The Claxton Family In Ukraine

Kiev 2010

2010-01-16T13:39:00.001+02:00

One thing we love about Ukraine is that Christmas is January 7th so Christmas decorations stay up until February. They really help cheer up the darkness of winter here in January. The Lord was gracious to us as we all had a relatively light case of the Swine Flu in December. Rumors were swarming about the Ukrainian flu so it was a little scary and lots of prayers were going up! Other than that we had a great semester of ministry and family togetherness with Carra spending her semester here in Ukraine.

Carra was able to get some field experience in teaching English to speakers of other languages by helping some native born Koreans with their English at Spencer's school. She loved those students and was really encouraged that this is the area she would love to serve in the future. She returned last week to Moody for her senior year. Please pray she has a wonderful semester of learning and spiritual growth.

Our New Year has started off with a bang! We will continue working with our new staff, hosting overnight trainings and trying to encourage our church family in any way we can. Spencer will be graduating from Kiev Christian Academy in June so he is having a great time his last semester with the wonderful friends God has brought into his life here in Kiev. Pray for him as he balances college applications, a very tough school schedule, basketball, family and friends.

We are praying fervantly that the Ukrainian elections this week do not affect missionaries' Visas or the freedom of the Ukrainian Church in the spreading of God's Word throughout Ukraine. We feel Ukraine is a pivotal nation in Eastern Europe, so vital spiritually and politically to this part of the world. We love you all and miss you greatly!

Ministry & Family Activities - October 2009

2009-11-04T18:01:00.000+02:00

Here is a pictorial update of our ministry and family activities for the month of October.

Joshua, Seth and Katherine were able to participate in organized soccer for the first time in their lives and we had a blast as a family going to all of their games. Jill was really into the whole "soccer mom" thing!

Jill and Mark were able to speak at the recent Kiev Parenting Seminar called "The Joy of Parenting" on October 17. It was a great privilege and honor to speak to Ukrainian parents on Building Godly Character in our children.

Mark recently traveled to Novohrod Volynskyi in Western Ukraine with a key volunteer couple to oversee a marriage seminar, over half of the couples in attendance were unbelievers. We left the seminar very encouraged by the response from those that attended. We are praying that as we follow-up with these unbelieving couples many of them will put their hope and trust in Christ and become involved in the local church.

Mark and his ministry teammate Scott Stemple recently traveled by overnight train to Dnipropetrovsk to meet with pastors and other mission leaders about our FamilyLife marriage seminar coming up in December. It was a whirlwind trip as we hopped on the train Friday night at 11:00 p.m arrived in Dnipropetrovsk on Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. and left to return to Kiev Saturday night at 11:00 p.m. to arrive just in time for church on Sunday at 8:00 a.m.,such is the travel life here in Ukraine.

Winter 2009

2009-04-23T21:16:00.050+03:00

We have had a great semester even though it was full of the flu and stomach virus for several months, God allowed us to have great family time during some long dark winter nights and some exciting ministry opportunities.

We had 4 conferences in Odessa, Zhitomar, Novograd Valinsk and Kramatorsk. The Kramatorsk conference was a joint effort with Brian and Heidi Kinzel from our church so that was a special blessing. We were able to take Katherine and Evan and the Kinzel children Alissa and Gabriel and ride on an overnight train so that was fun and a little exhausting for the adults. The train has little beds for each person, but you can imagine it wasn't a full nights sleep as the train stopped and started all night. We were able to stay with 2 wonderful Ukrainian families. The wives were sisters who live next door to one another, pastor's daughters, who remember their father and grandfather being persecuted for preaching the gospel and they themselves being baptized at night in the river to avoid detection by the government. One of the daughters is married to a pastor who attended seminary many hours from their home in Irpen to become trained to preach the word of God. Brian Kinzel discipled him and helped him attend Shepherd conferences in the United States. The legacy of this family in their community is incredible. Their church is growing and They are a great witness to us of the difference God's word can make in Ukraine. Below are the sisters with Jill and Heidi, the other 2 girls are their daughters.

