“Ya put, ee eestihna, ee zhittya”

Today in Ukrainian we learned John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Interestingly, there are two words for truth in Ukrainian, “istina” and “pravda”. Subjective truth is pravda. In other words I have my own pravda, which may not agree with your pravda. I love that there is a definition like this in Ukrainian. I wish we had one at home. With postmodernism run amok, we need a word for relative truth. The word that I love the most though is used in this verse, “Istina”. This is a higher truth, one that cannot be doubted, ultimate, overriding, and completely true (2 +2=4). When someone in this culture says “the istina is…” people wonder “who made you a prophet?”
Hurray for trustworthy, solid, unshifting truth that we can hang our hats on!!

Both Bill and I are now taking lessons in the Ukrainian language. Originally, I was going to study Russian and Bill had decided on Ukrainian. However, there was not an opening for me to continue with Russian at the language school and we felt it was important to not waste the next few months so I have joined Bill. It is helpful for practicing conversation at home and it is emerging in importance here as people seek different ways to express nationalism.

Our English language classes are doing well. We have grown from 20 to 30 students in 3 weeks and the majority attend the Bible class afterwards. Our prayer is that these students will meet the Lord and grow spiritually as a result of this introduction.