Pictures of Ukrain Trip
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On Thursday, June 12th, 1. Pastor Roff led 28 people on a choir mission trip to Ukraine. They traveled by bus throughout the country, singing in concert halls in six different cities to promote the visibility of the local Ukrainian Presbyterian churches. A highlight of the trip was singing at the dedication of the church building in Belgorod-Dnestrovsky, a building the congregation has been working on for ten years! All the anthems they sang were translated into both Ukrainian and Russian and printed in the programs. Along with comments during the programs from Pastor Roff, this enabled the choir to preach the gospel through the music.

2. We arrived in the capital city of Kiev (population 3 million) and sang in the morning worship service at Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church. Pastor Roff preached a missions sermon, translated by his good friend, host Pastor Ivan Bespalov.

3. On Sunday afternoon, we sang a full two hour concert at Kiev's prestigious Mogila Academy, the oldest university in eastern Europe. It was founded in 1615.

 4. On Monday, our bus took us two hours south of Kiev to the City of Bila Tserkva. The name means "White Church," named after the white church in which we sang. We took a leisurely walk through a beautiful forested city park covering several hundred acres (the private estate of a wealthy baron in the early 1800s) before singing our evening concert. The church was built in 1812 as a private family chapel for that wealthy landowner's family. It is a magnificent Baroque structure with a fine concert organ. We shared the concert with the resident community chorus, dressed in their colorful folk costumes.

5. The first of three overnight bus rides (these were not easy!) brought us to Lviv, just 70 mils from the border of Poland. We stayed in a magnificent 15 room hotel, which used to be a private mansion. A walking tour of the city showed us what is said to be the most beautiful city in all of Ukraine, with many magnificent Greek Catholic churches. Our missionary MTW church planting team there is led by Doug and Masha Shepherd (pictured here with their two children) along with Heero and Anya Hacquebord (both wives are Ukrainian). We sang our concert in a 17th century baroque church which doubles as a concert hall. It boasts the largest organ in Ukraine.

6. It was an easy three hour bus ride to Rivne where we met Pastor Vassili Pilipienko. His congregation had a pizza lunch waiting for us in their beautiful, relatively new church building. This congregation was organized in 1925. Almost all the members were executed by communists in the 1930s. The founding pastor (now 97 years old) was imprisoned for years. The church was replanted and now provides a witness to the gospel and to the Reformed faith in this community. We sang our concert that evening, once again with translated words and commentary so that the gospel content of our anthems could be understood.

7. Thursday brought us to Odessa, after a 12 hour overnight bus ride! We were ready for some "down time" to relax that day and enjoy the sights in this beautiful port city (population 1.5 million). We rehearsed in the afternoon, and then enjoyed a delicious dinner in a restaurant in the center of the city, just two blocks from the church and hotel. Odessa's opera house is one of the most beautiful in the world. Many of its buildings have been restored to their 18th and 19th century splendor. The church is located adjacent to the main city park, where summer flowers were in full bloom.

8. On Friday evening, we presented a concert in Odessa's Evangelical Presbyterian Church, featuring just our vocal and organ soloists. The church was organized in 1804. The building dates to 1896. Communists turned it into a puppet theater. It was returned to the church in 1998 and completely restored. Pastor Roff raised funds to purchase the organ, which is used in community concerts several times a month as well as in weekly worship services. The church is located across the street from the main city park. After dinner, we enjoyed another wonderful dinner in a local restaurant, complete with Ukrainian folk musicians. MTW team leader Clay Quarterman (and his wife, Darlene), described the history and strategies if the missionaries' work there.

9. On Saturday, our bus took us 50 miles south of Odessa to the city of Belgorod-Dnestrovsky (population 40,000). We were greeted by Pastor Sergey Betin and his wife Lyuda, who had visited our church almost two years ago. After his conversion he established a Christian clinic in his town. Out of that grew the church where he is now the pastor. This ancient city has a fortress originally built by Greeks. The present structure dates from the Crusader era. We arrived in time to witness a fabulous outdoor pageant about its history. In the evening we sang our concert to a full house of very responsive people in the newly completed church building.

10. Sunday morning was the highlight of our mission trip. We sang a number of anthems as we participated in the long-awaited dedication of the church building in Belgorod-Dnestrovsky. It was an unfinished furniture store building the church bought ten years ago (just walls and floors, not even roof and windows). It has taken ten years, but it is now a wonderful church building with a cafeteria/gym at the basement level (for a Christian school), Sunday School rooms on the ground floor, sanctuary on the top floor, with guest apartments at one end and nursery rooms at the attic level. It is in an excellent location right across the street from high-rise residential apartments.

11. Our Belgorod-Dnestrovsky friends provided the fixings for a sack lunch to eat on the bus as we rode back to Odessa. Once there, we packed our bags and finished shopping that afternoon before presenting our full choir concert in the church that evening. The two Odessa concerts (soloists/organists and choir) were both videotaped and audiotaped. DVDs and CDs are available for purchase from the LOPC office. Our musicians all did a wonderful job. Everyone had learned the music on their own. We had met in New York for just one rehearsal before boarding the plane to begin our trip! The concert included Psalm settings, spirituals, hymn arrangements, and anthems, along with major organ concert pieces. Odessa church Pastor Valera Babuinen expressed the thanks of everyone there for our ministry among them. We left the choir robes there as a gift for the church in Belgorod-Dnestrovsky. The evening concluded with another wonderful dinner in a local restaurant before boarding the bus for an easy 7 hour overnight ride back to Kiev. At dinner, we expressed our deep gratitude to Tanya Savchuk and Laura Batyushkova in the Odessa church offices who had done such a fabulous job in arranging the logistics for our trip (bus, meals, lodging, etc.). We could not have done this without these two wonderful ladies!

12. Our final day was a day to relax as we toured the beautiful sights of Kiev. While 50,000 churches in Ukraine were dynamited by the communists (who also engineered a tragic famine in 1933-34 that killed as many as 12 million people), there are still many gorgeous orthodox churches that survived. Here is St. Volodymyr Cathedral (with a service underway inside), the newly reconstructed blue St. Michael of the of Archangels, and St. Andrew's. We also saw some of the amazing architecture in the city, including the oddly decorated "Chimera House" with its strange menagerie of animal sculptures along the roof, the golden domes of the immense Lavra monastery and cave system, and the national bank. As we headed home on Tuesday morning, it was with a deep sense of gratitude to God for the privilege of aiding in the expansion of the kingdom in this land, and also with a deep sense of indebtedness to Him to pray for the people and churches of Ukraine.