Hello dear brothers, families and churches.
Yet again I’m grateful for your prayers. It’s a great blessing to be a part of God’s team and do ministry for Him on earth. October was full of interesting events.
Trip to Gorlovka
After shootings in the unrecognized republic ceased, I decided to travel to the occupied town and encourage Christians there. The trip was safe; however, I’ve experienced some constant internal tension. Christians met me with joy and love and didn’t want to let me go. I was the first one to visit them after the long period. During my stay in Gorlovka I visited 9 Christians (i.e. all of those who stayed in Gorlovka). They send their greetings and thanks for your help and prayers.
Situation at the Institute
During this month, we had Victor Semikoz, Albert Bagdasaryan, Vitaliy Rodichev, Terry Harmon and me teaching at the Institute. We are thankful for all of the teachers who make sacrifices of their personal time and comfort of home and come to teach at the Institute. They do a great job, because together we train future preachers for God’s Kingdom. Students are getting a lot of homework. Their schedule is intense. I hope that the knowledge they receive here they will use at the local congregations of their future ministry.
Right now we have an evangelizing week at the Institute. This time we divided the students into two groups. One of them participated in a campaign in Bila Tserkva. Alexey Mitskutis guided their efforts. He is BVBIU graduate of 2014, and I recently invited him to be my assistant at the Institute. Alexey will also be responsible for recruitment at the Institute. The other group of students went to Dnepropetrovsk. They will help to start a new congregation there.
During the evangelizing campaign, our goal is to invite people to come to Bible classes. During the week of campaign we host Bible classes every evening and try to provide the most important information, telling people about Christ and His plan of salvation. We don’t have any new visitors yet. We continue praying for the souls of those who are not yet saved.
Last Sunday we continued the process of recruiting new students for the next semester. Alexey, Bogdan and I visited the Vinogradar church of Christ in Kyiv. It’s a nice cozy church. I preached there, and we also did a short presentation about the Institute. I hope that our search for the new students will be successful, and we will find people willing to study the Holy Scriptures. Please pray for that.
We finally reached the long awaited moment when we sent a team of evangelists to the western part of Ukraine, to the city of Lviv. Three of BVBIU graduates: Bogdan Chigvintsev, Stanislav Kuropiatnikov and Dmitriy Kuropiatnikov decided to plant a new church at the biggest city of western Ukraine. They are very determined. Their wives will support them. Thus the church there would already have 6 members. And if they evangelize persistently, then the church would have a growth of prospects. Please pray for this young team that is willing to sacrifice their comfort to spread the kingdom of God.
This week we have our Masters program starting their last course for the students. This year we have three students graduating from this program: Stanislav Kuropiatnikov, Ivan Skoleba and Vadym Tymchenko. Unfortunately, they had to study longer than was planned. As a result of military actions, we had to cancel classes for Masters program last year. And the students had to wait for another year. I hope that some of them will be teaching in the Bachelors program.
The church in Bila Tserkva started growing. Some Christians who lost interest in the church now are gradually coming back. The church schedule is getting full of events. There are classes almost every day. On Wednesdays we have Bible classes; on Thursdays there are classes of learning English through the Bible; on Fridays there are youth group meetings and classes for ladies; on Saturdays there is Bible school for kids, and of course there is a Sunday worship.
We thank those who pray for us and support our work financially. I’m grateful for my family for supporting me in ministry to the Lord.
If you have any comments or questions, please write to me. I will be happy to answer. God’s blessings!
Your brother and coworker,
Dennis Sopelnik
To see Dennis’ report with pictures, please click here.