Full Submersion : Conferences in Ukraine

Yesterday I wrote about dreaming big. Today I recieved this letter from a friend of mine who lives in Ukraine. I'm glad that he wasn't afraid to dream big. This will let you know a little about the big things God is doing through his ministry.


Dear Friends,

This is a quote from a text message that I received from a youth pastor after our conference in Kiev. Let me continue his message – “This was the greatest conference in my life. It was arranged particularly for me”.

God has incredibly blessed our conference in Kiev last Saturday.

What a blessing it was to see almost 1,000 teenagers worshipping together in one Spirit despite the dozens of denominations they came from!

What a joy it was to watch their faces during our main drama as they were glued to the stage laughing and crying as the story progressed!

What a miracle it was when all the teenagers broke into small groups right there and conducted manuscript Bible study with Lena guiding them from the stage! We had 150 small groups in the auditorium!!

What an honor it was to present God’s Word to this generation in the straight way without “making it sound better”. And this is how we want this generation to be remembered – the Bible in hands, the Words in the hearts.

Our goal was not to challenge the teenagers to make another “n” decision. Some of them did make the decisions to study the Bible in the groups, read the whole Bible in a year or memorize a verse a day. Our goal was to mark their hearts with one truth – that there is the envelope with the personal letter from their Father. It will always be there for them and they will find a lot in it if they open it.

God was glorified with all the compliments we received for the conference. It was the best event we’ve ever done and to Him be all the glory. We can only dream what He will do in the churches through the teenagers who visited our conference. Our staff is very encouraged as well. This conference truly impacted us. Even though it was really cold in the auditorium the excitement of the conference warmed us all the time.

Tomorrow morning we are leaving in three vans for Donetsk to conduct our second conference there. It’s thrilling moment in the history of our ministry to do an event of such scale outside Kiev. There are many unknowns and yet there is a lot of peace because it’s not about us – it’s all about Him, for Him and from Him. Pray for us as we will minister to over 500 teenagers in the Eastern Ukraine this coming weekend.

Special blessings:

Awesome theme
Great team
Kevin Carroll -š a member of our Board of directors who came to be with us. I don’t know what we would do without his help 24 hours a day
Supporters who donated us over $3,000 for the conference.
A ministry that is renting out their vans to us at a lower cost
Dozens of people whom God is bringing from nowhere to help us do the conferences.
Youth pastors from Lviv (Western Ukraine) who came to check us out. We are planning on doing this conference in the fall in Lviv.


Special prayer request:

Pray that the students in Donetsk would be touched by God’s Word
Pray for the safety of 28 people on the road tomorrow and Saturday night
Pray for finances. We still need to raise almost $2,000. We added one more day in Donetsk to make sure we have enough time for set up.

In His Grace,

Oleg Vasilevsky

“Full Submersion” (Hebrews 4:12)