Go Forth Ministries - Good News!

This isn’t deep dark Africa or aborigines, ( to tell the truth Africa is no longer deep nor dark) but simple naïve Ukrainian students watching our Sunday school workers give their presentation of the Christmas story in the public schools. As usual the children are fidgety at first, but as the presentation continued something wonderful begins to happen. You and I know what the ‘wonder’ is. We’ve grown accustomed to seeing the Christmas story performed in churches and in the media every year. There is a sweet, innocent purity and presence we experience through this simple Bible story re-enacted. Nelya , our Sunday school Director was so excited, she said the presence of the Lord could be felt in these classrooms right in the public schools!!

The children here have absolutely NO idea what Christmas is. They have NEVER heard the Christmas story, NEVER seen a nativity scene (live, plastic or otherwise)! Mary and Joseph are not even names in their vocabulary. They have NEVER heard the Handel’s Messiah, nor have they ever heard that the piece of music existed! Hard to imagine, but true. My personal appreciation for Christmas and the Christmas season changed dramatically after the years of living here. Here it is like Narnia- “where it is always winter but never Christmas!” Christmas was recognized by the government as a legal holiday only 2-3 years ago! Very few people celebrate it and especially since they observe it on January 7th, which is after New Years. All the things like fir trees and “Grandfather Frost” with his “Snow Princess” and the giving of gifts the communists moved to the date of New Years, thus abolishing Christmas totally for a few generations. So New Years is celebrated with the same trappings as Christmas- without one important part- Jesus! I am very proud of our Sunday school crew who this Christmas season shared the Christmas message with a Gospel presentation to over 500 students right in the public schools!!

Doors have opened in many schools; other workers of ours have been invited to share sex education from the Bible, with administrators of schools agreeing to allow biblical principles concerning purity and abstinence to be shared. That is a far cry from condom distribution in U.S. schools!  The Lord showed Bill years ago that there would be a period of time where it would be better to be a student in a Russian or Ukrainian school than in an American one. Not to say though that all is wonderful yet. We will sometimes get invited in by one administrator or official, and then shut out by another as happened in one school recently.
 
Samaritan’s Purse
We were blessed to be able to distribute Christmas gift boxes from Samaritan’s Purse in orphanages and to the poor children we have contact with. The underprivileged children are totally thrilled to get these shoe boxes full of these lovely items. Again this year they came from families in the British Isles who lovingly wrapped and sent them. Although it was these dear believers in England who sent them, I still love to hand out the boxes and say, “Jesus loves you”. One under-privileged 13 year old girl who is a new convert was so elated and thrilled crying out, never in ALL her life did she EVER get a Christmas present. Isn’t it special she got her first one from Jesus!

A tid-bit Bill dug up out of history. One researcher exhaustively searched through historical documents and concluded that antiquity left no trace of organized charitable effort. When Christ and the Bible became known, charity and benevolence flourished. So next time you feel kind or generous and are questioning your own motives, rest assured it is Christ working in you and through you of His own will.

Christmas Persecution…Praise God!
Pray for us, we need it especially now, we were thrown out of our building on Christmas day. This is the first time we have had something like this on Christmas Day. Although a couple years ago they tried to take Bill to court on Christmas, but the Lord delivered him. Our Administrator was told by an official that it was for feeding the poor street kids and doing Alpha dinners, which draw a lot of the poor, who are considered undesirable, to the building. He also said it was because we are Protestant, but this may have just been his own personal feeling. We have found out though, that it was done to persecute us and put pressure on us, to stop our activities, especially to the poor.

It appeared we had another facility lined up, but we were told by another official, that although he has nothing against us, he would not approve of our use of the building for fear of losing his job. He said the last guy that showed favor to us nearly lost his job, and he sent us back to the office that closed our building down.

Please pray! If this was the only thing, it would not be so bad, but we are having a myriad of spiritual and practical problems. We need prayer at this time.

Thanks to you and the Lord we are encouraged in a discouraging time…
We would like to specially thank all of you who have contributed to the work here. Your generosity is expanding our ability to produce good fruit. Food distribution to the extremely poor is increasing even more. We can now purchase a good used vehicle for village evangelism which is going really well, not to mention many other activities.

For me personally it is sooooo exciting to see many of our people going out all over to the schools, hospitals and orphanages and villages preaching the Gospel and loving on people.

There has been so many healings and wonderful testimonies we now have a church reporter and soon will have our first edition of our Good-News paper to tell of all His wondrous works, as an alternative to all the trashy newspapers they read here.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. 2 Cor1:3-5
Glory to God in the highest and peace to men on earth!
 
