Posted on August 29, 2026
by Nathan
It's hard to believe that so much time has passed since our last update! I apologize for the radio silence and hopefully I'll be able to do a better job getting updates out in the future. However, the silence hasn't been for lack of things to write about. Time to get caught up!
Last October, our team made a UGO (Ukraine Gospel Outreach) trip to eastern Ukraine. We held meetings in 12 villages and 1 city, most of which had been previously occupied by the Russians. About 1,000 people received a package of humanitarian aid, evangelistic literature (including a Good and Evil), and heard the Gospel. We were encouraged by how well things went and are planning to make a similar trip this coming October. To learn more about UGO, click here. To see pictures from the 2025 UGO trip, click here.
Sharing the Gospel in a small village in eastern Ukraine.
As soon as I returned from our trip, it was time to switch into moving mode. After living exclusively in apartments while in Ukraine, we had finally found a house to rent with a yard in a town just outside Lviv. The first several months in our new house were hard. The house was old, neglected, and janky, it was farther away from friends, the winter was extra cold, and Russian attacks on Ukraine's electrical infrastructure meant that we were often without power for up to 12 hours per day. (Many thanks to our friends at North Belt for helping us purchase a generator!) But spring came, like it always does. The weather warmed up, the power situation stabilized, the fruit trees in the yard bloomed, and our investment began to pay dividends. The kids can go outside whenever they want to play, create, climb trees, or just blow off steam. In the words of Lydia, "Moving out here was the best decision you and Mom have made in years!"
Our family (minus Kiera) in front of our new house on the day we moved in.
You might remember that we had a batch of about 11,000 Good and Evil books being printed before our trip east. Some of the books were drop-shipped to various locations for the trip, and the remainder (about 10,000) were shipped to Lviv after the trip. We will distribute some of the books ourselves, but the vast majority will be distributed by a network of distributors. It's been encouraging to see the reports that are coming in; here is an excerpt from one of them: "These books were a wonderful gift for children of parents who are alcoholics. The books help to brighten up the time, and let the children know about a better life with God and forgiveness. They help them to not lose hope that things will get better, and understand that they have a better Friend and a better Father in heaven."
Lydia and Josh carry boxes of Good and Evil books from our basement and load them in the Steele's van for shipping.
As the war drags on, the number of men from our church that are serving in the military continues to grow. This has resulted in opportunities to serve in our local church. Katelin stepped up earlier in the year and joined the music ministry as a singer. I (and the kids) run sound when the main sound tech is out of town, and I recently found myself in charge of the music ministry for the month of August while the Steele family is in the States for the wedding of their oldest daughter, Abigail.
Katelin and I sing together along with the rest of the music team.
We are happy to report that Lydia recently made the decision to get baptized! We are excited to see her following the Lord, and pray that she would continue to do so.
Our pastor, Mykhailo, and I prepare to baptize Lydia.
I'll close with a couple other items/prayer requests:
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I broke my finger a couple months ago, so I would appreciate your prayers for a full recovery.
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As I continue to work with a functional practitioner, I'm making (slow) headway on my general health. There's still more progress to be made, though.
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Our ministry needs a new bank account. As the treasurer, that's something that I've been working on, and it's proving to me much harder and more complicated that I expected.
Be sure to pop over to the About Us page to snag a copy of our newest prayer card!
Posted on October 4, 2025
by Nathan
Next week, our team will be leaving for a trip to the eastern regions of Ukraine. The trip should similar to the one we took last November. This time, we are calling it Ukraine Gospel Outreach (UGO), it will last about one week, and you can read more about it here. The main goals will be to share the Gospel, encourage enrollment in Bible First, and distribute Good and Evil books and humanitarian aid. Pray for open doors, opportunities to share the Good News, and also for safety!
Sharing the Gospel during our November 2024 trip.
Regarding the Good and Evil books, they are the books that I mentioned in our last update, and a big thanks to everyone that contributed! They are being printed as we speak, so pray that they would be printed without mistakes, and that they would be delivered in time for UGO.
When it comes to the humanitarian aid, for those who wish to get involved financially, there is the opportunity to contribute. To learn more, click here.
Packing the van with boxes of humanitarian aid for distribution during the November 2024 trip.
Family
As if our October wasn't full enough already, our family is excited to be moving to a new house (with a yard!) in late October! In Ukraine, we have always lived in apartments, which worked well enough in the past, but apartment life hasn't been so great for our younger kids. Especially after living in a house while on our last furlough, it has been hard to go back to an apartment. Unfortunately, houses that would be considered fairly typical by American standards are few and far between in Ukraine, but it would seem that we have finally found our needle in a haystack! Moving day is still several weeks out, but we are already starting to pack things up and prepare for the big day.
We are also happy to report that we are considering Lydia to be completely recovered from Lyme as of a few months ago! The path to recovery was long and hard, but we are very thankful that Lydia is back to feeling like her old self again!
On the other hand, I broke my toe about three weeks ago during an air attack on Lviv. I was hurriedly carrying a sleepy child downstairs to our "shelter room" when I slipped on the stairs. The child was fine, but I was not. Thankfully, to my knowledge, my toe was the only casualty that night. Also, it's not a serious break, UGO doesn't require a lot of walking, and it should be healed by moving day. That said, I would appreciate your prayers for a full recovery!
Celebrating Jonathan's birthday back in August. (Jonathan is the one in the middle.)
Posted on May 30, 2025
by Nathan
Giving is not something I talk much about here. That said, our family has a giving budget, and we are always on the lookout for worthy causes and individuals to give to. For kindred spirits out there, I would like to make you aware of a couple opportunities for giving that have recently become available.
