Tea, Coffee and the Gospel

Anyone who has visited Ukraine knows how important "tea time" is to the local culture. Actually tea time can be anytime, from morning to night and it has sort of become a psuedonym for fellowship. If you need to talk with someone, you have them over "for tea".Ifthere's nothing to do, you have tea.  Of course "tea" encompassses more than just a choice of ceylon or orange pekoe. When you have tea, it means cookies, pastries, jams, and lite sandwhiches. Tea time is an important part of our small groups, somehow around the cups of steaming liquid people loosen up. If you want to have good long conversation with someone, serve the tea extra hot, so that you will have plenty of time to talk while your tea is cooling off.

In September our church opened up a new ministry similiar to a Mother's Day Out program. The ministry  is held twice a week from 9 am -12 am.  Several families in our community, who are not involved in church, have enrolled their children in this program. But instead of the mother's dropping their kids off and rushing on to run errands, the majority of mothers stay around, peeking  into classroom windows  to make sure their babies aren't crying or causing too much trouble.

About a month ago, the director of this ministry approached me about beginning a "tea ministry" with these mothers. She asked if I could serve tea and sort of get to know the ladies that hang around. I was more than delighted, after all who wouldn't love the responsibility of sitting around sampling rasberries jellies and cream puffs. But the first attempts where harder than I expected. The first morning,  the mother's were timid about coming into the classroom and sitting down for tea. I knew there was only one solution: home baked goodies. I started brining my best and most "unusual" recipes (banana bread is an exoctic dish here). Of course the ladies wanted the reciepes and finally contact was made.

The woman are finally starting to open up, and relationships are being made. In our work here in Ukraine, this is what Andrey and I call  a first step ministry.  It's just getting aquainted with the people, making contact with them and for the most part we don't discuss spiritual topic. Right now most of our conversations are pretty superfical. I pray that eventually they will begin attending our evangelical events like our tri monthly women's meeting, family nights, holiday events, that's step two, and step three is to get them involved in a small group.

So as you prepare for bed on Thursday night, say a pray for this first step ministry, I will probably already be up (if your in the States your Thursday night is my Friday morning) making something like poppy seed muffins or chocolate chip cookies.