The spring was a very busy time at the Ukrainian Education Center. This semester we had a boom of different groups and individuals using the Center for both the building of the Body and spreading the good news to others. Every night at the Center has been very busy with different meetings, special events and regular activities.

There are three church small groups that continue to meet at the UEC for worship and fellowship. Another student group started using the Center for their meetings in the early spring. Two of these groups met regularly for leadership meetings in order to plan group meetings and build up leaders.

Grady Bryan continues to use the UEC to help his students with their classes. Several times they utilized the newly installed screen in the big hall to view class assignments together. Grady also organized a group to watch and discuss different movies about the life of Jesus. Several freshmen from International Christian University attended.

Rick Walker also used the Center each week to teach classes to young preachers from Kyiv and the surrounding Kyiv region. Rick's students continue to benefit from learning how to understand and present the word of God.

In another develop-ment, Nivky church members renewed movie nights for students from ICU and several other universities. A few students from National Medical University as well as National Aviation University came. Thanks to the gift through David Ralston we were able to show movies on a new screen. Each Friday about 10 students would come for a little snack (usually some fruit and cookies prepared by Chris Lovingood). The refreshments were followed by a movie and a discussion. Special efforts were made to choose meaningful movies to help students evaluate their lives. We hope to continue this outreach as the summer semester starts May 10.

Lyonya Starikov, one of the sophomores from ICU along with several church members, has started an outreach at the Center. They invite seekers that they know to meet each Tuesday for a Bible study. Chris Lovingood continues his weekly English outreach and met with several individuals from Nivky church for mentoring and encouragement.

We also had several special events. Besides the event organized by Betty and Joe Cannon that you can read about in another article, Livoberezhna and Nivky church members met to watch The Passion of the Christ on Friday before Easter. Several seeking UEC patrons, who were viewing this movie for the first time, joined us that night. It was an emotional experience to reflect on the suffering of Christ once again and to witness to others about His tremendous love.

Posted on June 19, 2007