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

Thankful for God's Provision

   It's that time of the year again...the first snow is still sitting on the grass, the people are wearing coats again, and all of the Americans are regretting how much they ate at Thanksgiving dinner. We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with dear friends and a house full of laughter. It really was such a joyous occasions and I am very thankful for the people that came and the part that they have in my life.

   

   I can't complain, my place on the team in our church in Lviv is amazing! I love leading the youth group, playing on the worship team, working the coffee bar, and serving in whatever ways that I can. Because of my place in the youth group it has been so awesome to be able to speak into the lives of these kids and watch as they grow and mature. I am really proud of the kids in the youth group and the ways that they serve in our church.

   But times change. Right now is a large time of change in my life. In fact, today is my last day to hang out with my best friend Evan. Tomorrow morning Evan will be flying back to America to become a police officer, and he is the perfect man for the job! I also have other friends in the church that are moving and even my sister has moved out now. I have been observing the changes that have been going on and praying about what will be next.

   I believe that God wants me to accept these changes and realize that this is a time of change in my life. One of those changes that will be taking place is that I will be moving to Hungary for Bible college! It is my desire to be able to go Bible college this spring, as I have already done one semester online. Unfortunately, moving over to Hungary for Bible college costs more than studying here from Ukraine does. If I don't go to the college this spring I will remain in Ukraine until next fall. If that is what needs to happen of course that is okay, I will continue to serve here. But I would really prefer not to spend my whole first year of college off campus.

   

   This is where you guys come in. If I can get enough support then I might be able to make it to Hungary for college in a couple of months. If you have a desire and would be interested in supporting me for college, please click here. Any small amount of support that you can contribute will be a huge blessing to me and I thank you ahead of time for your support. Almost all of my life I have lived as a missionary and we have lived off of support from people like you. You guys are a huge blessing and I thank you very much for the part you have played in our lives in letting God use you to help us.

   I would also like to ask for your prayers as I will be having a wisdom tooth cut out on Tuesday. It should be a pretty simple operation, just a little bit of cutting and then it will be done. Praise God, we have a great dentist here that I know and trust. I will have the operation on Tuesday, but for now I am taking antibiotics to get rid of some inflammation in my gums so that they can easily get the tooth out. Thank you again for all of your prayers, they are very much appreciated.

   Well, that is all from me for today. Thank you again for your prayers, and please pray for my mom who will be flying back to Ukraine next week! We've missed her very much and are very happy to be having her home soon! So, until next week...Happy Holidays!

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt

Another Week in the Life of a Missionary

   It seems just yesterday that baby Norah was born and my parents went to America to see the new baby. Now she is 9 weeks old and so precious! But the time came for them to fly back to Ukraine and the time went by so quickly for them; so quickly, in fact, that my mom decided to stay in America a little while longer. This was a great decision and we are all glad that she will be able to stay and spend some more time with the family.

   So my dad flew back to Ukraine and he got into Kyiv on Thursday, and then Friday afternoon he drove to Lviv and got home without any complications. Even though he was fighting jet-lag he taught at our Saturday night Bible study and he will be teaching tomorrow for our church service, so please be praying for him, that he would be strengthened as jet-lag can be a pretty nasty thing.

   A couple of months ago our sound board broke and we weren't sure how bad the damage was. However, we are so blessed because we took it to Kyiv to get it fixed and now we are up-and-running again. It is so convenient to have everything working exactly as it should again and to have our pastor, my dad, back up on stage preaching the Word of God. We truly missed him and I am happy to give up teaching Saturday nights for my dad to get back up there teaching.

   Another thing that happened this week is that we finished the book of James with our youth group! Yeah, we had a great time going through James and it was a huge blessing for me. Now we are moving on to the next thing, and we are praying about which book to go through next. This is kind of a hard decision because I don't really know when I am moving to Hungary for Bible College. If I have the money then I will move there this spring, after the winter break. But if I don't have the money yet then I will continue to study online until next fall. You can see what my goals are by clicking here, and if you are interested in helping me financially to get to college, you can click here. Whatever support you can give is greatly appreciated, and as always, your prayers are appreciated as well.

  

God bless you all,

~ Alex R. Pratt

God is Good!

   Well, this week has been pretty uneventful, so this blog post will be pretty short. But I thought it would be nice to give you guys a little update about what is going on here in Lviv. Next week my parents will be back and so this week was my last week of covering a Bible study for my dad, and I really enjoyed going through the book of Philippians with everyone. That book is such a blessing to me and even as I was teaching from it God was using it to speak to me and as I came home tonight I actually felt a real sense of peace about some things that I have been worrying about lately. God really blessed me tonight!

   Another awesome blessing is to have my buddy Evan back from the States. He had been gone for three months, but he has been back now for a little over a month and we are all happy that he is back. One of the great things about having Evan around is that he is my poitner in crime, if you can excuse my cheesy jokes. We have been spinning poi together for quite some time now and after you get used to spinning with a partner, things just aren't the same solo. We actually recently made a short video of us just playing around with poi, so if you don't know what poi are, just click here to see our new video! You can also see our older videos by clicking here and here! This is something that I enjoy doing very much and it is a blessing to have Evan around to spin with me!

