A blizzard hit Ukraine just a couple of days before we planned a big outreach for the community. Sunday, January 8th is the day after Christmas here and it is when we planned a large Christmas festival in our church yard.
Two days earlier on Friday the snow storm moved in and temperatures plummeted to single digits with blowing snow. The weather forced us to cancel our Christmas eve service on Friday night. Some people were saying that we should also cancel our outreach but we decided to continue with the plans.
Friday and Saturday were snowy, windy, and bitter cold. When I woke on Sunday morning it looked like more of the same. Thankfully, however, the clouds broke just in time! Still we weren’t sure how many people would brave the cold temperatures. It turned out that people were ready to get out of there houses and apartments after two days of blizzard!
Our Church youth and many member of our church came together to make this event a real success! We also invited a missionary team from Word of Life in Kiev. They put on a great play at the end that focused on the real meaning of Christmas.
For the first time our church also used historic pieces of art (copies of them) as way to share the gospel. We had 8 painting that were hung in our church foyer. Each painting represented a different Biblical story. This proved to be a very interesting way to share the gospel.
The event was a success not only because the weather was good and people showed up, but primarily because we were able to communicate the gospel message to many in several unique ways.
karph63
January 10, 2017Nice to see our family of believers in Odessa. We miss them!