REPORT FOR Ben and Angela Doerksen - Missionaries with YWAM Kyiv

Transcription

1 REPORT FOR Ben and Angela Doerksen - Missionaries with YWAM Kyiv SEPTEMBER 1, 2018

2 To our friends and family, As you may know we are currently home for a year of furlough and fundraising. Next year Kai will be joining Cassie and Jay at school, so we will need to raise an extra $5000 USD to cover his tuition and travel costs to school. We understand that accountability is especially important for missionaries who are overseas and we do our best to send frequent updates and newsletters while we are in Ukraine. Nevertheless, reporting is a very important job that we have this year. It is not only because of accountability, but we also want to make sure that we are giving God the glory for the work He has done through our partners and us in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Eurasia. In this small packet we want to give an overview of what our time has been like in the past 4 years since we have last been home for an extended period of time. We want to share a bit of what we are hoping to do in this coming year, and we will include some of the thank you cards we have received over the years, because those cards are actually to you as well (since you are part of our support team). -1-

3 The Last 4 Years 2014 February-August We were home in Canada. During this time we raised money for our house, taught regular classes at our local church, met with many life groups, went on a marriage retreat, and took seminary classes to keep up our learning and growth. September - December Ben went into full time language study while Angela started Cassie off at school- Grade 1! We had also passed over the leadership of Titus Project to Sonya Yakovenko and when we arrived in Ukraine Titus Project was already happening and we helped to train and evaluate these new Bible teachers. We sent out three teams of Bible teachers- one went to Greece and worked with Afghani refugees, one team went to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and the other team went to Paraguay January - March Ben continued to study Russian and also prepared to lead our 9 month Bible school (SBS-School of Biblical Studies). Going through applications, accepting students, training the staff who help run the school March December SBS. This is a large undertaking because teaching and discipling young people through the whole Bible is not easy. Beginning in Genesis we teach many books (along with the other staff we work with), but we also have 1-1 s with students, pray with them, encourage them not to give up after long days of study, and of course grade their work. During all of this time Angela is also involved in teaching many books in the SBS as well as having personal discipleship times with all of the staff (other missionaries) on our Biblical Studies training team. Quite often we are requested to go help teach in other YWAM discipleship courses such as DTS, SBS and other Bible courses. For each one of these requests, we pray and ask God if He is leading us to go. -2-

4 2016 January March Angela lead the Titus Project during this quarter because Sonya was just finishing leading another Titus Project in the Netherlands. It was an exciting Titus Project because we also trained new Titus Project leaders for a program in Turner Valley, Canada. Multiplication is the best way to have influence. Training others to teach, and even train others to train others to teach. We sent teams to Central Asia and one team stayed in Ukraine teaching the Bible in churches and a few drug rehab clinics. April Titus Project ministries from all over the world gathered in Taiwan for a time to pray and strategize for the future. It was an exciting time where God spoke to us about new locations, and specifically updating what we do to reach a new generation.may August Because we did not run SBS in 2016, we wanted to focus on building the team that we have. We brought in a professor to teach Church history to the Bible team that we have. Angela worked on her Masters Thesis in Biblical Studies. We came home in the summer to be with our church for the 40th anniversary. September December We pioneered Titus Project in a new location- England! We sent out teams to Bulgaria, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine. This location will continue to run every year as we trained one of their local YWAM staff in how to run a Titus Project. The Biblical teaching team we lead January Our Bible teaching team has really grown, and so in order to develop unity and also be a light, we decided to take a teaching trip together to a unique place in India where most of the people are Christians. They go through the motions of Christianity, but have a very shallow understanding of the scriptures. Ben went with the team while Angela stayed home with the kids. February Angela finished her Masters degree and the team prepared to run the SBS again. -3-

5 March-December Ben led his final SBS and trained a new leader Thelma Selvan throughout the 9 months. She has been working with us for 4 years and is a very capable leader. These students were hungry for the word and very dedicated. It was a unique group who were focused on ministry in their lives but wanted depth in the Word first. One went on to begin a new dental ministry to the villages in Ukraine another works with Muslims in Georgia. One of the students even had 6 children and still managed to complete the work every week. One really exciting experience was having a church from Leamington (Ben s sister Maria and her husband Ike s church) come to build a roof for us on a big building we have that was leaking every time it rained! They raised the money and built the roof! Leadership Team We didn t write about our role in the leadership team in the yearly summaries because our role is consistent on this particular team. There is an American/Ukrainian couple who lead the YWAM base here in Kyiv, and there are 6 of us that make up the rest of the team. Our job is multi-faceted. We help with pastoral care of the 40 or so missionaries that serve with YWAM Kyiv, we also help create healthy policies, do staff training, plan the yearly calendars, help with staff evaluations, lead staff meetings, Ben does accounting, Angela does the Personnel work of orienting new staff, and the list goes on. This part of our ministry schedule takes about 20% of our time every week. It can be challenging at times, but we love that we can raise up more missionaries that reach into Ukraine and beyond in different capacities such as Orphan Ministry, Family Ministry, Preschool Ministry, Refugee Ministry, DTS, Business as Missions, and more. -4-

6 2018 January -March The first half of this year we ran Titus Project (every January!) and sent teams to Latvia, Estonia, and India. It is exciting to know that between percent of the Bible teachers we train are still teaching in some capacity all over the world. March - May SBS started again with a new leader. After being here for 8 years we were finally able to hand over leadership of this Bible Course. It is exciting! We helped get it going, and did some teaching, but the over all day to day operations were taken care of by Thelma. June We headed home. Excited for the year ahead to reconnect with family, friends and supporters. Please keep praying for us. During the coming year we will be quite busy with YWAM Kyiv work that can be done from anywhere such as resource development, teaching in our church, fundraising and most importantly praying about God s direction for us in Ukraine for the next 4 years. We know that we will be going back, but we want to dream and pray about what those 4 years will look like in regards to teaching the Bible, training teachers and leadership of this (quickly) growing community of young missionaries. Thank you again so much for your support! -5-