Wednesday, October 15

Marilyn is in the air from Newark to Ft. Myers as I write this. I have completed a great day of meetings that will advance the Christian educational program in Ukraine.

My meeting with Bishop Valeriy Reshetinsky of Christian Hope Center who leads 120 Churches in Ukraine and is Chairman of the Board of ICCL (International Center for Christian Leadership) can be classified as a “Meeting of Visions.” Both of us shared our vision and found out it was same for each of us. We have the same goals for elevating the Christian Educational System of Ukraine. Therefore, we will be networking our educational program with what he is now doing and taking some of his educational programs and adding them to ours so we can offer a degree in those areas – for example: Missions - Establishing Churches in Small Villages and Cities.

The Bishop has accepted our request to re-register Covenant Life University - known now as International Institute of Theology - Zoe here in Ukraine and probably to be changed to Zoe University when the documents are filed. He also offered office space and classrooms for Zoe in his facility. Exactly how all of this will look is yet to be determined, but Eugene Taits, Dean of IIT-Zoe is pleased. I am thrilled! And other pastors have offered their comments and they all confirm my evaluation of Bishop Reshetinsky: “He is a well-respected leader with high standards and ethics.”

We have requests for campus extensions from Germany, Italy, France, Georgia, Israel, Russia, and Russian speaking congregations in the United States as well. And we have many requests from Pastors who have completed our bachelor program to begin graduate courses (Masters through Doctorate).

The facility of Christian Hope Center has 12,000 square meters. For you who have forgotten how to convert from square meters to square feet, allow me to use my special converter and tell you that equals 129,167 square feet or 2.9 acres of floor space.

The original price was 5 million dollars. The pastor told them they would not pay that price. So they owners asked how much will you pay. $500,000 was the reply. The owners began to curse and finally said $1,000,000. The finally settled on $850,000 or which the Church only had less than $12,000. To shorten the story – they were to pay $100,000 immediately to which the pastor responded, we will pay you in 18 months. The day was approaching to make the payment and they were very, very short. But God led David Wilkerson to their Church service – after he had refused to minister their on that Sunday – the ushers sent word to the pastor that David was in the building. Pastor Valeriy asked him to come to the platform and David shared that God told him he was to go to Christian Hope and give them $50,000 but he did not know how to get there. God said, “Ask!” He did and found the service.

But that was not enough and on the day the payment was due a man, whose name is lost, came into their office and said that he was leaving on an airplane in a few hours but that God directed him to come and give them $100,000 from the sale of his facility – a Church. The story continues and today the building is paid for and now has a value of $40-50 million dollars!

There is much work to be done to this incomplete former sports training center – but they have a section with offices, class rooms for college and rooms for 40 students to live (10 to a room) for their 2-3 week courses of ICCL. As well they have an auditorium on the third floor that seats 1100 but during the winter they cannot use it because it lacks heat. They need approximately $150,000 to purchase the furnaces for this section. When they complete the main auditorium it will seat 3,500.

So you can see this leader is a Visionary extraordinary. How could I forget to tell you that he is a – I believe – a nuclear physicists (he has his doctorate in that field).

I wrapped up the day by spending time with Pastor Andre and Ira Ivanov (who visited us in the US in 2006). They made their requests for ministry during the coming year – a ladies seminar. That seems to be a key request now as the pastors are recognizing the need of the Ukrainian ladies. The women of Ukraine come to Christ with such enthusiasm they get their lives out of balance and many neglect their homes – children and husbands and claim they are “working for Christ,” so it is okay. But thank God some pastors are seeing the problem for what it is and want to do something about it.

It is time to crash – since I have been up now for almost 20 hours.

God bless and thank you for praying, (I teach in the College Friday, minister Saturday at New Time Church and Sunday at Victory (2 services).

Dr. D.