Christmas in IP cities

Kiev Praise the Lord, the church is growing in number and spiritually. This month, our church was preparing for the Christmas meetings. It is so wonderful to realize that we are as one family preparing together for the very important event: some decorated the room, some took care of food; others prepared a program for everybody to have fun. Moreover, everybody noticed and felt this, not only staff, but the participants, helpers, and everyone that was invited to the Christmas meeting. This year our youth decided to prepare a Christmas drama. While we were rehearsing more and more ideas came and we had a nice musical as the result. The time of the preparation was not so easy, but the spirit of creativity, and friendship and having fun together (jokes, songs, food), gave us so much strength. We felt God’s presence and blessings.

Dnepr. We had our Christmas service December 23. We invited people from groups and some friends. I thought that maybe only a few people would come, but I can say with joy that I was wrong. We had more than twenty people! Almost everyone we invited came. We invited them not for a party, not for a big meeting, but for a Sunday service to our church. We told about Christmas joy, worshiped Him with Christmas songs and thanked Him for love in prayers. Peter and Lena (Peter is an English teacher, Lena is a student from Advanced group) played the violin and the guitar, and sang “Silent Night”. At the end we had refreshments and fellowship, and people did not want to go home. I believe that God touched their hearts in a special way through this meeting. We pray that Christ will change their lives completely.

Zaporozhie. We celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ on December 23 in spite of the fact that in Ukraine people celebrate it on January 7. We invited all people from our English groups to come to this meeting. A total of 45 people attended. Our church group really helped us in this Christmas preparation. They prepared the Christmas pantomime about Jesus’ life. They also prepared a puppet-show about how we get a pure heart and showed a Christmas dance of Angels. Some of the English groups prepared their own items for the event.

Kherson. We had our Christmas celebration on December 23. About 30 people came for the celebration. At the beginning, we had a game to get to know each other. Every table designed a card for another table with wishes and congratulations. We then showed the cards to everybody, read them and called everybody’s names. It was very interesting. People showed us their creativity and wishes which gave us all the feeling of celebration. We read a “Letter from Jesus” which told how people often forget about whose birthday is being celebrated. The main thing in the program was a video of a musical that the Odessa team had last year. Our purpose was to show the true meaning of Christmas celebration. The musical helped everyone think about Jesus’ birth 2000 years ago and what that means to every person. We thought, what would happen if Jesus hadn’t been born? The answers were very different: we wouldn’t have this celebration, we wouldn’t have Christian teaching, we wouldn’t have salvation, we wouldn’t know each other and all wouldn’t be here today. We then sang Christmas carols, solved a crossword and ate delicious food. The atmosphere was truly like a family celebration. We are praying that this meeting would make us closer to God.

Zhitomir. We thank God for the church that He built in Zhitomir. Our Christmas meeting was our most memorable event of the year. We sang Christmas songs, recited poems, played games, communicated, met new people and just had a good time. We are continuing to work on our sermons and quality of worship. We are trying to involve all people who attend the church and groups in the ministry.

Simpheropol. We tried to make our last service kind of special – it was a Christmas celebration for the church. We decorated rooms with branches of Christmas trees, garlands, and Christmas ornaments. We lit the candles and put them on the decorated tables. It was a quiet and peaceful evening. We turned off the lights, lit candles and … in the silence and the twinkling of candlelight we sang … “Silent night! Holy night!” It seemed that we felt the miracle of that night when Jesus was born. Poems, songs and Scripture – all of them were very special. They taught us and encouraged our hearts to live so that Jesus would be born in the hearts of the many other people whom we live, work and study with.

Cherkassy. On December 25 our team invited all people that we have in groups and from church to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We had about 30 people who attended. We praised God and thought about the purpose of why we are here on Earth. Many people worked together to prepare the Christmas play. Praise and thanks to God for the opportunity to have such a good program and for our lay leaders who helped to plan and organize it.