This is pastor Vilodia in the yellow shirt next to Brian and Mark with his brother in Law and his son.
They were all such great examples of Ukrainian hospitality serving us great Ukrainian food and even better conversation! Below are some men at the conference, it went very well. The couples were very attentive and were so interested that they want to have Mark and Brian come again and cover more material. We taught 4 messages on God's biblical plan for marriage and Mark helped with Q and A! Mark also did an introduction in Russian.

We are really enjoying our Church. We have 3 pastors Alexei and Andrei pictured below, and Brian Kinzel. It is exciting to us to see these men faithfully preaching God's Word in Ukraine where expository preaching is almost unheard of. Sometimes it's the dead of winter and we have no lights or heat so they preach by candlelight, which is kind of pretty. They never get paid a full salary so they work other jobs, study in seminary, preach and take care of their families. Their desire is to Shepherd a Biblically based Church. Their wives are incredible and constantly serve with their amazing skills of making our Little Church beautiful for almost no money. Our music is Pastor Alexei's daughters who play violin and piano along with Heidi Kinzel playing flute. It is beautiful. The Hymns we sing are famaliar to us and we can read Russian so we can sing a litttle.
Our church family is so loving to us and full of young families who love the Lord. Evan loves his sunday school which is taught by Americans who teach in English and Russian and do some really fun crafts for the kids. We are really praying for more Ukrainians to come and for funding for all the exciting ministries we want to offer here in Kiev. Our church is called Word of Grace. Pray for us!

Spencer had a great Junior year academically at Kiev Christian Academy, the missionary kid school he attends. We had a fun time attending his induction into the National Honor Society. He has a tough schedule but is really enjoying the teachers and students. Pray for him as he makes college decisions over the next couple of months! Home schooling the other four is going well. Thankfully Evan, our four year old, really loves letters and has a great memory so his schooling is looking good, a real blessing to Jill who is a little tired of teaching phonics and wasn't looking forward to doing it for the 6th time. God always knows what we need! We love you all and miss you!

Pray for Our New Church

2008-11-03T15:11:00.006+02:00

These are just a few pics of people in our new church in Kiev. Brian and Heidi Kinzel are missionaries from Grace Community Church and are here teaching pastors in Irpen Seminary and planting churches. They have 5 children. Their son Luke is a good friend of Spencer's from school and they have a daughter and son Katherine and Evan's age. Their oldest, Derek will be in Chicago next year, where Carra is, so we have alot in common besides Theology! On the left is our pastor who is just wonderful! Andrei and his beautiful wife Luda have 3 lovely daughters. The church has about 8 young families which we think is a great foundation to build from. So pray we will grow and flourish in Kiev this year!

Kiev Conference 2008

2008-11-02T19:01:00.011+02:00

The conference was packed, but Ukrainians don't seem to mind that as much as Americans.

The Romantic desert comes at the end, we always love noticing the difference in the couples at this time compared to when they first arrived.
We received many prayer requests from conferees all throughout the conference and we were able to pray for them throughout the conference. The requests were identical to those addresssed by conferees in America.
The Whole World needs Jesus in the center of their families!

Our Ukrainian Speakers Alex and Lena (above) Vitaly and Johna(below) There are 4 topics addressed, God's Plan for Oneness in Marriage, Resolving Conflict in Marriage, Romance in Marriage and The Gospel Presentation. Both couples did a great job!

The Fall Semester

2008-10-20T15:20:00.003+03:00

Getting off the plane again in Kiev was very different this time. There was no feeling of panic, we understood about 40% of what we were hearing as we stepped into the airport and the people looked, well like people rather than foreigners. Most of all we knew we had a home full of our own things to recover from the jetlag! It was stocked full of groceries, toys and starbucks coffee (Thanks to the BCLR youth group)! We were excited to see Kiev friends that we missed and a had new resolve to work hard on the Russian Language. It was actually surprising that we felt so comfortable in what seemed like such a strange place just a year ago.

