What a Semester!

   Wow, where do I even begin to share about this semester?! I had always planned to be in Hungary at this point in my life, and I have to admit; it was quite a shock to me when the Lord ended up bringing me to America. But I am so glad that He did! Truly did the Lord speak in Isaiah 55:8-9 when He said, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,' says the Lord. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'" This is not what I had planned for myself, but as always God had a better plan for me.

   As most you well know, I had a great summer working at Horizon's Camp Indy, and the Lord really taught me through that time. Truly, ever since I arrived in America He has been teaching to be slow to speak and quick to listen. After camp ended I had a few weeks off, and then before I even knew it I was meeting all of my classmates for the first time. It is so strange to think back on that time when I was first meeting these people that I would literally be laughing and crying with. I can't express in words how dear some of these students have become to me, as they are basically my family in Indianapolis at the moment.

   To begin this semester, we all packed up our sleeping bags and grabbed our swimsuits as we went to the lake house where we had our orientation. That was seriously such an amazing few days out there! We got to go tubing and knee-boarding, and we all became humbled as we failed at our attempts to get up on a wake-board. I was on the water so much that one night, as we were having our devotions, me and my friend Jody were convinced that the secure balcony that we were on was rocking back and forth like the water. I thought it was just me, but as I began to tell someone on the phone what I was experiencing Jody shot his head up and chimed in on how he felt the exact same thing! But really, it was such an incredible time and I am getting goosebumps just remembering my first few days that I would spend with those wonderful people.

   If any of you know me personally, you know that I am usually the class clown and the life of the party. Well, I hate to admit it, but at the beginning of this semester, I was Mr. Anti-Social. I wasn't trying to be, but I was not aware of how much I was neglecting people. I had grown accustomed to studying in my room and getting extra homework done, because I can be a bit of an over-achiever. Whether my motives were good or not, either way I had not clicked in the beginning as I eventually would with my fellow classmates. I enjoyed their friendships, but I wasn't investing in them.

   I thank God for the change that He brought into my life after the mid-terms. God broke me and showed me that sometimes, in the words of my friend Grace, "I can be an idiot sometimes." I say that in absolute love because I needed friends who could show me when I was being a loser, and that alone has really helped me to grow. After the mid-terms I began to draw closer to my friends and I drew closer to Him, and these last few months have truly been life-changing months for me. Just one semester here truly has influenced me more than my whole first year of online classes.

   While I've been studying I have been both blessed and challenged by the job that the Lord provided for me...working at Starbucks! I really enjoy working behind the coffee bar and I love smiling at customers as I take their orders even more. This specific job was something that I had prayed for and the Lord was very faithful. God is using me even in Starbucks to be a light to the people that I see on a daily basis.

   As fun as working at Starbucks is, it does have its challenges. My coworkers are kind people but they all need Jesus very much. Some of the people that I work with have absolutely no filter on their mouths and they say the most filthy things. I truly don't judge them for the things that they say, but rather my heart breaks for them because they are so lost. I have been seeking the Lord's guidance on how best to show His love to them, and so far the greatest influence that I have had on them has been my genuine heart and my passion for the things that I need to do. They see me working there and even when things are difficult for me, they can see that I have joy in the Lord. When my friends that work their hurt, they don't have anything that concrete to fall back on and they just look lost. But I believe that they are never too far for the Lord to touch them and so I ask for your prayers as I continue to minister to them and try to show Jesus in everything that I do.

   If the mid-terms were crazy, the finals were crazier! I generally like to be ahead on all of my homework so that I can go to sleep at a decent hour, but the term 'sleep' became a long lost friend who would not return during finals week. For the most part I got good grades in the mid-terms, except for in one class: Revelation. The Revelation mid-term was a very difficult exam in which only two students actually did well; everyone else had about an average of 30 points out of a possible 55, some had even lower than that. Needless to say I was quite upset to see my low grade on the mid-term and so I wanted to be as prepared as I possibly could for the finals!

   Did I mention yet how much I love my fellow students?! Because if I didn't, I'm about to again! I grew up home schooled, and I am so thankful for that; if I could go back and do it differently, I wouldn't even try. But it was so amazing as I got to study with my fellow students. I stayed up until about 2 A.M. every night with the three other people in the picture above as we studied for the finals. We quizzed each other on that test until we could recite the whole thing backwards! I still remember my friends Savannah and Tumnus watching something in Spanish as I asked Grace the same question for the hundredth time, and the look on her face mirrored my own; it was a look that said that if she heard any more questions her brain would probably implode! 

