We can’t post photos due to the sensitive location of these teachers, but during their debriefing and celebration times here were some of the testimonies shared:
“I learned to focus on the audience.”
“It was exciting to train godly youth leaders, I really see this area growing.”
“I discovered I am not just an okay teacher, I am actually a good teacher!”
“I was able to overcome fear.”
1 of the 4 outreach teams went to an extremely remote location and found that the churches were very excited to have a team come, we hope to send more teams back to them. The other 3 teams went to different areas of India and built upon ministry that other teams had done in the past. One participant even had a chance to serve with her team in her home church. Thank you for praying for Angela and for sending her to India as we seek to help pioneer a new Titus Project location.
Thank you for praying for us, our leadership team meetings and our safety.The whole week we were in Kyiv, for the first time in a long time, there was not a single air-raid siren.
We decided to take a train from Budapest to Mukachevo, and transfer to a different train from there to Kyiv. The train trip was uneventful, just the way we wanted!
We arrived to the YWAM base in Kyiv on Sunday morning. It was definitely a wonderful feeling of coming home. Our house is still just fine, along with the rest of the campus. We immediately began cleaning. We went through each room emptying drawers and shelves so that our home will be even nicer for teams and volunteers to use throughout this coming year. It was very emotional. The children’s calendars were still set to February. Cassie had a sign up on her shelf that said BRB (be right back). When we left on February 13, we had told the kids we thought we would be back in just a couple weeks. We were going to help with an outreach team in the Western part of Ukraine and so each of us just took a small backpack with a few things. As you know, we remained in the west of Ukraine (Ternopil) and left the day the war began on February 24. We hadn’t been back to Kyiv since.
Because electricity is constantly turning off, the plants were starting to die from cold and the freezer had meat that was spoiled. Each room needed a lot of cleaning and we moved the plants to a friend’s apartment! It took us three days, but we made it through each room.
From Wednesday to Friday we met together as the leadership team of YWAM Kyiv. We had really wonderful times of worship and prayer. We also took a lot of time to read through the thoughts and perspectives of our staff team (from a survey we had sent them). By the end of the three days we had come to a place where we decided to re-open YWAM Kyiv as a fully functioning YWAM campus. Since the war began, we pressed ‘pause’ on our base as a YWAM campus, and we had been functioning as a volunteer movement with a mix of staff, volunteers, and a lot of movement of people. We have now created a new structure for our staff, with different types of teams created especially for this time. We also set up some different ways that our off-site staff (who are displaced around the world) can remain involved. Overall, we felt that our time together was extremely valuable and will really provide the framework for a successful year of 2023 even if the war continues.
We took the train home and arrived back safe and sound. You may have heard about the horrible disaster that took place when a missile struck a large apartment block in Dnipro (a city in central Ukraine). That missile struck the day we left. We were grateful to arrive back in Budapest and give our sweet kids a kiss as they slept in their beds. We were also so grateful to our YWAM Budapest friends Ahleah and Misha who stayed with them while were gone. Thank you to each one of you for your love and support as we begin 2023.
Thank you to all who prayed we would find a place. Due to an influx of people in Hungary, at the moment it is especially difficult to find places to rent. We only had a few days to find a house and get the paperwork done, so that we could apply for our visas to remain in Budapest, but we were trusting it would all work out. After looking at one place that wasn’t going to work, the next place we saw turned out to be perfect. It is only 10 minutes from the kids school. The owners recently sold a house so they have a bunch of furniture and they are willing to rent it to us furnished. This is such a blessing because we are not ready to buy a bunch of furniture AND they also said it was no problem to have our dog with us, so hopefully we can get Midnight from Ukraine at some point (this makes the kids really happy! They miss her!). We were able to get all of the paperwork done and now we will be in Romania for two weeks before heading back to Hungary.
While we are here, we will help out with the work that YWAM Cluj ELS ministries is doing. At the moment there are 96 displaced Ukrainians that they are housing and feeding everyday. They have also recently rented an area that will be a community center. They will use this space to run classes and create more community for the Ukrainians that are here in Cluj. It needs a lot of work yet, but hopefully it will be ready soon.
Thank you for your prayers. God is good, faithful, and we know he is with us.
Our 90 days are almost up here in Norway, so we have been really on a decision-making journey. It has not been easy. We did not anticipate needing to be making these kinds of decisions this year. We were hoping the war would be over by now and it would be safe to return to Kyiv, but sadly this is not the case.
We have decided we will stay in Europe so that we can be closer to our YWAM Kyiv staff in proximity. We are on the leadership team for the base as well as we lead our Bible teaching team, even if we are doing so remotely. We take that responsibility seriously and we have a commitment to fulfill. We have also taken seriously our children’s education and safety. After looking at many different schooling options, we have chosen to move to Budapest, Hungary for the year. They have a great school that our children can attend that is very similar to the school that they have been at in Kyiv.
So what will we do there? We have been in touch with the base director of YWAM. We aren’t sure exactly what it will all look like. We will continue to do our work with YWAM Kyiv (this looks like a lot of emailing, zoom calls, administrative work, social posting, and prayer), and we will continue to teach people how to study and apply the Bible to their lives (in partnership with YWAM Budapest). Ben may have a role with helping at the kid’s school in the area of math. We are trusting it will all work out well and we will see where the Lord will use us in Budapest.
We plan to move to Budapest once our paper work goes through, so we will wait in Cluj, Romania until we are approved for a long-term visa for Hungary. This will likely happen at some point this summer.
This past week Angela (along with a team of others) had the opportunity to bring together staff from all of the different Bible courses YWAM runs all over Europe. We invited Ron Smith who founded the School of Biblical Studies (now run in over 50 locations around the world) as our guest speaker. It was a very exciting and encouraging time. The best part of it all was that half of our Bible team from Ukraine were there together. It was the first time since we have left Ukraine due to the war. It wasn’t all of us (some are in America and some are in Ukraine) but it was a good group of us and there were definitely tears and hugs!
We have been driving…and driving…and driving! It has been good though. We have enjoyed seeing different sites in Europe, and also just having time to think, pray and talk. One challenge has been that I (Angela) was teaching Romans in Aqueduct (3 evening sessions) and so was preparing and teaching on the road. It is such a good book and I really enjoyed the chance to teach it, but I wouldn’t recommend doing a road trip at the same time as teaching! We still have a few more days of travel ahead of us and then we are looking forward to settling into a place and creating a bit more routine until June. Please continue to pray for the war to end.