This year is different in that we are adding 7 conferences to make a total of 13. Our conference cities are Kiev, Lviv, Chigarene, Simferopal, Odessa, Rovno, Zhitomar, Vinnitsa, Donetsk, Ternopil, Novgorod, Cherkassy and Uzhgorod. We are very excited about how hard our Ukrainian volunteers are working to bring their fellow countrymen to the conference and minister to them in the name of the Lord. They are so excited to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and to reveal God's plan for marriage and family. Their passion is both inspiring and humbling. The Kiev conference is October 25, we are thankful for a full house of 140 couples, many unbelievers. Pray for our Ukrainian Speakers Alex and Lena Travnikov and Vitaly and Johna Borody. Also pray for our American co-workers Scott and Cymp Stemple who will be presenting the gospel to the conferees. We are so excited to see what God will do this year!

Also we are hoping to become involved in a church that is beginning in Kiev. We are trusting the Lord that we will be able to serve in a Ukrainian church without translation so that we can come alongside another American family to plant a Bible centered, expository preaching church. Serving in and modeling a life built around Christ and His Church is one of the reasons we moved here so we are very excited about this opportunity and may be letting you know how you can help this church to grow and prosper here in Kiev. Pray for us as we take this exciting step!

We had a wonderful time seeing you all in America. We were able to see our families and church family, it was so encouraging! We were able to stock up on medicines, syrup and peanut butter! We feel much better! We were able to go to Chicago and meet Carra's wonderful friends at Moody. We couldn't ask for a more godly group of girls to encourage and help Carra while we are out of the country. We even attended some classes and were very impressed with her professors and Biblical training. God is so good to us! Pray for Carra as she had mono this summer and hopefully is recovering rather than relapsing. Also she is a Junior this year majoring in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, and has to do an internship teaching English in a foreign country this summer. Pray the Lord will guide her as she makes these preparations.

Spencer is having a great school year in 11th grade, taking a very tough schedule of honors classes and studying for the SAT and ACT. Pray as he begins to make college decisions. We are grateful God has provided a wonderful group of friends for him who are seeking to grow together in the Lord while having alot of fun! One thing we love about his school is the emphasis on service to Ukrainians, pray he will continue to be servant hearted during these projects and have an attitude pleasing to the Lord.

Finally our homeschool year has started off wonderfully since we haven't had to move this year!!!! Yay!!! Miraculously everyone is on grade level and doing well after the doubling up and summer school we had last year in the midst of chaos. To God be the glory great things he has done! Pray the children will really take off in Russian as they meet with a tutor 1 hour a day, 3 days a week. Pray we will be faithful to speak Russian together as a family and not be afraid to use what we know. We hope to make alot of friends this year both Ukrainian and American so the children will be happier to be here. Some days they love it here and others they miss their friends and family deeply. It is hard to convince them that if they lived in America they would still have to do school and chores! They remember it as a place to swim with friends and go to VBS!

The Lord is good and we see it as a privilege to serve among these wonderful people.
We love and miss you all and are so grateful for how you helped us this summer and continue to be used of the Lord to keep us serving Him here in Ukraine.

The Claxton family

Conferences in the Villages

2008-03-16T11:07:00.014+02:00

Last weekend we had 2 marriage conferences in the villages of Vinytsia and Zhitomar, both went really well, the room was packed and the people were extremely attentive. The Ukraine conference has 4 sessions: Message 1 - Five Threats to Oneness, Message 2 - Resolving Conflict in Marriage, Message 3 - The Gospel Presentation, Message 4 - Romance in Marriage.

During the conference the couples also do various projects together including writing a love letter to one another. This is powerful in Ukraine because it is a culture in which emotion is seldom shown, particularly by men. In both cities the men seemed uncomfortable at the beginning but as time went by seemed more softened towards their wives, the wives were beaming by the end of the conference. We noticed that many of the older men were especially appreciative by the end of the conference toward the speakers saying how important this message was to Ukraine right now. We were also very encouraged by the number of young newly married couples who seemed so excited. It is very exciting seeing how open these people are to the message of the Gospel and to God's plan for the family. In a country with a divorce rate of almost 70% that is only 2% evangelical christian, we are seeing alot of fruit in just 6 months.

