, our own Bishop Ruediger Minor and Peter Seigfried, the European Assistant General Secretary for Program of GBGM took part in our conference. One result from the conference is that we have started a Wesleyan Alliance. The Alliance will coordinate joint mission efforts between the Wesleyan denominations in Ukraine.

The Wesleyan Alliance has started monthly prayer meetings, and has made concrete plans for a joint street persons ministry. If we get approval, the Alliance will start giving basic medical care at the Kiev train station, a winter "shelter" for street people. Some have lived at the train station for up to 4 years. The train station is also the gathering place for a large number of street children, whose numbers are growing rapidly. The program will be jointly funded by the UM and Nazarene churches, with the Salvation Army providing equipment and expertise. All of the denominations will provide volunteers.

After the Wesleyan conference we went directly to the Ukraine District youth camp, for youth between 12 and 16 years old. The camp was on the Black Sea between Yalta and Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. There were 110 persons at the camp, 70 of them were youth from 9 different congregations in Russia and Ukraine. Many of these children had never seen the ocean before, or even been outside their hometown. The theme for the camp was Revival of Hope, a United Methodist program for prevention of drug and alcohol abuse among youth. We talked a lot about what drug and alcohol does to our body, what we can do for our neighbor who is already drug dependent. We had bible studies and worshipped together. All the youth received a Bible, which was an important gift for a lot of them. Helen, the director of the camp, especially remembers a 13 year old boy who came to her two days after he had received the Bible with tears in his eyes. He told her, "I have lost my Bible, I am so sad." After they talked a little about it, Helen promised him a new Bible. She asked him if he wanted it the same evening or the next morning. He looked at her and said: "I want to look more for it more, so I want to wait until tomorrow morning." Helen later said, "I don't think I ever have given a gift to someone who was so sad when he had lost his gift. That moment became a special sermon for me."

Many youth told us the camp drew them closer to God, and several made first-time professions of faith. This was the first youth camp for our whole district, we are happy for the results, and all of the youth are asking for another camp next year! We have also been to Kerch and Odessa this fall. We visited Kerch to help the congregation in their struggling to be a church where Jesus is most important, where He is the center for their work. The congregation has been through a hard time and still has a hard time, but we can see that things are changing. Besides that, it was great to be back in the city where we lived for a couple of years, a city we grew to love very much. Kerch will always be special for us, for it was here we started our ministry and our family life together. Our first apartment together was the one in Kerch. After a year with different pastors, last Annual Conference the Bishop appointed a full time pastor to Kerch. The new pastor is a woman and she is young. It is a very hard combination to be accepted in leadership in this country. She needs our prayers.

We have prayed and we still pray a lot for Kerch, for the congregation and for the pastor. We have prayed that God would help us to do the right things for Kerch. And God answered us through a phone call from Finland in early October. A young woman from Estonia has a call to go to Kerch for a year, help the pastor there with her work and support her in her ministry. A UMC congregation in Finland wants to support her with their prayers and with her expenses and give her salary. Julia speaks Russian, she has been to Kerch and she knows the congregation a little. She was a counselor at our youth camp in Sevastopol and is good with youth. We send our thanks to God and we are looking forward to this year to see what God can do through her ministry.

After going to Moscow to plan for the furthering of the drug and alcohol ministry in Russia and Ukraine, we were together with the Bishop and his wife over Thanksgiving weekend to open our new church in Odessa.. On Thanksgiving Day, we treated the Bishop and his wife to an American style Thanksgiving Dinner (they are German) at a local Kiev restaurant. The restaurant actually had a great meal! The way back from Odessa was an adventure as the ice storm of the century hit the middle of the Ukraine and we were stuck on a train for 27 hours! A week after the Odessa trip, we left for Lugansk, a mining city in in eastern Ukraine to be with the congregation on the five-year anniversary of the founding of their church. That train ride is only 18 hours long, a short one. This church had only 5 members two years ago, and was about to close. But due to the faithful work of their current pastor, Vladimir Paxomov, attendence is close to 50.

We have also plans for a women's conference next spring, leader training for youth leaders, a follow up to the Wesleyan Heritage Conference, leader training for the church leader, starting soup kitchen, help the congregation to do some outreach work for the neighborhood, start a congregation in Kiev and a new youth camp the summer of 2001.

Many of you have requested information of where else you could be involved in ministry in Ukraine and Russia. Here are two new programs we are considering:

Micro-enterprises. One of the biggest needs in Ukraine is jobs. We are looking for interested businessmen who might be willing to invest into the lives of Ukrainians by offering some entrepreneurial know-how and expertise. Small business ventures are extremely high-risk in Ukraine, but potential impact upon people's lives immeasurable. If interested, send us an email: whlovelace@aol.com Always include your full name and the church you attend. Mention if are desiring personal involvement, or are representing a church.

Street Children/Person ministry: As mentioned above, we will be starting a medical inspection program for street people. For more details on specific involvement, send us an email. whlovelace@aol.com. Include details mentioned above.

Our hope and wishes for our ministry is that we can give hope to people around us, in a world that seems hopeless. We pray that we can give Jesus' love and care to people around us through our deeds and words. We hope that all the conferences, camps, leadership training, conversations, soup kitchens and work in the congregations can be tools in our ministry, not simply busy-ness to fulfill our own needs for self worth.

We want to thank all of you for your prayers, for your letters, for your gifts. Thank you for your care. May God bless all of you in this special time of Advent.

Helen and Bill Lovelace