We are thankful to have a full schedule for August.  We are always open for any opportunity to talk about our ministry to Ukraine, so please contact us if you have any interest in that.

August 8 – Christ the King Presbyterian in Austin

August 13-14 – South Texas Presbytery meeting in Austin (this is a gathering of pastors and elders from the South Texas presbyterian churches)

August 22 – Steve preaches at Christ Presbyterian Church in Georgetown, Texas.  He’ll be speaking about some of the ways God has been challenging him and growing his faith over the last couple of months.

August 27-28 – North Texas presbytery meeting in Gordonville, Texas.  (same as above, but for the North Texas and Oklahoma churches)

August 29 – We’ll be giving a presentation during the Sunday School hour at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Texas, and speaking for a few minutes in the service.

If you are at any of these meetings, please let us know that you read the blog.  We’d love to meet you!

As the last entry explains, we had an offer on our house soon after we returned from North Carolina.  That started our search for an apartment and preparation for moving.  It also began about 6 weeks of communication struggles with our prospective buyer which complicated our plans to move.

We ended up moving to a small, 2 bedroom apartment on July 15 and closed on our house on July 28.  Praise the Lord for His provision in both instances!

Our apartment is much closer to Steve’s work so he doesn’t have such a long commute.  It’s very convenient to our church and other places we frequently go and I’m getting used to the neighborhood.  Stevie, as usual, seems to be adjusting very well.

Now that all of that is finished, we will be back in our normal routine.  My next post will give you an idea of our schedule for the next couple of months and our next update will let you know about the exciting ways God has provided financially for us in the last couple of months.

So, Monday morning was spent in the struggle not to give in to discouragement.  By Monday evening, two people had looked at the house and by Tuesday we had an offer!  Praise the Lord!  Our closing is scheduled for July 15, so please pray that everything will continue to fall into place with that.

With the house selling, our next concern was finding an apartment.  We spent about 4 days looking at various apartment options both in person and online.  We finally found one that fit all of our criteria – it is close to Steve’s job (cuts his commute time more than half!), convenient to a bus that had a stop in front of his building, has a garage, and the rent is less than our current house payment.  Again, praise the Lord!

We are moving to a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment so we are now sorting through our things and trying to get rid of things we don’t need.  Our hope is that going through this process now will make the transition to an apartment in Ukraine a little easier.

We love our home and will be sad to leave it.  We moved in when we returned from our honeymoon and it has been perfect for us.  We have many wonderful memories and we hope the new owners will enjoy it just as much.

Another treat was to have my (Dawn’s) parents there for the week to watch Stevie during our sessions.  One of the more difficult aspects of moving overseas is taking Stevie far away from all of his grandparents.  This week gave them a great chance to spend time with him and help him get to know them better.  His other grandparents live in Austin, so he gets to see them fairly often.  What a blessing to have grandparents!

In addition to the encouragement we get by talking to others who are doing the same thing we are and who are experiencing many of the same struggles, we heard some great teaching.  We were reminded again that our salvation is by grace and so is our sanctification.  Our growth in Christ is also dependent on Him.  It is not dependent on how disciplined we are or how hard we work.  The beauty of Christianity is that from start to finish, we can rest on the work of Christ to know that we have pleased God.  When our identity is secure in that, we are freed to take risks and reach out to others.

One of the hardest things about moving to another culture is that you often lose much, if not all, of what you take pride in about yourself.  You may not know how to pay your bills, you are incapable of having the normal, adult level conversations that you are used to, and you often need help to do even the simplest things in the new place.  As you can imagine, this can lead quickly to discouragement!  The message of Living in Grace is that God does not love you less even when you feel like you are not “performing” at the level you should be.  In fact, being secure in God’s love ought to release us to have the humility we need to be learners in our new culture.  It ought to release us from feeling we need to know everything or have it all together in order to minister to others.  The beauty of this is that when we come to others with this kind of humility and weakness, we are much more able to show God’s love to them.

Of course, this is all much easier to say than it is to do!  We will try to remind one another of these lessons when we get into those hard situations – I know we won’t have to wait until Ukraine before we’ll need the reminder!

