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
