Ukraine
Host Andriy invites us to visit three cities in Ukraine to help with construction/maintenance on schools, hospitals or playgrounds. Together with host churches, the team will host outreach events using sports, games, and crafts.
We encourage anyone who has experienced addiction personally or in their family to apply. The church in the Ukraine encounters many people struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, sometimes even among the children. As on all teams, we encourage male students to apply. The presence of young men in ministry is a powerful testimony to the community when few men are participating in the church. We, of course, need committed female students to apply as well.
We remember that we must be flexible and ready to serve in any way our host needs us to. Here is some of the initial plans and hopes that our host Andriy shares:
Our main goal is to impact the community with the love of Jesus in a practical way. And we believe there are 2 major components to our impact work: community development and community outreach.
1. Community development is a project were students join together with the volunteers from the local church to provide services or skills needed to improve the life of local community. Practical activities may include: helping volunteers from the local church in minor reparations or maintenance of community property (such as schools, hospitals, children playgrounds, etc.). We provide on-site training for any given job that we ask team-members to participate in and normally no special skills are required to do the work.
2. Community outreach is an interaction format where team-members together with local ministry leaders organize and host special community events. Our primary goal for community outreach events is to initiate new contacts for father follow-up by the local church through various activities such as children camps, youth camps, VBS, etc. We expect that during community outreach events team-members will initiate new contacts by helping and participating in sports games, rally races, making of crafts, sharing personal life experience and making new friendships. Due to the high interest in learning English language and desire to understand the culture of English-speaking world, team-members should be ready to share common knowledge about life in United States during public meeting such as English class at school or discussion groups. It is also highly recommended that all team-members should be ready to present testimony of their walk with the Lord.
Here is a letter from host Andriy to PLNU:
Dear Point Loma Nazarene University,
First of all, I would like to thank you for a long and productive cooperation in ministry that you have gracefully provided to our Ukraine District. We would like to express our gratitude for PLNU LoveWorks teams, as they provided quality assistance to our existing programs.
I find it meaningful and so I wanted to share with you some information that might be of interest to you. As a result of our 2-years cooperation with both PLNU and NNU in community outreach we were able to organize an NYI camp for over 130 participants this year. (Last Ukraine District NYI camp was organized some 5-6 years ago)! We had representatives from 5 different cities plus a group from Moldova.
Of the 130 participants, more than 60% were un-churched young people, for whom this camp was the first ever church-related experience. Approximately 40-50% of attendants answered the altar call for repentance. But what is more significant to me, as a pastor of the local church is that now, at least 10 young people from our original target group in Kiev were helping us as a volunteers in the last VBS activity that our church was able to organize ourselves, based on the experience and model that was developed while working with PLNU and NNU teams for the last 2 years.
You are making a great impact on our work here and as much as we can we would like to continue to work together with you in farther expansion of God's Kingdom in Ukraine.
Andriy Takhtay
Trip Dates: May 6 - May 27
Program fee: $3400
Dates of Previous LoveWorks Trips
to Ukraine:
1994, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012
Helpful Links:
Finances and Application
Please review these important links as you consider a LoveWorks trip.
^ Back to Top ^
