Thanksgiving Day 2016

Dear Friends,

Every day is thanksgiving for us, but we are just overflowing with gratitude this year. Our registration to live in Ukraine expired the first of this month. This was our mistake. Last year it expired at the end of the year, but they changed the date on our registration and we didn’t notice it until the last day, and then it was too late to do anything about it. On advice of counsel we remained in the country as illegal aliens until we could obtain a new letter of invitation, which took more than two weeks. We were told that if we left the country before we received that invitation we would not be permitted to re-enter the country for three months, but if we overstayed our registration date they would merely assess a fine.

As is it turned out, when we went out of the country they didn’t fine us, which could have been as much as $200 each. We flew to Warsaw to go to the Ukrainian embassy there to receive a new visa. They told us that this would probably take at least five days and perhaps more. But, amazingly, we got it the next day. We flew back to Ukraine this afternoon and are back home. Not only that, but an old friend from Arkansas is living in Warsaw and he hosted us for the time that we were there. All of this is a tremendous display of the grace of God. We are so thankful for all of this. We still have to go through the registration process here, which is more red tape, but we are not complaining but rejoicing in the love of God.

We have been most busy this fall. I have already taught four weeks at the Bible college and will start another two weeks of teaching next week. In addition to that I taught a seminary course at Ron Minton’s seminary in Vinnitsa in western Ukraine. I was supposed to teach a 10-hour seminar in southern Ukraine this past week, but that had to be postponed because of the visa situation. I will go there in December.

We started a new Bible study in our home for newly married couples. We had seven couples attend last Saturday. The plan is for this class to meet monthly until next June. The response to this class was so enthusiastic that all the married couples in the church want to be included. We are planning a couple's retreat for December to talk about Christian living in the home. It is truly exciting to see such response to the Word of God.

We are so thankful for the opportunity to serve the Lord in this place. He has blessed us with ministry and the health and strength to carry it out. We also thank our Father for all of you who pray for us and support us so that we can do this work. We are so blessed.

By grace alone,

Jim Myers