American Missionary Fellowship

Building Trust: Ukrainian Church Makes a Connection with Forward Bible Camp

Vadym is a Ukrainian youth pastor with a huge job.  He ministers at a church in California where the culture inside doesn’t match that of the outside world.  He willingly supports the expectations of Ukrainian parents and grandparents and at the same time strives to help the youth to fit into their new world.  The older generation believes that the American culture will corrupt their children, and the young people aren’t always successful at resisting the draw of sin. 

To make his job more difficult, the church is alone in a city of people and a host of other churches.  Cooperation with other Christians and Christian organizations is very limited.  There is a definite lack of trust.  It makes perfect sense when we consider the persecution and corruption the church members endured for generations back in the Ukraine.  They’ve learned with their lives that their trust is only to be given after the test of time.  This caution has made Vadym feel alone with his overwhelming ministry.

But God had a plan to help His church, and it involved Mitch McEfee, an AMF missionary. 

Mitch directs Forward Bible Camp for AMF.  Through the work of David Andrusiak, a Ukrainian missionary to Russia who was home on furlough, Vadym was introduced to Mitch.  Vadym wanted to use Christian camping’s powerful influence to reach his youth.  The challenge was to get the elders of his church to agree and to be able to afford the camp.  As usual, God was working behind the scenes and on several fronts to accomplish this humanly impossible task.

The trust that was usually so hard to earn was almost instantly shared.  How it happened was nothing less than a miracle.  Vadym needed a camp to help in his ministry to youth, and Mitch was in the midst of the construction of new bathrooms.  The Ukrainian people, who are largely in construction, were out of work.  The camp had very little money and even less experience in laying concrete block.  A deal was made for the Ukrainians to build the block walls of the bathrooms in exchange for a large discount to use the camp.  It sounds like a typical trade, but because the Ukrainians were allowed to help the camp, the elders agreed to let the youth to come, and the trade helped trust to grow. 

With this verbal agreement in place and before any work had been done on the bathrooms, Vadym invited Mitch to share from God’s Word at their youth coffeehouse ministry.  It was a great opportunity to be on their turf and begin to see how Christ relates to the Ukrainian culture.  It was also a tool to strengthen the trust between the Ukrainians and AMF.  When Mitch showed up at the church, Vadym looked surprised and said, “You’re here!”  Mitch’s desire to help the Ukrainians was obvious.   

It took a few weeks, but Vadym and the Ukrainian men showed up to complete the concrete block on one of the new bathrooms.  This time, Mitch approached Vadym and said, “You’re here!” It was a wonderful moment when Vadym answered back, “Of course.”  The builders did a great job, and Mitch again enjoyed sitting and talking to them over lunch. The Ukrainians and Americans were always learning, gaining respect for each other, seeing that we are both Christians, and of course, building trust.

Later that summer when the Ukrainians came to have camp, it was an amazing and beautiful thing to see Ukrainians and Americans working together for the cause of Christ and enjoying a mutual trust that only God could have created.