Probably the biggest joy was working with the volunteer team in each city. These couples did alot of work to get the conference to their cities and even provided music, food and fireworks!
It was cool (classnee in russian!) to see how different the conferences were because of the different personalities of the volunteers. They really owned the ministry and felt that it was their people they were bringing the gospel and Biblical principles for marriage. This is what we love to see because these are the people who invite the conference attendees into their homes and churches after the conference and disciple them when we are gone back to Kiev. The conference gives them about 300 contacts, pastors here are thrilled to get these contacts and are very supportive of the conference so far. We are praying that those who responded to the gospel would grow in faith and that those who were equipped would disciple others, specifically we would like you to pray that many of these conference attendees would respond when we contact them in the future to take part in home Bible studies and help plan for the conference to come back to their area next year. Glory to God, great things He has done and may the name of Jesus Christ be worshipped all over these villages!

Also be praying for the youth of Ukraine as Josh
McDowell ministry will be here in May, pray for a great attendance and for many teenagers to respond to the Gospel. Mark is helping to set that up along with youth pastors all over Ukraine.
We miss home so much, but time is passing quickly as we stay so busy in ministry! We will be visiting in August so we are excited to see you all!

Dasvadoneeya!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PICS

2008-02-16T12:51:00.019+02:00

A Wonderful Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The 2 houses across the street at our new home, What a contrast!

The Interstate to Hungary

The Ice Fishing lake by our house

Our Wonderful New Home!!!!!!!!!!

The Nutcracker at the Opera House

Fun, Fun, Fun in the Snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We Have Moved, Again!

2008-02-16T10:02:00.002+02:00

We have not had internet for a month as we have been in transition between homes. Our life has been so crazy lately. We had a wonderful Christmas with Carra, then the day after she left we moved out of our Bucha home and stayed in a church for 2 nights. ( Hotels here are only for the very wealthy, even a small room costs hundreds of dollars a night.) We then drove for 2 days to Hungary for a training near Budapest. The teaching was incredible, Erik Thonnes did a great job and will forever be one of our favorite preachers as he fed our souls at such a critical time in our lives! Spencer had a great retreat with other MKs and a team from a church in California did a vbs type of program with the kids. The kids learned about the lives of children in the 10/40 window, and met so many friends from all over Eastern Europe. I never imagined that I would be meeting and discussing the great commission with people from Serbia, Albania, Belarus and Russia! Pray especially for Belarus and Russia as many evangelical missionaries have been "invited" to leave those countries, some have served there for over 5 years with no problem but now cannot get their visas renewed. More on that later.

After the conference we drove back for 2 days. The drive was not uneventful, as you can imagine 9 hours a day on bad roads with 5 kids. We had 2 throw up events and a little accident with a gas pump. We were so happy that we got through the border pretty quickly and we stopped for gas right inside of Hungary. Our back window was blocked by our luggage so as we were leaving we backed into a huge trashcan/gas pump owned by the gas station. So we had to sit there for an hour giving a Hungarian gas station attendant our insurance information. So much for getting through the border quickly! Then once we got back to Kiev we stayed in the church again for 5 days. If you can imagine one big room with 5 beds with 7 people, no internet or TV, for 5 nights; and it was finals week for Spencer. (Poor guy had to shut himself in the bathroom to study, but he did great!) Needless to say we were ready for a little less family togetherness by the time we were finally able to move into our new home on February 1.

Our house is Wonderful. We were becoming quite discouraged as we were looking at homes in Kiev. A very small 2 bedroom house with almost no yard is around $2,ooo per month. We assumed this is what we would have to settle for. We were looking at one bigger house and getting very excited about it only to have our friends translate for us that it was $5,000 a month!!! Never Mind!!!! But, our friend noticed as we were sadly driving away that the house around the corner had some people moving out. She called the landlord and asked if we could see it and how much it was. Miraculously, Praise the Lord, it was 6 bedrooms at $1700 a month.
We have friends renting 2 bedroom homes for that price. So here we are, with a guest room just for you to come stay with us. We are down the street from the best grocery store in town and walking distance of some really cool open air markets.

