Brain drain
Ukraine has lost 5 million of its population in the last few years. Average life expectancy of the Ukrainian male is about 62. Times are tough and fewer children are being born. Those that can leave the country do. There is a true brain drain going on.
The church in T. is made up of godly women. There are about 5 men who help out with the spiritual leadership. Their hearts are good, but the task is huge.
The Christian girls have no one to marry, at least no one in the Lord. One just turned 30, but she knows that many not-yet-believers (maybe even most of those from Western Ukraine) are drunkards and will not make good husbands, so she keeps on praying, as do the other young ladies. “Will there come a time that God will answer our prayers?â€, they ask me. I assure them that God is listening and that he is strengthening them, preparing for them a glorious future.
It just may be a future without marriage, and that can be disheartening.
evendays
March 5, 2009@ 1:03 am
Our daughter spent a month in Ukraine a couple of years ago w/ a group of students from Azusa Pacific University and said she’d never known a group of people who seemed more hopeless and disheartened than the people she met there. It is very sad. God’s glorious future may not be realized in this life by many believers. And those of us who think we’ve experienced it because of the wealth of the United States may soon learn a completely different perspective on God’s blessings!
March 5, 2009@ 2:29 pm
These folks will be in my thoughts………
March 15, 2009@ 8:18 pm
Great blog Brady! You do make it hard to put comments up however (I don’t know how I am ever going to remember my evendays wordpress password)!
Keep up the good work…it is great to gain access to your thoughts online. Are you considering a blog in French (not that I could read it or anything)?
Also, very sad situation in the Ukraine. Tks for helping them out…definitely a country in need of some blessings.
–Ryan