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- Dima’s New Building (Donetsk, Ukraine)
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- Dima in front of his new building
Today we spent the morning in Slavynsk at the Antioch training. We left at about noon to travel 3 hours away to Donetsk. Dima moved to Ukraine and began a church 5 years ago. Today he showed us the building he plans to start renting next week. He also showed us the current building he’s in. Dima was a part of Russian gangs and did drugs for many years. God got ahold of his heart and now he’s a pastor. He plans to use the new building as a church as well as part of it for a drug rehab center which will trun drug addicts into pastors. Dima was told he and his wife would never have children and God performed a miracle and gave them a child.
Dima has his primary church body of about 150 people. He then has house churches. Many people do not have transportation or money and will never be able to be a part of a large congregation if they have to travel to get there. He began with 3 house churches. Those 3 birthed 10 more. Those 10 have each birthed 2 or 3 more house churches. He plans for the process to continue into the thousands in the next 5 years. While only 150 attend his Sunday morning services, over 300 people are in house churches.
There seems to be alot of poverty in Donetsk. The bathrooms we had to use were a hole in the ground. They smelled awful.
We’re now on the 12 hour train ride back to Kiev. Someone keeps knocking and trying to open our door. this has been going on for about an hour. Weird.