Our neighborhood is very strange, every other house is falling apart but then the others look like huge Florida beach houses with landscaped lawns. Ours is not falling apart but looks very Ukranian with white brick and these curved iron bars surronding the porch. We have a great yard. In Eastern Europe houses are surronded by a fence so they are all like little fortresses, you pull your car into your fence and lock your whole property every night. People ring the doorbell at the entrance to your fence. So it is great for kids to play outside protected in the front and back yard. It reminds me of feudalism. We think some foreign diplomats live down the street and probably some Ukrainian government officials. Another strange "coincidence" is that an American family lives down the street who work at Spencer's Christian school and the wife went to Moody and lived in the exact dorm, floor and wing (Houghton 9W) as Carra now lives on!

Well we are finally getting settled now that we know we will live in this house for at least a year and have a renter in our Little Rock home who has signed a 2 year lease which began in February as well. (Thanks to Janet and Skip Savary for arranging this!) Isn't God amazing!!!!!! As we have been talking to other missionaries we have been advised that owning your home in America is a wise thing, many have rented out their homes for over 15 years. So we are grateful that our house didn't sale and rented out so quickly to allow us to move in here. God knows how things should be and takes care of us even though we have no idea what we are doing! We were even able to go to a furniture store by ourselves and communicate with Russian speakers who knew no English and purchase some furniture! In Ukraine You buy say, a couch, you pay 100 grievna (which is about $20) then they deliver the couch for free and collect the rest of the grievna. They are very trusting. There are not rental agreements for renting houses, it is all by your word. So pray our Landlords will let us stay here for the price agreed upon the whole time we are here. Sometimes they will just tell you one day that your rent is now raised $500 a month or that you have to leave by next month. We have a verbal agreement that won't happen for at least a year, but there are no laws regarding these things yet. Pray for us to be okay with whatever happens and just trust the Lord as we are really weary of moving and want to focus on ministry and language study over the next couple of years.

We will post pictures soon, we are doing great and are very grateful how our Lord, Jesus Christ is providing all our needs exceedingly abundantly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love and Miss you all!!!!!!!!!

Mark and Jill

Sometimes There Are No Words, But There Is Always A Song!

2008-01-20T23:17:00.000+02:00

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in,
Lord, Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

ADVENTURES IN KIEV!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-05T20:06:00.000+02:00

This is a church we visited on Harvest Day, Ukraine's
version of Thanksgiving. The dress is traditional
Ukrainian.

Below is a monument to all the children
who died in a terrible famine induced by the communist
government in the 1930's.

This is Josh's BoyScouts of AMERICA troop, only
at this meeting he was the only American. These
boys are French, Russian and Korean. Their families are not Christian so it is a great oppurtunity to share the gospel with the international community of Kiev.

Downtown Kiev with Daddy

The boys in Mark's study and fun in a downtown Kiev park, Seth is always my helper with Evan!

Kiev's spectacular River the Dnieper, home of the very ancient Settlement Kiev-Rus, the Scandanavian ancestors of Eastern Europe. This civilization was settled in 500 AD by Vikings and was a major trade route in the world at that time. Later these people mixed with the Slavic people to become the modern day Russian and Ukrainian people.

Babykins, our Joy!!!
This is Katherine's Ukrainian friend, Marina and the dog we love and are dogsitting, Gracie

Russian classes have begun, Super fun but extremely time consuming!!! In the Russian alphabet H says 'n', Y says 'oo', P says 'r', there is a backwards N that says 'ee', an upside down h that says 'ch', and a 3 that says 'z' !!! So this is rather challenging, especially when Jill has been teaching English phonics for 15 years!!
DahsVahdahneeyah!!!!! (Goodbye!!!!)

