Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Day Thirteen in Ukraine

Hello from the third floor of Kiev Theological Seminary. My home away from home. It is raining again but here they don’t have thunderstorms and lightening very often. It’s just a rain and then, not really downpours although this morning the wind blew the hardest it has in my time here. Interesting. A place where there are not tornados?

Today is my last full day of teaching. Tomorrow is a special presentation and final exam.

I am thoroughly enjoying the experience. Steve Marshall, the mission pastor from Marantha Bible Church, Akron, Ohio spoke in chapel yesterday and talked about how our churches are like hotels that we want while on vacation: 1. We want to be feed well; 2. We want some good activities for our children to keep them busy and out of our hair; 3. We want it to be a safe place to come back to at night after we’ve been seeing the sights all day.

As you know I am substituting for Barry Clingan who was scheduled to be on this trip with this assignment. But due to the illness of his mother, he could not make it. An update – she had surgery yesterday (Tuesday) at Vanderbilt and they only had to remove about 30-40% of the kidney due to the tumor and the doctor is very optimistic she will make a full recovery with no dialysis. They did have to rush her back to surgery later in the day for internal bleeding and low blood pressure, but it was her spleen, not the kidney. Continue to pray for her for full healing and recovery. This is the only kidney she has.

I am still receiving great reviews of the movie “Expelled.” Richard Land interviewed Ben Stein and you can hear it or read it here.

Tim Lett will be with us Sunday leading music. Tim led during our “Faith Week” in October, 2006 and I had the opportunity to serve with him in the late 90’s. He and his wife, Daphne, and four children live in Gadsden. Check out his blog here.

I visited a Greek Exegesis class of the Gospel of John this morning taught by Dr. Rick Perhai. The students seem to be very dedicated to their studies and I’m overall impressed with the quality of the students. Many of the faculty here are missionaries with SEND International. Such is the case with Rick, who is from Michigan.

The seminary here has 191 enrolled. The Church Planting Division (of which I am serving and is under the leadership of Bro. Joel) will graduate their first class this May. It is a class of 12.

Well, I may blog again tomorrow, but if not: I leave the Seminary for the airport at 4:15 Friday morning (8:15 CST Thursday night) and go to Amsterdam, Memphis and then to Huntsville about 8:30 Friday night.

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