   We were all so exhausted but when it came to game day it payed off; when I sat down and looked at that test I knew every question on there. In fact, I only missed one question out of 87 and the one that I missed was one that I accidentally forgot to answer. But it was such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment! I went into my Revelation class feeling like I would never learn anything about it because it was too hard. After my mid-term I just wanted to curl up and die, I was so disappointed with myself. But after I took that final not only did I do well on the exam, but I had learned so much! And one of the greatest things is that I enjoyed doing it! I enjoyed staying up with my friends as we studied and I enjoyed a specific project that we had for Revelation. In fact, if you would like to view it, this is a video that I made for one of my final projects, and you can view it by clicking here! I want to take this moment to thank the people that were involved in this video and for all of the help...you got me a 100% on it!

   As I said in the beginning of this post, God really touched me and changed me in the last few months of this semester. God used my friend Carter to show me that I am not as patient as I should be. Carter, if you read this, thank you. God used my roommate Jimmy to show me that I need to step it up in my prayer life, and if you read this I want to thank you, Jimmy, for your constant example of a good and healthy prayer life. Thanks to you my prayer life has improved so much. The biggest change came after my friend Grace was bold with me and pointed out that a pastor needs to be a servant. I have a desire to be a pastor and she knew that and very boldly told me that she doesn't see me making many efforts to serve. God took the words, planted them in my heart, and gave me a stronger desire to serve. He showed me that I am not as perfect as I like to think that I am and that I have a long ways to go still, and once I was aware of that God was able to start working at my heart and He has been carving away at my flesh ever since. I am still not perfect, and I never will be; but now I am more willing to admit when I am being an idiot. I can't thank you enough for that, Grace! Thank you all for the part that you have played as instruments in the Lord's hand while He is shaping me in this life on earth. I thank the Lord everyday for these friends that He has put in my life and all of the other students. God has really ministered to me through almost every one of the students at the Bible College, but unfortunately I don't have time to write about every one of them in this post. So for now I will leave it at that and I will share more about these crazy people next time.

   To end this off I just want to give you a quick update about where I am and where I am going. Currently I am in Ukraine, visiting my family for Christmas and it has been so wonderful being back here. On January 9th I fly back to America where I will be continuing my studies at the Bible College in Indianapolis. My plan is to be working and studying again in Indy this next semester, and then I will go to Hungary to finish college and acquire my bachelor's degree. That is the quick form of my update and I will write more to you later. Thank you for reading this and have a Merry Christmas!!!

 -My roommates!

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt

Surfing U.S.A.

   Hello everyone, I'm back! My sincerest apologies about the lateness of this blog, but ever since I landed...well, ever since my feet left Ukrainian soil they haven't stopped moving. These last few months have been incredible and challenging in a wonderful combination that our Lord loves to throw at us. But generally speaking, my time back has been great and the Lord has done mighty things in the time that I've been back here.

   Very shortly after my return I started working at Camp Indy, which is a Christian day camp. This was my fourth summer working at Camp Indy, and it is such a privilege to have been able to serve under Wes Hoff, the camp director, for four years. Wes Hoff is one of my oldest friends and he even served in Ukraine with my family for six years. Wes is one of my biggest inspirations in life and he is a wonderful, godly man who loves Jesus and I couldn't be more proud of the way that he runs this camp!

   At camp, God opened so many wonderful opportunities for me and he really showed me that there isn't much that I won't do for children, even if that means mushing bananas into my beard! But I was really blessed and moved this summer by the fact that I could pray openly with these kids to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts. We live in a day and age in which Christianity is unpopular and Christians experience persecution all over the world, in many different forms. But to be able to freely tell these kids about my Jesus who loves me enough to die for me brings a tear to my eye even thinking about it.

   Another huge privilege has been being able to spend time with my sister and her family. As most of you probably know by now, I am a proud uncle to four children and I love them very much! But one of the difficult things about being a missionary is that you don't always get to see your family and loved ones as often as you'd like. But while I've been back I've been totally blessed by my sister, Nicole, and her family who have let me stay with them for a time as I settle back into the lifestyle in America. I'm happy to say that I have adjusted well to the culture here and I have been doing very well.

   God has been working in my heart and speaking a lot since I've been here. This is a very exciting time in my life and He has been showing me wonderful things! He has challenged me to be more faithful in my personal walk and to be a man of humility. My deepest prayer right now is that I would be a man in complete surrender to the Lord, following Him wherever He calls me to be. The closer I have drawn to Him, the more He has revealed to me. In Genesis 12, God called Abraham to leave his home and family and go to a land that He would show to Abraham. Abraham took a step of faith, not knowing exactly where the Lord wanted him to go, but trusting that God would guide him. Well, I left my home and family and I feel like the Lord has been guiding me and it has been wonderful to see His faithfulness. I am truly blessed by my relationship with my God.