OUR FIRST CONFERENCE IN KYIV

2007-10-20T16:10:00.000+03:00

Our first marriage conference here in Kyiv went great. There were 3 Ukrainian couples speaking on God's Plan for the family, a gospel presentation, and Intimacy in the marriage. They did such a great job!

We praise God for the attentiveness of all the couples, it was so neat seeing these men really listening and engaging their wives in conversation during the projects and when they went to write love letters to their wives, priceless!

The husbands were given roses to give to their wives at the end of the conference as they had a romantic dessert. It was astonishing how excited they were to find their wives to give them the rose. Giving these men a practical example of how to show love and appreciation for their wives and to see them as God's precious gift to them was an important part of the conference. It was an exciting sight to see these couples leaving holding hands. Pray this ministry will deter the Ukrainian divorce rate of over 70% and will multiply godly families in Ukraine!

We were convinced more than ever when we saw these people and thought about the impact they could have on their children, their churches, their parents, their friends and their communites for Christ, that this ministry is a powerful way to share the gospel and begin deeply discipling Ukrainians. Soon we will begin calling people to offer them to become part of a Bible study and to encourage them to become apart of a local church if they are not already. Mark has also had alot of great conversations with pastors in Kyiv to have conferences and Marriage studies in their churches. Many pastors from other areas of Ukraine traveled far to attend the conference and Mark is excited to work with them to get conferences and Marriage studies in other areas of Ukraine. The Family is in deed a powerful vehicle for the Gospel. Pray those who attended these conferences would continue to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

PICTURES AND GROUND-BREAKING, EARTH SHATTERING NEWS!!!!!!

2007-09-24T19:25:00.000+03:00

Well we finally figured out how to do pics!!!!!

The Kiev Airport

our house

our street

the castle across the street, weird the boys new room andOur new River, The Dneiper

Kiev architecture
Beautiful

Not so

much!

Well, now the earthshattering news. WE WENT TO THE GROCERY STORE BY OURSELVES FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lord's Day in Ukraine

2007-09-10T13:23:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was our first Sunday service in Ukraine. Since we don't have a car yet we attended services at a Ukrainian Baptist church here in Bucha. The church was beautiful, very simple with pretty new wood benches, all wood floors and alot of glass. The only decoration was a big cross on the wall behind the pulpit. I was thinking how nice a small wedding would be there because it is such a small area to decorate. One pastor preached who was a seminary student, the Senior pastor jokingly said that the student's wife was armenian and he was ukrainian, they both spoke french but he was going to preach in Russian. That's Kiev for you, very international. Anyway he preached on the Prodigal son and a young girl sat behind us and whispered the English translation in our ear.

Next the Senior pastor dedicated the newly finished basement for the use of Sunday School. They called all the teachers and children forward (the children had sat through the first worship time and sermon) and prayed for them. The Sunday School teachers were beaming with joy and looked at the children so lovingly, Just like in America many of them were young mothers and teenaged girls. I could tell that they were all so excited to be having a Sunday School and took the job very seriously. The pastor gave them a charge much like our church in America charges parents at a baby dedication. It was clear that these women felt a huge burden for the future of their church in their teaching on Sunday morning, as well they should!

Then the children dismissed to Sunday School, Josh was the only one brave enough to go to Sunday School that day, (surprise, surprise) and he had his very own translator. He loved it and was excited to find out that next week there would be a Bible quiz on the books of the Bible which he feels sure that he will win. (Lord help this cocky child even language barriers do not stop his desire to conquer the world) After the children left we had our second sermon given by the Senior pastor, his text was the entire book of Esther. The translator was exhausted when that was over! The biggest miracle was that Evan our 3 year old sat through both sermons, I guess the Russian speaking and singing was a little intimidating for him and he wasn't his normal rambunctious self. The preaching was simple but true and we really enjoyed being with these Ukrainian believers. They listened so intently to the sermons and so many seemed as if they were hearing these common Biblical stories for the first time. They looked amazed at the audacity of Haman and very excited when Mordecai was honored!

