A letter from Nadia Ayoub in Ukraine
March 2012
Dear Friends and families
I greet you with the peace of Christ the Lord. I thank God because of you all. And thank you for your love, prayers and encouragements and the way you would like to do effective participation in witnessing for the love of God for us through his Son, Jesus the Christ. I was so glad to receive your messages. Thank you so much for your prayers for me and the ministry. In October 2011 I celebrated one year of my ordination as minister of the Word and Sacrament, in November one year of leaving the United States and coming to Hungary, and in February I completed one year in Carpathian-Ukraine. In all of it I am thankful to God and to his grace for saving me and making me his, a child of his big family the Church of Jesus Christ.
We have very lovely children, with whom work four days a week. The ages for the preschool are from 3 to 7 or 8, but most days the older kids do not go to school and they are longing to learn even the very elementary knowledge that we are teaching to the preschool. As we teach Bible verses and songs to young ones the older ones learn how to read and write the same. When they learn one verse or a song they receive a reward, which usually is food and an item of clothing or shoes or school supplies. And if the child behaves well we celebrate her or his birthday with a delicious homemade cake.
Winter is officially ending; we see some sunny days and the snow recedes, but still it is very cold. It was such a harsh winter that one windy storm blew off a small wooden house of a family with two little children so that they broke my garage room door and occupied the room. But thank God the family is safe and warm, and they allow me to work in the room during the day. I still pay the monthly rent and utilities to the owner. This situation was testing my faith and I thank God who helped me to deal justly with the poor Roma family and be a witness for the Reformed Church pastor who thought to call the mayor and the police to evacuate the family who broke the agreement we have with them.
The road to the camp is very bad; the so-called highways are very broken and the small roads are muddy. I needed to jerk my car a couple times to get out of the mud. This is the situation in the two Roma camps where I work, and we have been in prayer and asked the assistance of the mayor of the city. He told us about one house in the area for sale, and recently we have been in negotiation about it, first to have agreement and permission so we can have a sort of center for the Roma children and people there, and then to know how much it will cost.
For that, please, I ask your prayer that God will help lead the local believers (Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical), especially the Reformed Church, to take the lead in witnessing to God’s love for the forgotten Roma people who live on the edges of their cities.
Thank you for any way your congregation wants to help. Some of you have written offering to send knitted and crocheted items such as hats and scarves made in your congregation; these kinds of things would be useful, and you can send them to us through regular mail. I’m including our mailing address at the end of this letter. I am not sure how reliable the mail system is because I have not received anything through it yet, but we may try with a small amount of items first. Health and school items we have in the Ukraine or Hungary, and we can buy them here. They may be more expensive, but if you send things from the U.S. you will need to pay for shipping and a border custom declaration, which is not easy. Women come and ask for help to buy medications for their sick children or for a bus fee to take a child to the hospital, so if there is a donation toward that it will be of great help. To send donations to this ministry, please use the Extra Commitment Opportunity (ECO) information at the bottom of this letter.
I thank God so much for the way he is reviving and empowering the members of the PC(USA) at large and the individual congregations like yours to experience the victorious joy of sharing the good news with poor unreached people near and far. Yes, I rejoice with the apostle Paul and say, "….we are more than conquerors through him who loved us all, Roma people and non-Roma" (from Romans 8:37).
Again, thank you so much for your prayers and support. May God bless you through this Lenten time and reward you as you respond to his love in obedience to serve him with me among the Roma people.
In Christ the risen Lord,
Nadia
Mailing address:
The Reformed Church in Carpathian-Ukraine
The Bishop Office
Beregszasz 90202
Munkacsi St. 83
Att: Nadia Ayoub
The 2012 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 284
Write to Nadia Ayoub
Give to Nadia Ayoub's sending and support
Give to the work of the Reformed Church of the Carpath-Ukraine (ECO E864466)
