Six Days and Counting...

With just 5 days remaining before we leave for Ukraine on June 13th, I am very excited!  Currently, I am in Manchester, New Hampshire (the Dolzhanskiy's home) preparing for the trip with the rest of my team members.  First of all, I wanted to mention that to the glory of God, we all raised 100% support for the trip!!!  This is truly and answer to prayer and we are all so thankful to the many people and churches who have supported our trip.  Thank you all!  These last couple of days have been spent preparing for the missions trip in three ways: packing, making lessons and buying supplies, and learning special music and poems for presenting in the numerous churches we will be at this summer.  In addition, all of us guys are all preparing sermons to preach while in Ukraine.  Personally, I have already preached twice at the churches here in the New England area!

Your prayers are all still greatly appreciated, especially as we prepare to travel next week.  Please pray for our safety in traveling by car, plane, and train before we reach our first destination.  Also, please pray that we will not have any problems with our luggage, as we are taking A LOT of suitcases mostly full of supplies for the orphanages and church ministries.  And finally, please pray for our physical health.  We really need to be fully rested and in good health before we arrive to Ukraine.

Ilya, Yuriy, Olenka, Ivan, Konstantin, John

I wanted to take the time to introduce our Ukraine missions trip team.  As I mentioned earlier, several of them are also PCC students who graduated with me this past May.  We are all very grateful to God for providing this great opportunity to serve in Ukraine together.  Here is a little about each of the team members:

Ilya Marchenko - He is a Pastoral Ministries graduate from PCC.  He lives in Seattle, Washington, and will return to PCC in the fall to begin his Master's in Educational Leadership.

Yuriy Dolzhanskiy - He graduated with a Pastoral Ministries major and with several science minors from PCC.  He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and will begin Medical School in August.

Olenka Dolzhanskiy - She is a Senior Biology major at the University of New Hampshire.  She lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.  Yuriy, Ivan, and Konstantin are all her older brothers.

Ivan Dolzhanskiy - He also graduated from PCC with a Music Ministries Bachelor.  Ivan is also from Manchester, New Hampshire, and also plans to begin his Master's at PCC this fall.

Konstantin Dolzhanskiy - He just graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Politics and Society.  He also lives in Manchester, New Hampshire.

John Loo - Well, that's me! :) And in case you missed it, I also graduated from PCC this past May with a Missions major from the Bible department.  I am from Houston, Texas!

Well, this gives you all a short update about our missions trip which is quickly approaching!  Please stay tuned to the blog for lots of future updates about the trip.  For now, God bless and next time I will write a new post, I hope to be across the sea in Ukraine!