teamnebel.org

Dear Co-laborers and Fellowservants,

Spring takes a little bit longer to get here than in the midwest – but it is on the way. I remember taking pictures of our first day of Spring cookout in Belarus in 2006 – with a couple of feet of snow on the ground!
We are quite a bit farther south now, but our latitude is about the same as just north of Minneapolis. In the last day or so, the daffodils in the yard are beginning to bloom and the flowering trees are in bloom.
Spring seems to evoke a sense of newness of life in all of us. It is a welcome time for us.

A couple of days ago we received news of Brother Al King’s latest doctor visit and prognosis. I have cut and pasted a portion of his newsletter:

Yesterday, we met with the doctor to discuss the results of my CT scan from last week. The tumor is clearly growing and now measures about 1 inch by 1 ? inches. Dr Warnick explained that removal of part of my skull (though very unsightly) has probably extended my life by a few months because there is much less pressure on the brain. When asked for a prognosis, he gave me three to six months. The same as he gave me in
mid-December.

Please continue to pray for Brother Al, for his healing, encouragement, and for the spiritual and emotional health of him and his wife and family during the next few months.

Tomorrow we take the train to Kiev to leave for London on Thursday. We will be travelling to London for the purpose of obtaining our visas. I will try to explain this in a few words so you can understand. An American citizen can enter Ukraine and stay there for 90 days without a visa. In order to stay longer or in a more permanent sense, you must obtain a visa. To get a visa, you must have a letter of invitation from an official organization within Ukraine. And you cannot obtain a visa while you are in the country – it must be done outside the country. So our 90 days will be up on the 16th of April. We have already obtained our letter of invitation, downloaded and filled out our visa applications, gotten our required passport photos, and now must simply travel to London, go to the Ukrainian Embassy there, submit our paperwork, passports, and money, then after three days of processing retrieve our passports with visas. While we are in London we will be staying with the pastor of Monnow Road Baptist Church, where friends and missionaries Steve and Ally Baker just spent the last ten years.
(http://www.mrbc.co.uk/) Steve recently ordained Pastor Mark Jackson and turned the ministry over to this national pastor. We met Mark and Sara when we were in London for a MRBC missions conference back in 2005. We are looking forward to being back there and fellowshipping with our friends. We will also be participating in a children’s holiday Bible club event (kind of like a vbs for spring break). It should be fun. We will be back in Simferopol the 22nd of April.

We still need you to continue praying for us concerning the ministry in Simferopol. We have many unanswered questions. We still do not have a home. Recently in my Bible reading I went through the passages of Exodus and Leviticus where God gives all of the specifications of the tabernacle, different sacrifices, and the law. I hate to admit this, but at times it was pretty boring reading. But then it occured to me, how specific and detailed God is in His doings. No detail is left out – from the type of wood, the type of animal skin, what sacrifice must be made for what, etc. Everything had it’s purpose and instruction, and obedience was demanded, not decided upon. We believe God has a purpose for our being in Simferopol. An exact purpose. While that might not be clear to us yet, it does not negate the perfect way of our Lord. We must be patient and wait on Him. We must be obedient. Every morning we read Proverbs together and pray. The past few days we have been reading the 119th Psalm. What a medicine this is to our soul! We thank and praise God for His Word and His faithfulness!

Like all missionaries, we have needs that involve money. The contents of most missionary letters I read have a lot to say about financial needs.
I fight this tendancy to “raise funds”, choosing rather to believe it is God who supplies our needs rather than trusting in my ’salesmanship’
ability. I don’t mean to sound pious, critical, or judgmental, either.
The Apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sufficiently dealt with this issue in the 8th and 9th chapters of 2 Corinthians and the 4th chapter of Philippians. We ask you to pray for us to buy the right vehicle, for God to supply the money. We can buy a small four door or two door car sufficient for the four of us to get around in. But a van or larger vehicle is much more suitable for ministry – and more expensive. Pray for the Lord to supply both the vehicle and the money. We need to find a house to live in – preferably to buy. We think renting is not a good method of stewardship. But of course, buying takes more money, and we need the Lord to supply this need also. Please pray for the house God wants us to have and the money to pay for it. This is an issue that must be resolved soon. We hope to resolve this once we return from London. This unexpected and unplanned trip to London, after airfare, passport renewal costs, letter of invitation costs, visa costs, train travel, and then registration in Ukraine and health insurance will be just under $5000.

I want to share a portion of our church’s newsletter Pastor Jeff Adams sends out. Memorial Day weekend our church will celebrate the 65th year of its existence, and Jeff wrote of our humble beginnings:

Beginning in a series of tent revival meetings and in the Masonic Temple on Linwood Boulevard, the church grew, and trusted God to buy a garage at 39th and Brooklyn. In the 1950’s the congregation built its own building on Swope Parkway. God used a tax write off for an oil millionaire in the early 1970’s to literally give us our initial property here. That generation is all but gone. We have benefited, though, from their labor of love, sacrificial giving and their time on their knees scrubbing oil off a garage floor to hold services each Sunday.

The only explanation for these type of circumstances is GOD! God provides our needs through impossible and miraculous means! We are only required to be obedient and faithful and hold on for the ride. By the way, I began attending KCBT in June of 1978, and this is the first time I heard this story.

I have much more to write about our plans and goals, but I will probably put them on my blog. This letter is already long enough! Keep up with our lives by checking all of our blogs on the website. May God bless you richly for your faithfulness to pray for us and this ministry!

Pressing toward the mark,

The Nebel Family
Missionaries to Russian Speaking People
www.teamnebel.org