Thanks so much for praying for the prayer requests we sent you recently concerning the volunteer project we were getting ready for with a volunteer group from Mississippi. God heard your prayers and answered.

First of all, He prevented the Orthodox priest from being successful in protesting the work. Although he tried repeatedly, and did cause problems and difficulties that had to be dealt with, God worked out the problems and allowed us to do all the work we had planned to do.

Secondly, He gave wonderful health and safe travel to the group during their time here and en route here and back to the USA. The wonderful MS group completed their construction project, did evangelism activities in various institutions and settings in the city, and held medical clinics 5 days. More than 1,450 appointments were received by the doctors, and all of those who came heard the gospel and received New Testaments.

Also, He used all the trouble the priest tried to stir up to probably give us some of the best PR the church has ever gotten. All the officials are certainly more aware of the churches where we worked and that they are active in that city of 45,000. (Perhaps we should thank the priest for the publicity.)

Please pray for the following needs:

• Pray for our entire team as we are presently out of the country in Poland for our Annual Missionary Meeting (Which is also why I was late in getting this prayer/praise report out to you.) This meeting is with all our other missionaries from across the former USSR. Pray for our safe travel and return, and for the training we will receive here this week.
• Pray for the small group ministries we are trying to launch and train people for in our city of Dnipropetrovsk. This is the key to reaching our city with the gospel.
• Continue to pray that God will call out and put into the hearts of hundreds of Ukrainian young men the burden to start new churches in our region.

One of our Ukrainian co-workers - Dima Lepin with his wife Lena and son Dims, jr.

Dima and his team continue their ministry. They have started working with three new Bible Study groups.

One of the new groups meets at the car repair shop. It has as many as ten people in it. Two other groups meet at people's homes.

Childrens ministry is going well. In fact, parents are starting to show interest in the Bible through this ministry. Two mothers have already asked Dima and his co-workers to come to their homes to study the Bible together.

One of the groups was unfortunately closed/ It used to meet in ZHECK (a city service head-quarters). The office was closed, so they had to close tha group as well, since they have nowhere to meet now. There is a Bible Study group going on in that part of the city, and people were asked to come there. They have showed a great interest, but no one ever showed up.

• Pray for Dima's team as they minister to the people of Dnipr together. Pray for God to strengthen them and draw tthem closer to Himself and to each other.
• Pray for all the people Dima and his team are working with. Pray for God to open their hearts to His thruths.
• Pray for the people from the "closed" Bible study group. Pray for God to continue to work in their hearts and to bring them to a church or a Bible Study group.

This week Tim is doing language study a lot. At the end of the week, on Thursday, April, 15th, Tim will be going tot Kiev.

Tim continues to work with the church in the village of Kulebovka. Unfortunately, the work there goes rather slow. In summer they are planning on doing a conference on the sports ministry in the morning, and then a sports camp in the evening.

• Pray for Tim as he goes to Kiev. Pray for the safe travel and for his business in Kiev to be taken care of.
• Pray for the sports ministry in Kulebovka. Pray for God to raise up strong leaders for this ministry not only in Kulebovka, but throughout Ukraine.

This week we are enjoying a break to get together with workers from our entire region. This is what we call Area Group Meeting (AGM). This time we are in North East Poland at a fairly nice Hotel. We are together with about 400 other workers and their kids from about a dozen countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

It is a great time to meet with friends, be inspired, worship together and gain insights and vision for future ministry.

• Pray that God gives us wisdom for future ministry. We are leaving in Two MONTHS FOR AMERICA !!
• Pray for God to move in the lives of many of us who are tired, and some who are discouraged. -
• Pray that God gives many wisdom for new ministry plans.

Nikita, Ruslon, Igor, Max and me (with the cheesy smile).

A few weeks ago Max called and asked if we could have a mid-week Bible Study. I was a bit surprised because I had him pegged as a permanent agnostic. He has been attending our Friday night group since it began last April and has not shown much serious interest. He is a post-modern thinker, loves to quote "The Matrix" movies, has studied "The Book of the Dead" and other Tibetan Buddhist literature (Hello Dahli). Philosophically speaking, trying to pin him down on his beliefs is like nailing jello to the wall.

But he and a few others wanted to meet. Their motivation is English study but also an interest in Christianity. So, of course, I agreed to meet with them and anyone else that wanted to come. Since then our Friday group has shifted from mostly girls to mostly guys. This is really strange since most students that want to be translators or are otherwise desperate to learn English are ladies. Also, most who are open to attending Bible Studies are ladies also.

But with all the guys coming on Fridays, I invited them to come on Tuesday nights and this week I had four guys. We discussed the story of Adam and Eve and philosophized over the nature of sin and evil. It was a cool. So Lisa still has her 3 groups a week and now I get to have fun to. Please pray for these guys.

Our Vision is to help these small churches develop both formal and informal women's ministries.

March 8th is Women's Day throughout the former Soviet Union. It is a more inclusive celebration than Mother's day but includes lots of the same kind of traditions. Several months ago Lisa started joining me on Sunday church trips to speak to women. She gathered the ladies (usually about 80% of the congregation) and spoke about issues pertaining to being godly wives, mothers and ministers.

This soon birthed an idea to help launch women's Bible studies and other ministries in many of these churches. We talked about this with Vlad and Katya who work with me in the Bible School and they seemed to think it was an OK idea and that Women's Day would be a great time to have it. Then we got busy again and Lisa and I didn't follow through with the idea - though it held a prominant spot on our "to-do" section of the whiteboard.

This is why I was very surprised when, about a month ago, Katya handed me a rough draft of the first ever Volnogorsk Regional Ladies Conference. She had already made most of the arrangements but wanted me to approve the schedule (like I needed to) and also wanted Lisa to be the key-note speaker.

Well, one month later, the conference is over and it was a great success. We had over 120 ladies packed in the small church at Volnogorsk. Lisa spoke about "Relational Evangelism" and also "Women Mentoring Women". She did great. Katya ran the program and kept it on schedule to the minute despite being 9 and one-half months "with child". She is due the last week of the month. She may be tired, sore and eating for two but she still has the energy of ten.

The conference was a big boost to the women of these small churches who are the behind the scenes workers and especially the pray-ers. Our vision is to help them minister to each other and bring others to faith in Jesus also.