The Heart of the Matter

On the last Monday of each month, the Kyiv Christian Women's Fellowship meets at our flat...typically a time of networking, encouragement, some singing.  A time for Christian women living in Kyiv and environs to get together...from differing denominations, differing ministries, differing mission organizations.  It is really a sweet time of fellowship.

Tonight our speaker asked us an important question, "Do you need heart surgery?" Tanya (a young Australian mother of two young boys) has lived in Ukraine since 1994.  She and her husband are involved in a new church plant in a village about an hour-and-a-half from Kyiv.   God has been working in HER heart over the last several months, and she was open enough to share some of those lessons with all of us.  

She humbled herself, challenged us, encouraged us...

And, by the end of the evening, we all knew that we needed to ask the Great Physician to perform heart surgery on each one of us.  We needed to refocus on Him, be motivated by our love for Him (the result of His love for US!), recognize that we cannot do anything of value without Him.  We have rotten attitudes that need to be surgically removed. 

Surgery can be painful, BUT we can rejoice in the fact that He loves us.  That He will complete the work that He has started in us.  He will not leave us nor forsake us...He will be with us as we go through whatever it takes to CHANGE us to the likeness of His Son. 

Search my heart, O God.   

Maybe we need colder weather to "kill" the germs.  (You would think that as a medical wife I might know whether that concept is myth or fact...but I don't know.)  And maybe it's just a coincidence, but with this milder winter it seems like more and more people have been complaining about sinus problems, coughs, congestion, fever, headache.

Today Jeanne missed church due to a GI "situation" and Jamie left here yesterday feeling really under the weather.  He also was not in church.  In fact, it looked like a large number of people were missing from church today.  I don't know whether they were all sick or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

We're long overdue a serious cold snap, and I, for one, would love to see something other than cold rain.

And I am thinking that I can actually say that for health reasons, let it snow! 

(Not to mention that this city looks so beautiful with a blanket of fresh white snow.) 

It's been Ladies' Night here for the past couple of nights.

Jim left Thursday afternoon on the 3:00 train to Chernitsi...arriving THERE at 6:30 a.m. on Friday.  He and Nika were met there by their hosts -- a group hosting a conference for speech pathologists.  Jim was invited to be a speaker, partially because of the GREAT response to the Caring Partners International team that Jim hosted last fall.  

And on Saturday he was scheduled to speak to possibly 50 physicians.  He was to share a Christian philosophy of medicine.  Using the Saline Solution program that Ukraine Medical Outreach translated into Russian AND Ukrainian, he was also able to teach the physicians how to share their faith with their patients.

I just received a text message on my phone...he and Nika are on their way back to Kyiv.  They will arrive sometime on Sunday morning before church. 

His comment on the message:  "Two great days!"

I can hardly wait for his return to hear what all took place. 

Not to mention that he is greatly missed when he's out and about. 

It is good to have friends in high places...thanks to Karen, Michelle, and Jake for alerting me to Firefox...for whatever reason, Safari just did not like working with blog.com!!  And thanks to Jake for staying on the phone with me (and Jeanne) until the mission was complete.

A few more glitches to work out and then I'll be really on top of things!

Again, THANKS!! 

(I'm playing with color and font size because.....I can!!) 

One nice thing about living in this neck of the woods is that we get to watch the European skating championships in real time. Not HOURS after the winners have been decided and we've seen it scrolled along the bottom of the news broadcasts... I ALWAYS think of Trish Robins when we see great skating. Oh, Trish, you'd love this program they have here...similar to our Dancing with the Stars. But it's SKATING with the Stars. Details when I get this formatting problem solved...

Okay, we've got a little problem here. No, make that a BIG problem. Yesterday we lost our internet for 24 hours...I was FORCED to miss a day of blogging. Probably a good thing. I was becoming really compulsive about posting each day. A couple of times I had actually gone to bed, put my head on the pillow, and then suddenly sat straight up...realizing that I hadn't posted. And I got out of bed to enter SOMETHING! (You can probably tell which of the entries probably fell on one of THOSE nights.) But NOW, blog.com is having some technical difficulties. Or miMAC doesn't like blog.com. Or something. Everything shows up as one paragraph. No color options. No fonts to choose from. No way to post pictures. I'm not sure what's up! But I am QUITE sure that without the ability to format (and thus organize my ramblings), I cannot post anything of any substance. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

I know that you're looking at this post and thinking that there's something just a little bit different.

But you can't quite put your finger on it.

Is it a bit bolder?

Maybe snappier?

GIVE UP??

 

It must be my "new-to-me" laptop! My first post from miMAC. (As in my own MAC)

(Thank you oh so much, Karen, for this awesome computer. I've spent a great deal of the afternoon trying to get familiar with the workings. As you know, my first experience was to put this baby in an induced-coma...with no signs of waking! Fortunately I could shoot an e-mail off to you from a different computer and get THAT challenge fixed! I've received bahahto messages (like mnoga messages) and I was trying to answer them...but I get a message saying that I can't send from the server netlabz. Not sure why that has become a problem! Any suggestions?)