   The next step in my life is starting my third semester of Bible College. I am very excited about this and I already love my roommate to death! I know I keep repeating myself, but I cannot over-emphasize how great our God is! I am so overwhelmed by the way that He has watched over me and made sure that I am not alone, even though I have left my family and my home. Where will I end up after Bible College?! Who knows?! God knows, and right now that is all that I need to know.

   I ask you all for your prayers, as I always have. I need support as you know, and if you feel like God would like you to support me then that would be a huge blessing! But most of all I ask right now for your prayers. There are big decisions to be made in my life right now and I want to follow the Lord's guidance in these things. Please pray that I would be open to the Lord's responses and willing to follow Him, wherever He calls me in life. Thank you!

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt

New Beginnings

   "To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven." ~Ecclesiastes 3:1 This is one of my life verses, and it is very important in my life right now. I am about to take some very big steps towards my future, and one of those steps is coming up in one week. I realize that it has been a long time since I have blogged, so I thought that it was past time that I write to let you guys know what is going on in my life right now. 

   First of all, I have a few weeks left and then I will be finished with my freshman year of Bible College. This first year of Bible College has been one of the best times of my life, even though I have had my fair share of trials in the midst of my studies. I want to thank you guys who have supported me and my dream to study at the Bible College. Without your support I would not be able to continue studying to achieve my ultimate goal, which is to one day become a pastor. If you have a desire to help me at all financially, you can do so here! Really, even the littlest amount that you guys send is a real blessing to me and you are supporting a missionary by doing so.

   The next thing that I have to announce is pretty big...I'm going back to America! In just one week I will be flying back to Indiana where I will study for one semester at Calvary Chapel Bible College Indianapolis! While I am back I will work at a camp called Camp Indy, I will work part-time at the church while I study at the college, and I will work on getting my own bank account and driver's license. I will continue studying with the Bible College as I gain credits to earn my bachelors degree in theology. After taking one semester in Indy I will then fly back to Ukraine just in time for Christmas, before moving to Hungary to complete the rest of my studies there.

   The truth is that I am very excited about moving to America, and at the same time I am very torn. I love Ukraine; I love everything about it! I love the language, I love the people, I LOVE the food, I love the music, I love the buildings, and I absolutely love my friends! The last few days I have been having a hard time as I have been noticing all of the things that I won't have in America that I have here.

 

   But then I remembered that this is not goodbye...this is "see you later!". Yes, my passport tells me that I am an American, but my passport can't tell me where my home is. Yes, of course my ultimate home is found in Heaven, but while I am on earth my home is a wonderful country called Ukraine. I was thinking about the men that tried to build the tower of Babel; they were trying to get as close as they could to Heaven. The truth is that those guys had it all wrong...if they wanted to get as close as they could to Heaven, all that they needed to do was come to Ukraine!

   I am sure that most of you have heard the expression, "You can take the fish out of the ocean, but you can't take the ocean out of the fish.". Even when I am in America, I will still have Ukraine. Praise God for the easy access that we have to the internet today, so that I can stay in touch with my friends in Ukraine very easily. I also believe that I will have many opportunities to pray with people for Ukraine and the situation that it is in right now. Even while I am America, my full support goes out to Ukraine!

   I want to thank you guys again for reading my blog and I want to give a huge thank you to those of you who have supported me throughout this first year. I want you guys to know that I am still studying and your support is still needed and appreciated. But I am so grateful for you guys and you have made the first years of the rest of my life possible, so thank you!

   I also continue to make poi videos and here is a new one if you want to watch it! I stayed out until about midnight with my friend Tanya, and then I came home and worked on editing this video until 4 in the morning. But I have put a lot of time into learning how to spin poi well and I have so much fun doing it. I hope to be able to use these to help with many evangelism outreaches and I have already been able spin poi at outreaches here in Ukraine. I am so happy to be able to do this and so happy that I can glorify God even in simple things like spinning poi.

   Well, that's it for now! The next time that you read this blog I should be in America! I know that since the beginning of this year I have not been extremely consistent with my blogging, but there has been a lot going on around here. In fact, you are probably looking at my pictures and saying to yourselves, "Wait a second, how long has it been since he had a blog post?! Look at his beard! Has it been that long since he updated his blog?!". However, I plan on doing much more blogging now, so stay tuned and there will be another blog post soon. And remember...airplane rides leave great stories to be told...

