January Update

Posted on January 13, 2020 by Nathan

Bible First

Meeting Our Students

For a long time, we have felt it would be a good idea to reach out to some of the Bible First students and try to meet them face-to-face. One such meeting finally happened, thanks to Serhii Chepara, who has been helping us run the Bible First course. He picked a city, Lutsk, set a time and place, and invited our students to meet with us.

We weren't really sure what to expect, but three of our students showed up, and we had a good time getting to know each other. They gave us some feedback on the course, what they liked, what could be improved, and we shared some of our plans for upcoming changes to the course.

Nothing earth-shattering happened at our meeting, but it was nice to put a name with a face, and we went home encouraged. We'd like to do the same thing with our students in other cities, perhaps starting with Rivne in the next month or two.

Left to right: Abby, Josh, Nathan, Serhii, Oleksander, Oksana, Lyuda, and one of Oksana and Lyuda's daughters.

Ukrainian Bible First

One of my main projects continues to be preparing the refreshed Ukrainian lessons for print. Fourteen lessons down, six more to go!

Bible First Online

Unfortunately, we didn't make our self-imposed December 31 deadline to begin using Bible First Online, but we're getting close! We haven't given ourselves a new deadline yet, but hopefully soon!

A New Team Member

Allow me to introduce the newest member of the team, Kade Bloom! Kade attended CMO 2019, and decided he wanted to come back and work with us full-time. His current plan is to stay for one year and see how things go, and his main goal for now is to learn the language.

Carpathian Mountain Outreach

It's the middle of January, and that means that CMO is just five months away! We haven't made the official announcement yet, but the info for CMO 2020 is up on the CMO website, and registration is open. I know of a lot of people that are interested, so apply ASAP before we run out of room!

Family

I'm happy to report that Lydia's eyes continue to improve, and it is looking very unlikely at this point that she will need a second surgery!

Now that Christmas is over, our family has finished our "month of celebrations", with Melissa and Briana's birthdays, and Christmas, of course. Now it's time to hunker down and hit the school books! We are still enjoying a warmer winter, which is nice for Jonathan, who plays outside almost every day. I'm sure the girls would like some more snow, however. At least we've had one good sledding snow so far, and I'm sure there are more to come!

Melissa opens one of her gifts.