The first concerns the Chepara family. Serhii Chepara is someone I have known for two decades, and before he was drafted into Ukraine's armed forces, he served alongside us in ministry. In all likelihood, Serhii was killed in action last year while defending his country. Our ministry recently launched a fundraiser to support people like the Chepara family. To learn more, click here.
The second opportunity relates to Good and Evil. Good and Evil is a comic-book-style Bible story book that we have used in ministry over the past 15+ years. I wrote back in October about the fact that we were nearing the end of our supplies, and we would like to print more. About a month ago, the ministry that publishes Good and Evil launched a fundraiser that would help us do just that. To learn more, click here.
Back in the fall of 2024, Briana, Jonathan, David Steele, and I unload boxes of Good and Evil out of the Steeles' van for shipping to our network of distributors
Ministry
We recently had a student complete our entire Bible First course in just under a month! At the end, he was disappointed that we didn't have any more courses, but I was able to point him in the direction of some other Bible teaching materials (in audio and video format) that we have produced over the years.
Speaking of Bible First, one of my projects lately has been to work on some long-overdue updates to the Bible First website that will make it easier for coaches to grade their students' lessons.
Family
I'm happy to report that Lydia continues to make progress on recovering from Lyme! Little by little, she is easing back into doing things that, just a few months ago, would have zapped all her energy for the rest of the day!
As to my health, I finally finished the four-month protocol that I mentioned in our last update. It was a bit rough at times, and I'm currently taking a break from additional treatments to give myself the opportunity to rest and recover.
Just last week, we celebrated the end of our school year! Everyone worked hard, and it's nice for us all to be able to take a break. Unfortunately, the weather has been unusually cool and rainy, so we've been more cooped up at home. Hopefully all this May rain will bring June flowers, and we'll be able to get out and enjoy our summer vacation!
Celebrating the end of a unit study on the American pioneers with a treat at a local restaurant.
Posted on February 15, 2025
by Nathan
Back in November, I took part in a missions trip. That, in and of itself, is not that unusual. I have taken part in many missions trips over the years. But this one was different. Usually, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect, because I am one of the organizers of the missions trip. But not this time. I knew that Joshua Steele, Ben Sargent, and I would be meeting up with Oleksandr Ilchenko (whom I had never met) in Zhytomyr (located in northern central Ukraine), that we would be heading to southern central Ukraine to areas that had been occupied by the Russians, that we would be distributing humanitarian aid and preaching the Gospel, and that Oleksandr had a plan. But what that plan was, I had no idea.
What happened next was a testament to Oleksandr's organizational skills, and to the Body of Christ's ability to come together for service. Prior to our arrival in Zhytomyr, Oleksandr's church had been assembling hundreds of aid packages and shipping them ahead to the target area. The packages were then received by another church and stored until our arrival. A group of believers stayed up all night baking bread for us to distribute. All throughout our trip, Christians were hosting us, feeding us, and helping to gather crowds of needy people for us to share aid with, both physical and spiritual.
This crew baked hundreds of loaves of bread for distribution, and the lady in the glasses also fed us several times!
Over the course of about a week, we visited 11 different locations, distributing aid and sharing Christ. As a rule, we would pull into a town, and there would already be crowd waiting for us, usually gathered by the town leadership, but sometimes by local Christians. We would then introduce ourselves, share the Gospel, distribute aid and literature, and then spend some time with the locals before moving on to our next destination. As we trundled along the roads, Oleksandr would often be on his phone, coordinating future stops.
Sharing the Gospel.
As you might imagine, all along the way, we saw evidence of the war's devastation. Some villages were almost completely reduced to rubble, while others had escaped relatively unscathed. But even in the villages that seemed to be in good shape, a closer look would often reveal abandoned homes, shrapnel and bullet holes, blast craters, or piles of spent Russian ordnance. Signs, or sometimes just ribbons tied on bushes would warn us to the danger of mines if we were to venture off the road, and sometimes we would pass a demining crew painstakingly working their way through a field. All along the way, we heard stories of battles that were fought, civilians fleeing for their lives, and atrocities committed by the Russians.
Ben poses with one of many spent rockets that once contained cluster munitions that were dropped on and around this particular village.
Not surprisingly, the war has left a lot of needy, hurting people in its wake. While we couldn't undo what had been done, and there was very little we could do to fix what was broken, we were grateful for the opportunity to do what we could, and shine a light of hope in a dark place.
To see pictures and a video from our trip, click here.
War News
In part due to record-breaking warm weather this winter, power blackouts have essentially been a non-issue, for which we are very thankful. I believe the last outages we've had were in early December, after a large Russian attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
Speaking of air attacks, while Russia's launching of drones and missiles against Ukraine is an almost daily occurrence, things have been relatively quiet on our end of the country.
Family
As far as my health goes, I'm a little over halfway through a four-month herbal protocol, which has been bumpy at times. I'm looking forward to whatever is next, which will likely be decided in April or May once I get some more testing done.
On the other hand, Lydia does seem to be feeling a bit better in her battle with Lyme. She still can't walk very far before she feels like she's run a marathon, but it does seem like things are slowly trending in the right direction.
Just when we were starting to hope that the "real" winter would never arrive, it did! Despite the colder temperatures, Katelin still makes it a point to get most of the kids outside every day. Everyone is working hard on school, and Katelin and the kids recently finished a big unit study on the pioneers. Sometimes life feels hard, but if we compare ourselves to the pioneers or especially to the folks whose villages were occupied by the Russians, we really have a lot to be thankful for!
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