August – October 2022
Dear Praying Friends and Family,
Greetings! I pray this letter finds you well in the Lord looking forward to His soon return. This is my third attempt at writing this overdue prayer letter. The first two turned out to be small theses. There is so much that could be said about our ministry, our church family in Ukraine, the situation with the war with Russia, our family, etc… Please accept this letter as a brief overview of what could be said.
Ministry Update in Ukraine: We stay in communication with our people in Ukraine and stay abreast of the situation there. The US Embassy in Ukraine has issued a “No Travel” advisory to Americans. The only way to travel into the country is by car or train since the airports are all closed. Our church people still advise us to not return to Ukraine right now given the precariousness of the situation. While they are hopeful that full-scale war will not come to our region it is still unpredictable and could change very quickly. We are taking their advice and waiting till Spring to reassess the situation for a possible return date to Ukraine. This winter looks like it is going to be a hard one with curfews, electricity shut offs four plus hours each day, and air-raid sirens daily.
We are overjoyed and thankful to hear that our church in Ukraine continues to rally around the word of God at the feet of Jesus Christ. They continue to assemble, pray, witness and serve the Lord by reaching out to the lost in the community with the Gospel using Humanitarian Aid to open the door.
Since our church is registered as a religious non-profit organization, we have the legal authority to receive Humanitarian Aid that was donated by the UN. By hand, our men moved 26 tons of food from Odessa to our church in Rozdilna, where they distributed it locally to those suffering from the war.
This opened a huge door of opportunity to get the Gospel into the hands of the Ukrainian people. It almost, however, turned into a riot after word got out that our church was distributing food. A line began to form at 6:00 a.m. and was three blocks long by 10:00 a.m.
Our people handled the crowd heroically. If you have ever tried to manage a mob of desperate people you would understand! Since distributing help to the poor and refugees they have reported that several people have prayed to receive Christ as their Savior.
One man, named Misha, fled the heavily shelled city of Mykolaiv and came to our church to donate his time helping people. He quietly helped our men and heard the Gospel explained. He received Christ as his Savior and has continued to serve alongside our church in the trenches of front-line missions.
We are overjoyed to receive the latest stats on the video presentation of the Gospel that we were able to help Pastor Bevins Welder put together with Pastor Joel Logan.
So far, over 30 million people have viewed at least some portion of it. Of the 30 million, 11 million of them watched the Gospel presentation all the way through and went on to log onto the website! What a blessing it is to think that we had a small part in explaining the Gospel to 11 million souls in the Russian language!
Ministry Update in the USA: The past three months have been busy with meetings. We spent a lot of miles on the road, over 12,000 of them, driving to meetings in CO, KY, MN, OH, NJ, CT, NY, IN, and TX. We’ve seen God’s hand of provision and protection the entire way! During this time, we have seen souls walk the aisle for salvation, altars full, and young people surrender to full-time service. The Lord has given us the opportunity to preach on the street with a couple of churches and opened the door to give an interview about Ukraine over the radio with Brother Grissom in Hastings, MN. Pastor Vince Massa in CT has a few men and women from Ukraine and Russia in his congregation. They gathered a small group, and I had the blessing of preaching to them in Russian, with several of them hearing the Gospel explained for the first time.
We’ve also had our share of setbacks and obstacles. Our vehicle has broken down six times with the same problem, leaving us stranded during, on the way to, and traveling home from meetings! Please pray that the dealership service department will honor the warranty. In addition, my laptop that I have used for fourteen years died on me and I’m still trying to retrieve all the years of files. Then we entered the ranks of those who have experienced being targets of credit card fraud twice in two weeks.
Please be in prayer for us as we prayerfully consider making a quick trip into Ukraine before the hard winter hits. Thank you for all that you do for the Lord, giving us the privilege to serve Him in Ukraine. Until our next prayer letter or our meeting in the air!
That Ukraine May Know Him,
Christopher Rue
Phil. 3:10