Is God working?
There is a lot we could tell but wanted to keep this letter short. So here is just one of many miracles to show how God is working constantly not matter what men and the Devil are doing. Armen, one of the brothers who goes to the villages a lot, was asked at a home group in a village to pray for a little boy in the hospital with Leukemia. The group prayed together as they pray for so many things and thought no more of it, the prayer being nothing out of the ordinary. Some time later at the home church in Kharkov, a friend from a village asked him if he knew one of the ladies that came to Christ that day? “She is the mother of the boy you prayed for with Leukemia. He was healed, the doctors have released him and pronounced him healed, and the Mother now has come to Christ.” You should have seen that boys face when they brought him up to testify the last week, cute as a button and smiling from ear to ear. The same meeting a woman we did not recognize testified of being healed of a cancerous tumor on in her chest during the worship recently, when Igor the worship leader said something about God wanting to heal people spontaneously at that moment.

I love all of you and the years away have made my heart more sentimental and loving. People are so nice in America and it is so clean and warm (everywhere one goes it is heated) and bright with the sun (on our furlough last summer in America when people would close their blinds from the sun everything within me wanted to jump up and say ,’No’, don’t do that ) and especially nice are all the smiles everywhere - you are all so blessed------worship God and thank Him every day! Come over and visit and you will see for yourself how blessed you really are!

This is Joanie here for Bill and I and John and Tanya, Annie, Christi and Sarah.
Love and Kisses.
 
From Bill:
Although there is a lot to tell you, I really do not have time to report it all right now, but there are two things on my heart.
 
Street Kids, a world problem
As Joanie mentioned we were thrown out of our building in part for feeding the street kids there. Who would have thought that such a little thing would get the Devil’s attention so much, but we were told it was the main thing that brought about the closure of the building.

The thing that concerns me though is not the trouble we are having for caring for these kids, but the fact that we cannot do a good enough job with them yet. I now see that this is a ministry that really needs mature spiritual leadership. It also needs, I believe, people who are from a background where they have been exposed to and conditioned to know what a wholesome, stable family life and proper character development look like. Many times recently I have been tempted to leave all my other ministries and just work with the kids. My heart really aches for them, and I love them dearly. You would too if got to know them, if you saw them begging on the streets at midnight in the sub-zero weather, or the driving icey rain and snow.
What I am praying for and asking you to consider is whether God is calling you to give all or part of your life to work with these kids. Maybe God would have some of you leave the comforts of the West, and come here where you could lose your life for others, and have great glory and treasure in heaven. It’s nothing more than what Jesus did for us leaving heaven to come to earth.

Most of the ministries we have started here can be done, and done well by the people here, although they are young in the Lord, they learn fast and they have great hearts, and great faith. But what they lack is stable family backgrounds, and a well-rounded picture of mature Christian character development and family life, as well as a basic understanding of things like child development, discipline, hygiene and so on. Not that these things do not exist, but they are rare. As one of our leaders said, “I thought loving one’s family was just a personal thing with Bill, just an unusual character trait. It was not until I spent several months in a church in America and saw the Christian men loving their families, that I realized that this is a fruit of godliness, and I began to try to love my family.”

What I believe we need is some people from the west who love children, and want to serve the Lord to come here and establish the work with the street kids, and then hopefully later with orphans. These kids are sooo desperately needy of love and spiritual development, and they respond so readily. Their lives are already so changed from the little we have been able to do for them. There are so many more we hope to reach before the opportunity is lost. Just in the last couple months we heard of two babies found in the trash, in the sub-zero weather. What is their future?
 
World harvest time is here..
The other thing on my heart is in regard to the harvest. I have heard so many say to me, they wished they could be doing something like we are doing. Well, you can. The need is great,
the harvest is great and the grace is adequate.

Even for those with little or no ministry experience, there are countless thousands of towns and villages here waiting to hear the Gospel. The average mature believer in the USA has all the equipping they need to come here and do all that is needed to get people saved and to start churches. It just takes getting up and doing it. Jesus got up, left heaven and came to earth and saved us. We just have to get up, leave our comfort zones and go to where the need is as he did and we will reap eternal fruit for eternal wages. This is what God wants from all of us, but I know there are some who are hungering for this and are unfulfilled in your lives. This is your moment of opportunity.

 If I only had words to convince some of you to follow Jesus into the harvest, but hopefully you will hear his voice saying what I can not say well enough.

Let us know if you want to respond to the Lord’s call for laborers for the harvest, and we will do what we can to help you get started.
 
Well, as Joanie said, we love you. It is your prayers and support, God working through you, as well God working through us, together that makes it all happen.
 
Love in Christ,
Bill Lynch