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt

Back to School!

   Wow! What can I say, it has been such an eventful holiday break that I don't know where to begin. To say that I have been busy would be an understatement! But it has been a very good busy. The holidays were a blessing as I got to celebrate the birth of our Savior with friends and family...in fact, with the whole family!

   As I have mentioned before, my biggest role in the church in Lviv, Ukraine, has been leading the youth group. It has been a wonderful experience for me and has really helped me to grow in a lot of ways. All of the kids in the youth group have wonderful hearts and I love each one of them. It is such a privilege to watch them grow into godly young men and women.

   

   There isn't much that I wouldn't do for the youth...in fact, I do have some news regarding this subject. As you all know I am currently studying at the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Hungary via correspondence. I am in a three year bachelor's program and I look forward to moving to Hungary to study. In fact, I was trying to go there this semester, but the Lord had something else in mind. The youth group here doesn't have anyone to take my place if I would leave right now so they would probably have to stop meeting for youth group, so I have decided to stay and study one more semester online while we continue searching for the next youth leader. So, I will continue my online courses for this semester and by Fall of 2014 I will be in Vajta, Hungary, which has been my dream since I was about twelve-years-old.

   So, shortly after deciding to stay here some pretty interesting things happened, one of which was getting locked in a bank! Now, I know that being locked in a bank in Ukraine sounds kind of sketchy, but it was actually quite funny and I really wasn't worried at all. You see, I had been hanging out with some of the youth after church and it was great, as usual. But after we were done visiting a park we parted ways, and I continued on with Terah Clifford, a Bible College student on her 30-day-outreach to Lviv. 

   We were on our way to a Bible study, but Terah needed to pull some money out at the ATM so I took her to a secure place to get her money. Everything worked fine until we tried to get out of the bank and realized that the bank had closed while we were still inside! Right next to the door we saw a big button that said "Emergency" on it, and we just looked at each other and asked, "Does this count as an emergency?!" So I called some people and had one of the Ukrainian girls from the church come to try to help us escape, but she couldn't open the door. So we just prayed that by pressing the emergency button there wouldn't be bars coming down from the ceiling to lock us in any more! We pressed the button and it was a simple release for the door, no problems at all. Again, that might sound like a scary situation, but it really was quite amusing.

   Shortly after this God blessed me in a wonderful way for being willing to stay another semester...He let me teach my first Sunday morning sermon! I have been teaching at youth group for quite a while now, and I have even had opportunities to teach at our Saturday night Bible study, Koinonia. However, I had never given a sermon on a Sunday morning and that is my dream. Part of my goal in going to Bible College is to one day be a Calvary Chapel pastor. So God really blessed me with that and you can even listen to it here if you want to!

   

   Another blessing this year was that God brought our whole family together for Christmas! To some people that might sound like something easy to do, but when you grow up into missionaries it isn't always easy. My brother lives in Finland with his wife and three children and my sister lives in America with her husband and baby, and my other sister just moved to Kyiv, so getting everyone together can be difficult at times! But with God all things are possible, and so with some prayer we got everyone here.

   It never ceases to amaze me how quickly these little ones grow up! One minute I am holding baby Emily, days after she was born, and now she is almost six-years-old! I still can't believe it. Time goes by so quickly, and watching kids grow up can give you a new appreciation to how you spend your time. After all, I am only going to be on this earth for one time around, I might as well make it a good one. I just can't imagine what Emily will look like by the time that my last nieces and nephews will be born!
   

   We had a great time while the family was here, with one exception...we all got sick! It didn't last too long, maybe 4-5 days, but we all got a really bad stomach bug and I felt miserable! This was the closest that I ever came to feeling like I did when I had swine flu, which was not fun considering I had a temperature of 104. But we all survived and we had quality time together, and that was the important thing.

   Then the hard part...saying goodbye. Someone once said that goodbye's get easier with time...well, I am convinced that the man who said that must have been a hermit who lived alone his entire life and never met anyone, because I have spent fourteen years in the mission field and saying goodbye never gets easier. Right before the family left I had to say goodbye to Terah, who I spent a lot of time with while she was here and I miss her already. After Terah left I then had to say goodbye to my family members one-by-one as they headed home. In fact, I just said goodbye to my sister Nicole and her family.

   So now here I am, starting my second semester of Bible college. I want to take advantage of this opportunity to thank everyone for their support! Because of you guys I can live out my dream! If it is your desire to support me financially you can do that here, and as always your prayers are very appreciated! Thank you again for a great year and I look forward to what the Lord will be doing in 2014! You will hear more from me soon!

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt