Greetings from Ukraine,

We hope and pray you are happy and doing well on your side of the world. We have had a MUCH calmer month than May though still seemed to stay on the go most of the month.

Doug Reeves Visit

The first week of June Doug Reeves was here and we spent time with him making new plans for the fall and visiting orphanages. Someone had been kind enough to give Doug $200.00 a month for an orphanage here and he was asking our advice on where to use it. We felt the orphanage where the babies with aids are would be a wise choice. We took him there and when he saw it he totally agreed this would be a wonderful place to help. They need so much formula and baby food plus food for the toddlers that their need is always great. It was so wonderful to go back there and spend some time seeing the babies. We got to hold a lot of them and the older ones were up this time and we spent a good bit of time playing with them. For the first time, the director took us to see the children that definitely had full blown aids. There were about 15 of them out of the 60 children they have. Some have now tested negative while many await further testing until they are 18 months old. Your heart just breaks to see this but also you feel so thrilled about helping a place that is doing such a good work. These kids are well loved and you can tell it. They are happy and loving and this says volumes for the dedicated workers that work there.

We also went by to visit the Children’s Hospital that the school helps monthly. We took a car load of food and medicines there as we do each month. They were thrilled to see us and could hardly wait to tell us how very much they were enjoying the use of the pool of plastic balls you had given them. The therapy they give these children is remarkable and we literally saw one of the young boys walking who could not walk when we first starting going there. These dedicated people are amazing. This is the hospital where they help children with downs syndrome also. In Ukraine and Russia it seems to be the "norm" to "hide" children who have downs syndrome and we are so thankful to have been able to have found a hospital willing to help these children as they are so very precious.

Doug was actually here on our 34th anniversary but we were able to "sneak off" and have a lovely meal at my favorite place here, The Titanic. I had sushi again (California Rolls, NO raw fish) and it was just wonderful!!! The piano player came also and it was a very special evening.

We had another group of Americans here from Texas the second week of June wanting to see the school and what it does. They are wanting us (Jay Don) to undertake taping classes and sending them out to places that have no resources of their own. People in remote places could at least have the opportunity to learn more in depth Bible lessons from these tapes. However, Jay Don is the ONLY resident teacher plus director of the school and this is going to involve hours of work. But God does provide and Rhett is now a graduate of UBI and can help his Dad under take this project if it goes through!!!! Rhett has inherited his dad’s wonderful talent of knowing all about computers, videos and tape machines so this would be a perfect opportunity for him to help out!!!

Trip to Prague

We left the Americans late on a Thursday night, packed quickly for a week in Prague and got up at 3:00 A.M. to catch our flight!!! When we got to the airport the "crooked" Ukrainians who were checking us in wanted more money to ship our suitcases. We said we only had $10.00 in grevana on us so they took it and let us on. I’m just amazed at how much these people are going to have to learn to ever be allowed in the European Union!!! Everywhere you turn someone wants a "bribe" to get something done.

We flew on the typical old Soviet plane to Kiev, just wondering every mile IF we were going to land safely. We did though and then had to wait 6 hours for our flight to Prague. About an hour before we were to board we met a couple from Alberta who had been in Ukraine helping with the Baptist Church. We had a lovely visit with them and we are hoping they will call the Church in Calgary and give them our love and greetings!!!

We had a great week in Prague. We literally walked our legs off but we both needed some time away from Donetsk, especially my husband. As long as he is in Donetsk someone is always calling him or needing him to do something and I wanted him to get away for a "late" 34th anniversary present!!! Prague is a beautiful old European city with much history and so very clean and quaint and so very different from Donetsk. There are dozens of cathedrals with a fairy castle type look and just beautiful. Mozart also spent a lot of time here and there were classical concerts everywhere day and night. We were blessed to take in 4, all of which were just awesome. The most unusual one was that of a Choir from Bellingham, Washington just one hour from where we lived in Canada for 20 years!!!!! (Small world!!) We were just having coffee one morning at Kampa Square, just off the Charles Bridge (a square made famous in the movie "Mission Impossible") and a lady heard us speaking English and asked where we were from. We told her and asked why she was in Prague and when she told us she was the choir director from Western Wash. University, we just couldn’t believe it!!! She invited us to her concert and of course we went. The first hour was a Check choir performing and the second hour was the chorus form Bellingham. They were awesome. They sang a lot in Latin the first half which we don’t like at all but the second half was lively Spirituals which is our kind of music. We just loved it! It was just a wonderful experience and we really did love Prague. One of the pictures we have included is a picture of one of the Baroque church buildings. They told us that Prague was one of the most atheistic cities in Europe yet there are these opulent buildings everywhere. Gold and silver do not save people, the simple message of the Gospel does.

Lily's Story

The rest of the letter I want to share a letter with you that was written by a news reporter here in Donetsk. She had found out from our landlord that we had given money to help with little Lily’s heart surgery and just could not believe that this was being done. She came by the school and interviewed Jay Don and our landlord, Dr. Alexander. The following is the complete article that came out on the front page of a Donetsk newspaper. Of course it was written in Russian but it has been "loosely" translated but I think you can get the gist of the article. I just wanted to share this whole article with you so you could see the impact of your generous giving and how it is touching lives and making a difference in Ukraine.

"Lilya’s Story"

The doctors have helped a little girl with heart disease from the Volnovaha region to overcome a threshold of doom thanks to the help of kind people from afar.

Lilya Goncharuk was born in a family where there were other sickly children besides herself, she is the third child. The doctors said that she needed an operation quickly. The diagnosis was a bad heart problem. This heart problem kept the girl behind in development from the first minutes of her life and did not promise her longevity. She would not have the opportunity to grow at the same level with other children her age.

Because the operation was so expensive for her parents they attempted to find someone who would help to solve their problem, but for a long time they were not crowned with success. At the regional public health services administration they were treated with understanding and sympathy but it was impossible to back up these feelings with money for the expenses of their daughter. They had nothing in their budget for that purpose. The father applied to a charitable fund and was told that they would help him to draw up a paper with which they could seek a sponsor on their own. It is impossible to explain how unreal this task seemed for a man from a very small village. The problem came to the attention of some people who have been trying to help sick children in Ukraine and Russia. The Rogers family is from Canada. Mr. Rogers is President of the Ukrainian Bible Institute in Donetsk (a branch of the Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock, Texas). He and his wife have been living in Donetsk for two years. They are members of the Church of Christ. The Rogers and the churches of Christ have been helping children at the Donetsk Children’s Hospital boarding school for children who have cerebral palsy, down syndrome and the Makeevka center for HIV-infected children. They decided to meddle "in a good sense" with Little Lilay`s fate.

A decision could be made by the Rogers, who also represent a charitable fund called Reach for the Children International, and the amount of the expenses was specified and agreed on and for the first time in two years there seemed to be hope for the Goncharuk family. Regional Medical Association in Donetsk under the leadership of Professor G.V.Bondar with the participation of the Head`s assistant of the regional department/administration of public health services of the regional state administration L.F. Lipchansky volunteered to organize a meeting of the parents with Jay Don and Mary Lee Rogers and to coordinate all the organizing issues. In the Institute named after Amosov in Kiev, where the parents took the little girl, they implanted her with a pacemaker (just for information: it costs several thousand greivna). She was under the doctors` supervision for two weeks. She came back just the other day with new prospects on life. She does not understand for the present what these strangers have done for her. And as to the father he did not keep back his feelings and he sincerely admitted that he was willing to kiss their hands. One could have put a happy period at the end of this story if something had not been done for Lilya. Yet other children with inborn heart diseases also need the same help. Do you know how many of them we have in the Donbass region? . . . 450. Every year about 150 children need to have an operation done with the purpose of correcting this problem. We do not have to search long to discover cases of these diseases.

The Institute of Urgent and Rehabilitation Surgery of the AMS in Donetsk as well as the Institute of Heart and Vascular Surgery in Kiev are financed from the state budget. As they say comments are unnecessary. They are extremely poorly provided with oxygen generators, valves and pacemakers which are necessary to do these surgeries.

People who have money to pay for all medical services and to get all the necessary things for the surgery do not need to worry. The needy, like Lilya Goncharuk, in the market economy fall out of the list of those who can be helped. They have nothing else to do but to count on somebody else who will give them a helping hand. But why do kind foreigners and not we ourselves show concern for the children’s health? Not by words of mouth but in action through our giving?

We joke at the present time when a new "Mercedes" is chosen to match the color of our socks. We admire contestants with a rabbit’s tails on their bottoms receiving a beauty title and we pave their way to the podium with money. And how much advertising and "fireworks" the rich "eat up"… that does not count other people’s money they consume as well. But as I compare those expenditures with the one that saved the girl`s life I can not keep back bitterness - just a thousand and a half dollars and a few thousand grivnyas.

The doomed girl received the financial support from over the ocean and not from her fellow-countrymen. Soon that generosity will also be received by a fourteen-year-old boy who has problems with his heart also. Now the Rogers are concerned about him. And their distant fellow-countrymen are collecting the necessary amount of money for him as well. And it makes no difference to me that the church which they represent is called differently than ours. Yet its teaching is based on the familiar teaching of Christ which calls us to love our neighbor and help him.

It is good that these village people have received help. The times have passed when missionaries from afar were not allowed to help with public health services lest its main "military" secret - complete impoverishment - was "declassified". Now we accept charitable goods of all kinds such as medical equipment and medicines. And we even are ready to present multi-volume lists of what else we would like to get and what is second hand. But for some reason we present them not to our local new rich Ukrainians for whom a thousand "grivnas" is mere change. Nor to the state that so far has not put one of the most important spheres of activity - public health - on the proper well-provided level.

… As they were trying to get Lilya talking at the platform after her return she showed them her tongue in reply and laughed. That unrealized grimace is a result of our social system. Are we too busy with other things to take a closer look ourselves. We need to take care of our "heart trouble". How many like Lilya are lost amid a lot of noise by a pathetic lack of concrete participation in the lives of others.

Lilya Goncharuk, her mother and Mary Lee Rogers who has become a good fairy for her.

Some information to think over:

The children of the region with inborn defects of heart and vessels who are in need in 2003:

Oxygen generators - 150,

Artificial heart valves - 50,

Two-camera pacemakers - 50.

Donbass Newspaper, Donetsk, Ukraine

That to us was a very touching article and shows how much many people appreciate the wonderful giving people that you are and how very much your help does over here.

We plan to leave Tuesday morning for two weeks in Omsk where Jay Don went 13 times. It will be good to see the church there and our many friends that he made while teaching and visiting various hospitals. We will enjoy special time with Dr. Olga and family, who now are our "in-laws"!!! After about 10 days in Omsk, Julia is taking us all to St. Petersburg. She is excited to take us to "her city" and show us the Palaces and Gardens there. She says they are very beautiful so we are looking forward to that. Please remember us in your prayers as we travel.

Thanks for your continued help and may God bless you all,

Jay Don and Mary Lee

We thank our God every time we remember you.