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“And they overcame by the blood
of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and
they did not love their lives to the death.”
Rev. 12:11
Dear friends
and family,
Greetings from the Ukraine. It has been a long time
since I sent out any kind of newsletter. Since the
last time Annie and I wrote, many changes have taken
place, and now it’s Tanya and I writing. About four
years ago I started a very close friendship with a
person that later became that special person I was
ready to spend my whole life with. She’s my first
love, and there’s nobody like her in this world. I
don’t know why God blessed us both in such a way, but
we’re both each other's first love, and as we say
“first and last”. In August 2000 Tanya and her best
friend Lena were invited by their girlfriend in the
States to come over and visit. Tanya left with a
diamond ring on her finger that I gave to her on
August 4th. In October I went back to the
States to work and make some money for the wedding and
all. Our engagement continued for eight months as we
were hundreds of miles away from each other, only
email and weekly phone calls connecting us. Finally
on May 28th 2001 we met each other after
the long lonesome months, and on July 7th
we were married. We had a wonderful time on our honey
moon on a Greek island in the
Mediterranean
called Naxos. It happens to be that this is the
island where my great grandfather lived, and was
actually the mayor of
Naxos
Town.
The time I
spent in the states was difficult being so far away
from my love, but God blessed me in many ways that I
didn’t expect. At the time when I left for the States
I was involved in a lot of ministries in the church.
It was a big change to go from being so busy with
ministry to doing nothing but working all day in a
factory. Well, I was expecting it to be one of the
most boring times of my life. Fortunately I guess
that’s not what God had in mind. I was incredibly
blessed by some friends who let me live in their
house for free, fed me, and provided a vehicle for the
whole time spent in the states. It was a perfect
blessing from God. I didn't have hardly any expenses
whatsoever. They even paid for my gas, so all the
money I made I could be put into savings for our
future.
I had heard of
many stories of people saying how they found
themselves in circumstances when they didn’t have any
friends, and that caused them to become better friends
with God. Well because of times in my own life being
a missionary’s kid, when I didn’t have any friends at
all and didn’t seem to be experiencing that typical
happy ending of getting to know God better, I didn’t
really have any positive expectations. God really
surprised me! During that time working at the factory
thinking it was going to be so boring, I experienced
the sweetest fellowship with Jesus I’ve ever had in my
life. A few times when I was working on jobs that
guys at the factory liked the least, I found myself
having to stop what I was doing just because of the
overwhelming thankfulness to God for everything He’s
blessed me with. I just started weeping as His
presence touched me right there where I least expected
Him. After that time in the States I could honestly
say that I fell in love with Jesus, and really mean it
from deep in my heart. Before that experience I had
heard many teachings about falling in love with Jesus,
or returning to your “first love”, but now I know that
it’s the kind of thing that you don’t fully understand
unless you experience it. Well now I can say that I
sincerely fell in love with Jesus.
I hope that
wasn’t a boring update for any of you. I just haven’t
written in so long that I thought many would be
wondering what has been going on these last few
years. My original plan when I went to the States was
to return and start a business in the Ukraine, in
order to make a living. Well, eventually when I got
back I realized that was not the direction God wanted
me to take. In the meantime I do as much ministry as
I can fit in between doing accounting work for my
Dad's ministries, and other work for the church. Tanya
is going to school learning foreign languages. This
will be her last year studying English (which she
already knows pretty well), French, German and
Ukrainian. Both of us are mainly involved in youth
ministry. She does a lot of counseling with young
girls, plays in our pantomime team, oversees six house
groups that she started, and her and a team of young
people visit kids in an orphanage. She is also an
incredible one-on-one evangelist. I lead a guy's home
group for young adults, and also my friend Costa and I
lead a group for teenage guys. I can’t imagine what
would have become of many of these teens if I didn’t
listen to God when He told me to start this ministry.
The teens of this next generation have temptations and
hardships that none of us knew at their age. It’s
just neat to see how much it means for them when older
guys spend time with them and just be their friends.
Every other week we have house group with them and in
between we go on outings with them or teach them how
to make all kinds of fun things. For instance one of
the things we did with them recently is I taught them
how to make home-made BB guns that shoot little play
dough balls. They loved it. It was something that
kids up in Russia taught me when we lived in Kostroma
nine years ago. I still play in the worship band,
but right now my main ministries are the teens, and
outreach ministry.
