Talbot School of Theology — Kyiv Extension staff welcomed eight potential students to the Kyiv Theological Seminary campus on Friday for a day of testing and interviews.

The eight applicants traveled from all over Ukraine to meet with Talbot staff and professors, and to take the English-language entrance exam. (Though extension classes are taught in Russian or with Russian translation, half of the required reading is in English.) 

These eight are the first applicants for the class that will start in 2011. 

The Talbot — Kyiv Extension offers Slavic students the chance to earn a Western-accredited Master's degree in Biblical and Theological Studies without having to journey to the West. Classes are held twice a semester during intensive two-week modules, a schedule that encourages students to continue their ministries, even as they work toward a degree.

We are cooperating with SEND’s National “Teaching Values in the Public Schools” project and as a result volunteers from our church are teaching 10 classes each week in two different public elementary schools. As we make friends with the students and visit them in their homes we have open opportunities to present the Gospel to their families. We have also been invited to present seminars on parenting and class discipline to the teachers. These seminars led to a twice monthly Bible Study Class with Public School teachers at our church. The teachers have many questions and it is fun to lead this Bible study. One recent question they asked was, “How can we explain Adam and Eve as the origin of the human race when in our textbooks evolution teaches that we came from apes?” One of the teachers has invited us to conduct a Bible study for all of the teachers in her school. Pray for God’s help to speak directly to the spiritual needs of these teachers.
-Mike and Carolyn Ballast

Students in both our residence program and extension programs around the country are growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and sometimes there is an obvious connection between their coursework training and their effectiveness in ministry. One student from the extension program in Varna, Bulgaria turned in the write-up of her final project for the Pastoral Counseling course I taught a short while ago. As her counseling session progressed, it became obvious that the foundational need of her counselee was forgiveness that comes only by faith in Christ. How wonderful to read that her session resulted in new birth. Accounts like these are numerous, and I trust they encourage you as they do me.

When we lived in the Philippines, our final three years were in a subdivision, south of Manila, an upper class neighborhood with families of professional people. One of the men was Esteban, a lawyer. We're still very close friends with Esteban, now pushing 80, and he continues to practice law. He had six children.

I poured a lot of hours into the two youngest teens, a son and daughter, and I didn’t feel I knew the older four very well. But we’d often hold something just for teens and college age kids at our house -- games, food, Bible study, hang out. Our house was generally open game, and our carport had the only ping pong table in the neighborhood. Teens and twenties gathered regularly. My husband played ping pong – I provided food and drinks.

Fast forward 30+ years. Two of Esteban’s sons have lived in the US for years. We know them as Dandi and Bingo. We saw Esteban in January in Manila and he said, "Your daughter is living near Dandi and Bingo. I'll connect you."

Last week I had a phone call from Dandi asking when we were coming his direction. Yesterday we had another phone call from Dandi. "Can we all come see you this afternoon? Bingo's daughter is singing in a noon concert at the university near you.”

Four o'clock the doorbell rang and in poured the two men, their wives, and Bingo's teenage son and daughter. The guys enveloped us in huge bear hugs. Then the wives hugged us, and then the teens hugged us. Instantly the living room was carpeted with people in every chair and piece of floor space, talking full blast. I had our five day old granddaughter in my lap and they kept shifting seats so they could watch her. The teens had never seen a baby so young.

Bingo said to his son, "This guy here (pointing to my husband) -- he was the village holy man, ya know. We didn't have a priest so he was IT." And from there the men launched into "Do you remember the time we...." "You know when we brought G over..." “Do you have pictures of the shaving cream game? The Hat game?” "Do you still make pizza?" Most of which, well, we DIDN'T remember but they did. Who would have thought that a ping pong table, food, silly games, and Bible study would have made such a deep impression?

Hours later we were still talking. Topics spanned the ocean, multiple cultures, and the years. The teens said little, but when I thanked them for coming they said, "Oh, we wouldn't have missed it. We've heard so much about you, and this was really interesting."

Dandi and his wife were the last to leave. As he went out he said, "Who is doing youth work now in the sub?"

"Filipinos," we said. "Your parents' church has over 3000 people. And now there are lots of other churches in the area. All the churches do youth work."

"Good," he said. "It was really important to us."

A little like the ten lepers that were healed and the one who came back to say thank you.

During the Muslim month of fasting (Ramadan) from sunrise to sunset for 31 days, one of my students invited me to her home to join her family in celebrating the evening feast, once the sun had set.

I asked this student’s aunt, "Why do you fast?" One of the personal reasons she gave me was that in refraining from food and drink, it helps her to identify herself with the poor around her. She added that unless we experience what they experience, we will not truly know what it is like to be poor.

In that moment, I felt as though the Lord was reminding me why I was here  – to "fast" from my home country and the familiar for the summer to better understand what it is like to walk a day in the life of those who are spiritually poor, lacking the truth and transforming work of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord in their lives.

My time in Asia has been formative. I am spurred on to pray for Muslims daily, now that I know many by name and have become friends with them. I am encouraged to mobilize others to pray and even go to the Muslim world, as I've seen the great need. Lastly, I am encouraged to continue pursuing the call I believe the Lord has gently and quietly been placing on my heart to go to a Muslim people long-term in the future.