Anyway, I am THRILLED to have my very own computer...one where I choose what goes on or not! One that I can use when I'm ready.

Ah, life is good.

More lessons from John Piper from his book "What Jesus demands from the world":

He is writing about the rich young man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  "If you would enter life, keep the commandments."  The man responded, "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth."

Piper asks, "Was this true?  Maybe at one level it was.  Perhaps there were no external behaviors that contradicted God's laws.  But what about his heart?  Jesus had said in another place, 'Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'  The problem with these rigorous law-keepers was that they focused on externals alone:  'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.'  Was that true of this wealthy man?

"The second step in Jesus' answer to the man's question reveals a serious problem in his heart.  Jesus said, 'You lack one thing:  go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'  This is amazing.  He says he only lacks 'one thing.'

"What is this 'one thing'?  It sounds like three things:  Sell what you possess, give it to the poor, follow me.  How are these three things really one?  These demands may be summed up like this:  'Your attachment to your possessions need to be replaced by an attachment to me."  It is as though the man stood there with his hands full of money and Jesus said, 'You lack one thing; reach out and take my hands.'  To do this the man must open his fingers and let the money fall.  The 'one thing'  is not what falls out of his hands, but what he takes into his hands.

"When a person treasures Jesus above money, the poor are always the beneficiaries.  That's why Jesus mentions the poor.  But the main point concerns what is happening between this man and Jesus.  'You lack one thing.  You lack me.  Stop treasuring money, and start treasuring me.  You want to inherit eternal life.  You want to enter the kingdom of heaven.  I am the treasure of heaven.  If you would have treasure in heaven, you must have me.  If you prefer money over me now, you will not enter heaven where I am the treasure.  But if you treasure me now above your money, "you will have treasure in heaven."  I will be there.  Only by your attachment to me will you inherit eternal life.  If you would be perfect -- which is the only way into God's kingdom -- follow me.'"

Sooo, what is it that I am holding in my hands that is keeping me from taking Jesus' hands?  What do I treasure more than Jesus himself?  What has become an idol in my heart -- our ministry, my family, language acquisition?  What gets in the way of my growing relationship with Jesus?

I encourage you to ask that same question of yourself.    

I have become fully aware that when my camera is not out where I can see it ALWAYS, I forget to take it ANYWHERE with me!

I had some wonderfully sweet photo ops at the hospital on Friday...but no camera.

I stood in an incredibly strong wind for about 15 minutes on Friday while waiting for a marshrootka (taxi bus), watching the clouds move in what seemed like "fast forward."  I would loved to have taken a bit of video...but, alas, no camera.

Saturday night Jamie and Dasha prepared a wonderful dinner for Jim's birthday.  Jim, Jeanne, Jamie, Dasha, her grandfather (Dedooshka), and I sat around their table laughing, listening to stories of days past in Ukraine, followed by a rousing game of UNO.  Jim loves chocolate ice cream, so, rather than cake, Dasha prepared dishes of ice cream surrounded by fresh fruit.  Jim's dish had skinny candles inserted into the scoop of chocolate and I would have loved to have taken a photo...but, again, no camera.

And tonight as I sit down to write this post...NO PHOTOS! 

As soon as I hit "publish," I'm going to move the camera.  And THIS week, I'll have some visuals!

You know, I marvel at the servant attitude of Jim.

He is always available to do what's needed around the flat...whether it's helping with the laundry, the dishes, taking the trash out, shopping at the bazaar or the grocery store.  He makes a mean pot of coffee in the morning, and is learning how to use the cappuccino machine that Jeanne gave us for Christmas.  And that's not counting the 40+ hours he puts in at the office.

Yesterday, AFTER work, he called us on his way home.  He just wanted us to know that a young mom was bringing her young son over to our place so that Jim could check him out...they would be arriving close to 6:00.  She was so appreciative that he would see her; she didn't know that it was Jim's birthday.

Today Jim had another consult in our flat.  Not the normal day for seeing patients, but a dad with a translator wanted Jim to check out the medical records of his 3-year-old daughter who was been diagnosed with an inoperable tumor on her chest.  Jim took over 2 hours with this dad...

His weeks are FULL.  In fact, we are in the process of redesigning our website so that we can keep folks up-to-date on his work here.  So much happens that doesn't exactly fit into a newsletter! 

Please pray for Jim...for discernment, for wisdom, for energy!  And for his ability to understand and speak the Russian language.

We thank God for his fabulous assistant Nika, and for Natasha and Artyom for their help as needed in the office.  Pray for those attending Saline Solution conferences (learning the relationship between medicine and science, and teaching physicians how to share their faith with their patients), and for those attending the weekly medical Bible study.

It's a joy to watch Jim humbly walk in the work that God prepared in advance for him to do. 

What an example for those of us around him!

Keep up the great work.