   Now, teaching at Koinonia Kafe, our Saturday night Bible study, was very interesting this week. I had a few slides to show and I wanted to play a couple of videos for the people, but 5 minutes into the sermon and the power goes out. Of course the temptation in that situation is always to panic, especially when you are the one leading it. But I remembered one night when the power went out at our English club, that my dad just stood up there and talked for about an hour, and he finished the night well. So, we lit more candles and we continued to study the book of Philippians. I think it is just so great to see that even without our sound board, or even electricity, we can still continue on and talk about Jesus freely. And in those times when we can't see because of the darkness around us, we can always look to Jesus who is our light!

God bless you all,

~Alex R. Pratt

Harkiv, Lviv, and the Rest of the World!

   Wow! I can't believe I haven't gotten a blog post up in two weeks! I am so sorry guys, I don't plan on missing any more Saturday night blog posts. The good news is that I didn't abandon you guys. These two weeks that I've been absent I have been very busy, and it has been a great kind of busy. I can't wait to tell you about all that we have done these last two weeks.

   

   Harkiv! I had the opportunity to go with a very small team from our church to the Calvary Chapel in Harkiv, Ukraine, where we stayed and served for a few days. The first night that we were there we had the privilege to lead the people in worship as we performed a concert for them. It was really a sweet time of worship, as there weren't very many people and most of the people there were believers. So we gathered and we worshiped. The night was a huge success and praise be to God, a young man gave his life to Christ that night! God is good!

 Almost all of my life I have lived in Ukraine, and just about every year that we were in Ukraine we would host a Bible College group that would come to serve in Ukraine. Even though I have lived most of my life as a missionary, I've never really had many short term mission trips like the Bible Colleges would have. So it is funny for me to say this, having grown up as a missionary, but one of the things that I have been looking forward to the most about Bible College is the short term missions trips. I am sure that most of you are aware that I am currently studying at the Bible College in Hungary, but I am studying online, so I wasn't sure if I would really have any short terms mission trips this semester. So I was really blessed to have an opportunity to go to Harkiv for a few days with the team.

   

   The team for this trip consisted of me and two other people; my brother, Joshua Pratt, and our best friend, Evan Ledford, who plays bass with our band. We are a pretty tight group of friends which made it pretty easy to get along as a team. We came to serve the church in Harkiv in whatever way we could, and the Lord opened many doors for us.

   One of those doors that the Lord opened for us was physical labor! We had a great time of manly bonding as we helped our great friend, Nate Medlong, carry "stuff" down 6 flights of stairs. Now, when I say "stuff" what I mean to say is a super heavy, super old, soviet style couch that cannot be broken down into smaller pieces! We had to carry that, among other pieces of furniture, down 6 flights of stairs and into a storage basement; it was quite an adventure. But we all had a great time as it was quite comedic as we tried to get the couch down stairs and through small doorways.

   Another awesome opportunity that we had was to open the morning for a children's school. My brother got to sing a few songs of worship and then they asked me to teach from the Bible...in Ukrainian! I am pretty much fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, but I still use a translator because my Ukrainian is often more informal. So I was pretty nervous as this was my first time ever teaching the Bible in Ukrainian, but I did alright and it was really such a blessing to be able to share with the kids.

   

   Well, after a great few days the time came to head back to Lviv and to all of the opportunities that awaited us there. We got back and jumped right back into ministry with our church. While my parents are in America to see their new grand-baby, I've been teaching two Bible studies at our church; one Bible study is our youth group and the other one is our Saturday night Bible study called Koinonia Kafe. At times it has been difficult, keeping up with classes while preparing to Bible studies each week, but I have absolutely no regrets and I treasure every moment that I have to teach.

   We also have had several opportunities to do concerts in Lviv as well, which has been a huge blessing! Just last week we played at a cafe called Medelin and we had a pretty good turnout. Most importantly, on a Friday night when most people like to party and get drunk, the people at this concert heard about Jesus and the great love that He has for us!

   If you guys would, please pray for our photographer. He comes to our concerts and takes pictures and has even done several awesome photo-sessions for us. He is a really great guy, but he needs Jesus. So please pray as he spends time with us that he would see Jesus in us and that we could be a witness to him.

   

   It is truly such a blessing to be here and to serve in the many ways that God has provided for me to. It is crazy to think that soon I will leave this place to study in Hungary. After I finish studying in Hungary who knows where I will go?! There are so many things that the Lord could do, and I can't wait to find out what they are! But for now, I am content to be serving exactly where I am, in the midst of the Ukrainian people that I have grown to call my brothers and sisters. How great it is to be in the place where God has called you to be!

God bless you all

~Alex R. Pratt