One thing is for sure being with the Lord's people made us grateful to be here in this country full of new believers, but it made us miss the comfort of our home Church where everything is challenging but is in English!!! Oh well, Language school begins in 2 weeks so we will at least begin understanding a little more every week. Spencer is actually learning alot in school so he is teaching us informally. He still loves school, last friday he and some friends hung out together after school all day, running around the city then attending a youth group which meets on friday night. So Missionary Kids have fun too!

Mark has been working on his first conference in October, so he has been on the Metro alot going to meetings in downtown Kiev. The Metro is always an adventure, one of our friends got his billfold stolen with $300 in it last week, so pray for Mark as he travels. It seems safe but you can't get your guard down too much. Mark has also met many pastors through the people who own this house we are living in, so pray he can cultivate those relationships.

Continue to pray for us as we visit churches that we would discern where God wants to plant our family with the local church here in Ukraine. We love and miss you all. God bless your ministries at home! We love you !!!

Life in Ukraine

2007-09-03T12:00:00.000+03:00

Well I have held off writing this because I wanted to have pictures, please read the previous post about this, but I guess words will have to do for now. We are blessed to be staying in a beautiful big home with a fully gated front and backyard. The owner has colorful flowers everywhere and we are keeping their sweet dog so the kids are having a blast with that. A neighborhood boy comes over often and speaks russian to us 90 miles an hour even though we tell him constantly we don't understand him. About every other sentence he says hello, which is the only word he knows in English. After a couple of hours of playing I tell him goodbye in Russian but he just says hello to me, he knows exactly what I am saying. I have to walk him out the gate to get him to go home! He is only 6 and I have never even seen his mother. Our next door neighbors who are christians and one of whom speaks English say his family are not believers so we are praying to have some opportunites with them in the future as we learn Russian.

Spencer is really enjoying school. The other missionary kids from all different ministries around Kiev have been so friendly and fun to be with. He attended youth group last friday night and really enjoyed that. The classes will be challenging so pray he continues to be diligent particularly in Algebra 2 and Russian.

We have been to several different grocery stores which aren't too hard because half the brands are American and our friend has always been there to interpret, but once we get a car that will not always be the case. People seem to be understanding. What is hard about it is that we want to talk to people! We feel rude, especially on the train; people always talk to the children and they aren't able to respond. The kids are so confident though they are not the least bit afraid and are constantly asking how to say things in Russian then saying them to the people they meet. The Stemples, the American family we work with, just adopted a 9 year old Ukrainian girl who only speaks Russian, Marina. She and Katherine are really learning from each other to speak the others language. They play for hours!

Carra is really loving this semester at Moody and such a surprising praise, she is on the same floor with a new girl whose parents are missionaries in Kiev. Spencer is in the same grade with and has gotten to know her brother here at school in Kiev. We hope to meet their parents soon.
So Carra will have someone she enjoys to fly to Ukraine with for Christmas!!! God is so good to us! Well we will write more later.

In His Care,

The Claxtons

Technical Difficulties

2007-09-03T11:48:00.000+03:00

We would like to post pictures on here but are unable to do so, Spencer is also having trouble on facebook and we can't email pictures either. We have vonage phone set up here and are wondering if that has anything to do with this problem. If you know what we might try email us at jill.claxton.ufc@gmail.com .

We're Here!!!!!!!

2007-09-01T20:23:00.000+03:00

The Plane ride was long but the kids slept the whole time, so praise the Lord our plan of exhausting the kids in the swimming pool and staying up all night previous to our 3:30 am trek to the airport worked! The 6 hour layover in Germany was pretty rough but it made us actually glad to get on the plane again to Kiev. The airport was pretty funny, when they saw us get off the plane they assigned this young guy to help because we had so many carry-ons, when he saw our 14 huge red duffle bags come out in baggage claim his jaw dropped to the floor, he left for a long time to secure 3 carts to carry them on. By the time that was over as usual he was great friends with Mark. We were very happy to see our friend and coworker Scott Stemple he drove us to our beautiful home. The Stemple family has been such a blessing to us.