Climbing the mountain of knowledge or the best three months

    Things were packed, tickets to Odessa were bought and finally this day had come! The hero-city met a new group of missionaries :) BTW, about the group: there was seven of us – three girls and four guys. You can see us at the picture on the right side, we are in the T-shirts of the State of Iowa <-- So, from right to left meet Aliona, Marina, Vicka, Philimon, me, Dan, Zakhar and Amadeush. It’s like the slogan from advertisement says: we are so different, but nevertheless we’re together :) The fact is that Philimon and Amadeush are Poles, Dan is American and others are Ukrainians. Lessons were in English, and to understand an intricate foreign speech a wonderful girl Maria and Sasha, the pastor of one of the churches, helped interpreting. 

     The training lasted for only three months and took place at home. We lived in a small house alongshore of the Black sea, and every week or every other week new pastors-teachers had come to us, each with his own course of lectures. In the mornings we went to the coast for a prayer, and walked in the evenings. That time was full of knowledge, fellowship, practice of English (and even Polish:) ). We were like one big family, we cooked together and ate together, recreated and walked, sang and evangelized in the streets... It was favorable time for our spiritual growth! But as any family, we had our own problems and difficulties as well, and God helped us to overcome it.

      Those three months were the best in my life and they have cardinally changed my life! I am grateful to God for our teachers who spent their own time and money to come to Ukraine from the other side of the ocean for a week, who taught us the bases of missionary ministry, I’m grateful for the directors, Mark and Arkadiy, and for the group of missionaries who helped us with studies, but most of all I am grateful to God for our group which became native for me. 

     After the training was finished we were given our certificates and were ordered to a different countries and cities for a six-months practice. Philimon has gone to Syria, Amadeush to Poland, Zakhar and girls have returned home, to different cities of Ukraine, and my practice took place in Russia, in the glorious city Tyumen, but more on that another time :-)