Dear brothers and sisters from the United States, our partners in evangelism here in Ukraine, we greet you with the love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are grateful to God for His mercy and protection during these troubling days of war in Ukraine, where this war has been raging for over 1,420 days. Things are difficult now in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, where the city has been without electricity for over seven days. There is no heat, and people are freezing. We pray for this situation and for these people. Our brothers and sisters in faith also live there, and they are facing a very difficult life in apartments without heat during this freezing winter. Thank God, although power outages are very frequent—eight hours a day or more—we have heating, and we do not freeze.
1. We thank God that we were not hit by missiles and that we were able to organize a celebration for widows and orphans at the beginning of this year, on January 10th, at 25 Kovelska Street in Chernivtsi. James 1:27. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
- More than 200 orphans came, as well as widows from this war with children, and there were also several families who had adopted more than 10 orphans to raise. It was a blessed gathering where the children sang and glorified the name of the Lord Christ the Messiah, born on this earth to save the whole world from sin. These children were treated to a delicious breakfast, and after the festive program, they received bags of gifts from our church. These children glorified the Lord and thanked God for such delicious gifts, saying, "Thank you, Jesus Christ, and your church. We rejoice that the name of the Lord was glorified among the orphans and widows, and they had blessed fellowship that day." The next day, Sunday, we visited the shelter for underage orphans located on Central Street in Chernivtsi. These children were unable to meet with other orphans due to quarantine. So we brought them these gifts from our church, and they rejoiced and thanked God. They prayed the Lord's Prayer and sang Christmas carols, glory be to God. We are also grateful to God and to you for your prayers, because God has blessed us all—the Church of Christ—to serve orphans and widows on this day.
2. Bible Institute
- We continue our study of the Book of Psalms using the Inductive Bible. We have now reached Psalm 51. This study greatly encourages us and teaches us how to properly come before God with a contrite heart and a humble spirit. How to glorify the Lord our God with all our hearts. Glory to God for His Holy Word.
3. Thanksgiving:
- We are grateful to God and you for your prayers and for your financial support for our ministry here.
- We are grateful to God for our church in Nesvoy, where I serve, and for the young families from the church who prepared such wonderful gifts for these orphans.
- We are grateful to God that our 11th grandson, Theophilus, was born to our family. This is the family of our son Andrey, and our daughter-in-law, Rebeka, who gave birth to a third child, this beautiful boy, Theophilus. Praise be to God. We thank God for hearing our prayers and for Rebeka to have a safe birth. We pray that the Lord will continue to bless baby Theophilus, mother Rebeka, father Andrey, brother Mark, and sister Emima.
4. Prayer requests:
- Pray with us for the war in Ukraine to end and for the long-awaited peace to come. Only God can help us with this. Pray for those cities in Ukraine where there has been no electricity for over a week due to missiles striking the infrastructure, and therefore homes where people live are without heat. These cities include Kyiv and Kharkiv. It's freezing outside. May the Lord help them.
- Pray for all those who heard God's Word this month, that the Lord will test their hearts for repentance.
- Pray for me too, that the Lord will help me recover from this difficult surgery. I really want to serve and go to ministry. I'm currently taking various medications for recovery, and thank God, I'm moving around much more easily, but full recovery still requires some time. We pray and believe that the Lord will help me with this.
We also pray for you, brothers and sisters from the USA, our partners in evangelism here in Ukraine. May the Lord bless you abundantly and reward you a hundredfold with His blessings.
With love to you, the Petikhachny family, Pavel and Larisa.