Big
Rock Concert:
On the first
of December we put on a big evangelistic rock
concert. I and some other young artists from our
church sang, our pantomime team, “Faceless People”,
put on a funky dance as well as doing a couple mimes,
and there was one group of guys who did some break
dancing. We were quite surprised when we saw crowds
of young people waiting outside the doors to get in.
About seventy percent of the people who came were
young people who have never accepted Jesus. The
auditorium where this all took place fits one thousand
five hundred people without the balcony, and the place
was packed. It was a lot of fun. Lately I had been
wondering how effective the concert really was. Well,
last week I saw some of the fruit. A friend of Dima,
one of the teenagers I work with, got saved at our
housegroup. His name is Lyosha. He came to the
concert with Dima, and really liked it. Only recently
after many invitations he came to youth group, and
then got saved at the house group. Praise the Lord!
There’s nothing more awesome than seeing someone who
never knew Jesus say “Jesus, come into my life, I want
to follow you.” You can just see it in his eyes. For
the first time in his whole life he is in touch with
the One that made Him, the Creator, who has pleasure
just hanging out with man, his most unique creation.
We gave Lyosha a New Testament and found out the next
week when he came to housegroup that he had already
almost finished reading the Gospel of Mathew. It is
such a joy to minister to someone whose heart is so
open to the gospel.
“Tanya, tell me about
Jesus…”
In the winter
of last year Tanya formed a group of young people that
would visit an orphanage weekly. It was an orphanage
filled with teenagers, many of whom have parents that
either don’t want to discipline their kids, or they
are there because of parents not being able to support
the family financialy. The children live in this
orphanage for five days a week, and on weekends they
go home to their broken families. Most of the
children there are very broken emotionally. With some
of them when you ask them about their parents they put
their head down, or another child might tell horrible
stories of her dad beating her mom, or how a child’s
dad was simply killed. Telling these stories they
burst into tears. Tanya and their visitation team
teaches lessons on sexuality and friendship, trying to
use this to tell the kids about Jesus, because of the
orphanage staff not allowing them to directly speak
about Jesus or preach. After visiting the orphanage
all winter long every week Tanya and another person
from the team went to the director of the orphanage to
talk about doing a real evangelism meeting with an
altar call and everything. After talking with him
they felt that a certain trust level had formed and
the director told them “Youcan do whatever you want.”
After the kids listened to some songs, watched a mime
that they showed and listened to a person's testimony,
they did an altar call. Well all sixty of the kids
that were there raised their hands, and like one big
choir prayed the sinners' prayer! After the kids had
all left to their homes, many of which were far out of
town, many of them found small churches and started
going to Sunday school. Around the time when they
first began to visit this orphanage, Tanya was sitting
at home studying, when an eleven-year-old girl from
the orphanage came to the door. Tanya was very
surprised that the girl was able to find her
apartment, and when she came to the door the girl said
“Tanya, tell me about Jesus.” There was no way the
girl could have known where she lived. She didn’t
have her adress, telephone number and didn’t even know
Tanya’s last name. She just came wondering around in
Tanya’s neighborhood, and after asking an old lady
where Tanya lives she came right to Tanya’s
apartment. Well Tanya took her in and talked with her
about God, and prayed for her. The girl, whose name
was Christina, told Tanya that her and other girls at
the orphanage read the bible together and pray.
Christina then told Tanya that she’s from a family
that came from Azerbaijan with eight brothers, and
she’s the only sister. Her father very strictly
forbid her from going to church, and would not allow
her to wear pants, or cut her hair. Later Tanya
visited Christina where she lived hoping she could
convince her father to allow her to go to church.
When Tanya got to there place she saw that the whole
family of eleven people lived in a two-room apartment
(that’s counting the living room). There wasn’t any
furniture whatsoever, and there were many bottles
lying around, that they most likely collected to get
money for. Unfortunately it was no use trying to
convince her father to allow her to come to church.
Recently we ran in to one of the boys that Tanya met
in that orphanage. When we asked him about his mom he
said that he doesn’t have one. “She died,” he said
casually, “she was torn to pieces by some street dogs
that attacked her at night”.
