News from Andrew and Mary – August 2024
We are praising God that two members of our Family and Friends Fellowship chose to get baptized in August! This is the wonderful work of God. Prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this couple were closed to the gospel and believed that a person’s religious faith should be kept private. Now, in getting baptized, they had the courage to express publicly the fact that they have given their lives to Christ. What a miracle!
PRAY: Please join us in praying for their ongoing spiritual formation and walk with Jesus. Pray that they would continue connecting deeply with God and Christian community, and be a light to those around them.
We are praising God for giving us opportunity and courage to press into spiritual conversation and friendship this month. This is where discipleship happens, as we wrestle and work out together how to walk with Jesus amid the everyday stuff of life.
I (Andrew) have been blessed to press into spiritual conversation with men one-on-one. These spiritual friendships include believers and non-believers.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to share my testimony with a young man who is “searching” for answers. The young man was curious whether following Jesus made my life more fulfilling. After the conversation, the young man expressed an interest in reading the Bible on his own, so I helped him find the YouVersion Bible App and get started.
I have also had opportunities to bring my faith and personal story to issues that are important to men these days, such as justice, strength versus vulnerability, and the biblical view on pornography and sexuality.
I (Mary) have been blessed to meet with different ladies one-on-one or in groups of three. With some I meet weekly and some have been new connections. In these meetings, with God’s help, I always seek to establish an atmosphere of trust, confidentiality and vulnerability. And I’m grateful for how God has been blessing each and every conversation. Looking back, I can conclude that the “hot topics” in most of my interactions this past month have been boundaries, sexuality, courage to change, and identity. I was able to share what God has been doing in my life and heart, was challenged by these ladies, and was also able to hear and speak into their lives.
I love that discipleship as a way of life is not a sprint, but a marathon, so I’m grateful for all these connections the Lord has established and continues to strengthen.
I’ve been reflecting a lot about thoughts from one of the sermons in our Kyiv church: when we share the Good News with someone, in that very moment we have a new experience of the power of the Gospel ourselves. So, we are not to live as “professional Christians,” as if we have experienced and know everything about the Gospel, but as a students of Christ, always ready to be sharpened, challenged, and shown a new side of the grace and love of God.
God has shown me how important it is to come to every meeting (even if I have known the person for a long time) as a learner and observer. What if, just as much as God is using me in the life of the person in front of me, He is using this person, their attitude, life journey, and experiences to work in my heart?
With the Family and Friends Fellowship, God has also given us wisdom to bring grace and truth to conversations about a biblical sexual ethic. These were separate conversations that touched on homosexuality, abortion, and modesty in our modern world.
These aren’t easy topics. But God gave us courage to enter each of these conversations, and each conversation became an opportunity to more fully unpack the good news of the gospel (even for ourselves!).
PRAYER: Please join us in praising God for these spiritual conversations and friendships. Pray for us and those we engage with to continue growing into whole-life disciples who follow Jesus everyday.
We are pregnant! This baby is a real miracle. We’re praising the Lord for his grace and willingness to entrust us with a child.Â
After a lot of prayer, we feel led to have our baby in the United States. So, we will travel to Kentucky for our week of counseling classes in September and remain Stateside until we have the baby in January and he or she is strong enough to travel with us back to Ukraine.
God is helping all the pieces come together. We will be able to continue our missions work while we’re in the States. This means we will continue serving Ukrainians online through discipleship and fellowship. We also plan to serve in the Wilmore community, where God has already prepared many connections. Our organization even runs the OMS-Asbury student center, which we are looking into as an opportunity to serve college students. God has also provided a place to live: Asbury Theological Seminary has given us on-campus housing at a very good deal.
PRAYER: Please pray for God’s provision as the pieces continue coming together. Pray for Mary’s health and for the baby to grow healthy and strong. Pray for God to help us be good parents, good students, and good servants.
Andrew and Mary are Inspire Missioners and OMS missionaries in Ukraine. Mary is Ukrainian and all her family live there. Click here to read more and find out how to help support Andrew and Mary
