Profoundly fruitful day.

 One of the glorious things about God is the diversity of life he has created. In many senses we have explored that in his goodness today. This morning our studies explored the diversity of people Jesus reached out to, climaxing in the character of Levi. A man with a foot in many camps he was loved by no group, but in Christ he found his belonging and welcome into the eternal, multicultural people of God. 

There are no manmade barriers too strong to withstand the love of Christ. 

The team fuelled by yet another awesome breakfast set about various tasks at number 31, including the complete digging out of the basement. The guys looked like an industrious version of the 7 dwarfs, with shovels over shoulder and a smile on their faces. That was until it was announced that the big hardstanding in the middle also had to be removed. Sledgehammers swung, the building rocked (literally as I stood on a wobbly ladder trying to fix a ceiling). The biggest hitting came from the smallest people, and I won't share who they were (or which church members they were thinking of) as they belted the living day lights out of the ground.... but I learned that even the most timid and spider like frames can have a fire in the belly when motivated by God to serve. Praise God the work today was a great success.

This afternoon and evening the diversity continued, with an English Ukrainian football match between the teams, (which we sadly lost - all congratulations to our budding Shevchenkos) and a small team of us went to the fabulous and glorious city of Ternopil. In Ternopil every stream of life exists, art, culture, all nationalities, all needs. Thank God at the heart of the city is a gospel church reaching out to all from a basement which oozes love. There are ministries which shine brightly,: especially their outreach to the disabled community and those shut in their rooms in the city. They run various children and youth outreach ministries and their fruitfulness is unmistakable as they are seeing many disciples make progress and a number going to further training with various passions (especially church planting). We shared many stories of God's goodness going around the globe, and discovered his generosity is wider than us, our situations/ everything we are aware of. Even our mutual testimonies of how God reached us, and how he is reaching the unreachable blew our minds. We went on to tentatively plan lots of of possibilities between the nations and we felt the smile of God on our time. Our prayer is to mutually co labour to reach the unreached, and we see that he is opening doors to do so. We feel our weakness, but we also see his immaculate and time perfect provision. Pray for our brother Igor and his leadership team, that they will not grow weary in the glorious work of the gospel that they are sold out to.

I will try to post photos but technical issues are abounding. Hope the test gives some sense of colour.