Supernatural
healing:
During one of
our home groups recently, Dima had a prayer request
for Lyosha, who couldn’t make it that day. He wanted
us to pray for his mom who had been ill with very
serious back problem for a long time. It’s the kind
of sickness that doctors have a hard time fighting,
and there’s not much they can do. The symptoms had
become so severe that she couldn’t work or do
anything, but just lay in bed all day. Well, Lyosha
asked Dima to ask us to pray for his mom and also his
kidneys, which were ill and would cause him much pain
every morning when he woke up. We prayed casually not
really thinking much of it. We really just did it
because I felt like we had to. The next day Dima
called me and I found out that the morning after we
prayed for Lyosha and his mom, his mom felt completely
better, and started working again and doing everything
she used to be able to. Lyosha too was completely
healed and no longer had any problems with his
kidneys. It’s neat when you don’t really take prayer
very seriously, but God does.
Backyard
concert
This week we
put on another rock concert, but this time we did one
right in our neibourhood. It was great. We ran an
extension cord from our apartment on the fourth floor
all the way down into the yard to hook up all the
equipment. As we were getting setup many people
started to gather around. It turns out that most of
the youth where Tanya and I live are not what you
would call well-raised, good boys. Most of them who
came to the concert were from sixteen to 25 years old,
and many of them have already been in jail. There
were at least fifty people that gathered around as we
got set up and started the concert. As usual, after
our mini rock concert the pantomime team showed two
mimes, and our youth pastor Dima preached to the
crowd, that listened very attentively. Often when it
gets to the preaching many people leave. At many of
these outreaches that we’ve done in neighborhoods we
ended up having some bad problems with drunken rowdy
guys. One time my friend Vova even got beat up a
little bit. Thanks to God He gave us wisdom through
someone in our church that recommended us to talk to
the main police officer of our section of town about
the concert and possibly giving us a few police
officers to keep things in order during the concert.
It turned out that the main officer wanted to be
present himself at the concert. It really made a
difference, because as long as he was there nobody had
the nerve to try to do any harm to us. Usually one of
us preaches a message of the gospel and then we talk
to people interested one on one. Unfortunately most
of the people usually leave as soon as the program
ends, or even before the preaching, but at this
concert it was not so. After Dima preached, the
people just stood there like little birds swallowing
every word he spoke. And almost all of them stayed
afterward to talk with us. Our band that usually
plays when we do these outreaches consists of myself
on electric guitar and lead vocals, Vova (my best
friend) on bass, Dima (my other best friend)
percussion and harmonica, Boris drums and lead vocals,
and two guys both named Costa, one plays guitar and
the other raps. It’s such a blast every time. It’s
such a pleasure to be using the gifts you have and all
the means you have to preach the gospel. There’s
nothing more satisfying than to simply tell a lost
soul the good news of Jesus Christ. Every time I fall
away from that I feel like something really big is
missing in my life.
Besides
organizing camping trips with the youth and other
activities like that we’re going to be doing as many
neighborhood concerts as we can this summer. We
already have many invitations. The only thing
hindering us is time, and sometimes lack of
instruments, and equipment. Since none of us guys
have our own instruments, except me having a bass, we
have to use the church’s instruments and equipment.
Of course that creates conflict sometimes, when the
timing of our outreaches doesn't line up with church
services or ministry trips the worship band often
takes.
God
is doing more than you could ever put on paper. There
is an openness in Ukraine right now, and we need to
use the opportunity to spread the gospel like crazy.
There are seasons to plant and seasons to harvest.
May God help us not miss the harvest, because of
distractions of our everyday life or just laziness?
God has put a fire in our hearts, and we don’t want to
let it go out. Blessings and peace to all of you.
Thank you for your prayers and support. You have
given us much more than a cup of cold water.
Blessings and peace to you all in the name of our
Savior and Friend Jesus Christ.
With much
love,
John
and Tanya Lynch
If you would like to
send a donation please write “for John and Tanya ”, or
else it will go to general GoForth Missions.
John and Tanya Lynch - Missionaries
U.S.A. Address:
Marshala Jukova 5
Kv.53
Go Forth Missions
Xarkov 61082
P.O. Box 26863
Ukraine
Salt Lake City, Utah 84126
Home (38)(0572) 713-4416
Email:
elijahOil@ukr.net
Mobile (38) 067-771-7876
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