Stevie will experience his first plane ride and we have high hopes it will go well!

Thanks for your prayers and for your giving. We are grateful that the funds were available to go now and not have to wait until September.

This weekend we will be at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Dallas.  We will be presenting during their Sunday School hour and then having a few minutes in the worship service.  Come say hi if you’re there so we know some people read this blog!

If they record it, you can hear the sermon by clicking the “Listen Online” button.

I think that God often works with us on a “just in time” basis.  He doesn’t give us all we need weeks before we will need it.  He often doesn’t give us that safety cushion that we wish He would provide.  On the other hand, He always gives us what we need by the time we need it.  There’s an old saying that God is rarely early but always on time.

Anyway, we recently experienced some “just in time” encouragement.  We had hoped that our house would sell before the tax credit expired at the end of April.  (Yes, that was an ambitious hope, but we’re like that sometimes!)  When it not only didn’t sell, but we didn’t even have one person look at it over the last weekend in April, we were discouraged.  At the same time we were looking at our support account and wondering if we would be able to have the funds to cover the training we wanted to take in June.  If we didn’t go in June, our next chance would be September.  We just weren’t sure what the best decision was and we were discouraged that the finances were so close.

Well, God met us “just in time” in a couple of surprising ways!  As you know if you receive our email updates, one of our donors called us and offered to match any donations given to our support account during the months of May and June.  This was completely unexpected and reminded us that God will provide for us.  We had made the decision a couple of days before to register for the June conference and trust that God would provide.  He didn’t even make us wait very long to show us His provision in an amazing way!

Our house is still on the market and we haven’t had any new lookers in a couple of weeks.  However, we went out of town that last weekend in April in order to leave the house open and to visit Southside Community Church in Corpus Christi.  A couple of days after our donor contacted us about the matching gift, we got an email from a couple who was visiting Southside the week we were there and who said they sensed God telling them to start supporting us with monthly contributions.  Just in time, God confirmed that our decision to travel that weekend was what He wanted us to do.

The entire support raising process is full of ups and downs.  It is definitely a time where God builds our faith and makes us trust in His provision.  The project is so much bigger than what we can do on our own and it forces us to depend on God.  That is a habit we need to develop on so many levels!  Praise the Lord that he always meets us just in time .

During the visit they had a fellowship meal and the BBQ/Smoked Pork was amazing. I can’t say that should be the reason to become a member, but maybe if you were on the edge..

We wanted to thank Ben Wheeler for having us on Sunday. You have been a great encouragement.

During the trip, we had the opportunity to visit the USS Lexington that is parked in Corpus Christi Bay. The Lexington is an inspirational part of US history. Here are a few photos from out visit.

Stevie is such a blessing! He continues to amaze us and has been bringing us many opportunities to visit with lots of people who we would have never met. You can see him looking back,  busy charming all the others who are visiting the ship.

Anyway, my meetings with that girl fizzled out after about 4 or 5.  The women’s ministry activities had varying degrees of what I would consider “success”, but things didn’t really take off like I had hoped. The Person of Jesus study guide/notebook went onto my shelf.

At a Country Team meeting a year or so later, one of our missionaries in Odessa, Ukraine, mentioned that she was looking for something to use for a new Bible study that she was starting.  I recommended the Person of Jesus study and told her I had even translated the first few lessons into Russian.  Andrea took the first few chapters to try it out and ended up going through the study with a group of women over the next couple of years.

Fast forward to March 8 – Women’s Day – of this year.  One of my fellow Kyiv team missionaries gave her testimony at a women’s event geared toward the women of our church as well as their mothers (many of the SPRC members are university students).  They had a great turnout and Tracy is going to begin a new Bible study with them.  Well, guess what curriculum she’s going to use?  That’s right, Andrea has just about finished with it and the leader’s guide got passed back to Kyiv.

I am so encouraged to see how God has used and is using this Bible study with various groups in Kyiv! Just another example of how God is working in a very broad way as well as specifically with each of us as individuals. He is concerned with more than just my plans.

Keep Tracy in your prayers as she begins this study.