I apologize for the long delay in getting a newsletter out, but the hard drive on my computer failed a couple of months ago and I have been busy exploring options for retrieval of data – all of which was way too expensive!  So I have reconstructed my mailing list from memory and other documents.  If you are reading this on the website and didn’t not get a copy, please forward me your e-mail so I can add you to the list.  I implore you!  If you don’t have a backup system for your computer data, get one now and back it up.  I lost four years of pictures and documents, not to mention my e-mail list.  Oh well…

Okay, a lot has happened so let me try to bring you up to date.  Two weeks from today Annabelle and I will leave for Ukraine for about a two week trip.  After arriving in Kiev on Monday the 26th, we will take a domestic (Ukrainian) flight to Simferopol.  We will be there only a day to grab our bags we left behind last year and meet with missionaries and a national Tatar pastor.  These people are targeting the Tatar people, who are the ethnic Muslims of the Crimean peninsula.  Our goal is to map out a strategy to assist them in this difficult ministry.  I have a good friend who is Arabic and has a ministry to Muslim people, so we will try to arrange some sort of a joint ministry function in the coming year.  Pray for this.  Tuesday afternoon we will load our 6 bags on the train in Simferopol and take the 20 or so hour ride to the other side of Ukraine to Zhmerinka.  If you remember, Pastor Valera holds a Bible Institute there every year from January to March.  I have taught there before and he has invited me back.  We have a great relationship with these dear people and the church there.  Here is an excerpt of a letter I received from Pastor Valera recently:

God laid on my heart to share with you with the experience I got during the evangelizing trip to Russia I’d been on for two weeks. I’ve been to the Southern part of Russia and it is Rostov region. The town I was in is called Zernograd. The population of the town is about 30 thousand people. There is only one Baptist church in the town. There are about 60 people who go to that church. Half of them are refugees from Georgia. During that time God showed me in what a sad state many Christians are now. “Being churchpeople and calling themselves Christians” they don’t know the Gospel of Jesus Christ at all. We’ve visited many families there, where God helped the believers to open their hearts and bow before Him admitting not having known him at all. Many of them told they’d got tired of living such a formal and superficial Christian life. We had about seven meetings altogether and at every of them someone would go forward and open their hearts to God. They repented of dead formalism, wishing to live a new life. I spoke about Christians dying for himself and that Christ didn’t save us in order to correct us but to live IN us. It seemed to awake many. Sometimes we would open the Scriptures and talk on these topics until late at night. My heart was breaking when I saw the LORD fill the church with His Holy Spirit. And believers didn’t want to go home and asked me to stay longer because the time passed very quickly. How remarkable it is to have the presence of the lord at church. There is no commercial needed. People just come themselves. Now being in Ukraine, I am rejoicing about the blessings of the Lord we have here. I haven’t been thankful enough to God recently for everything he’s done for many years in my life. Many people don’t have it. We’ve remained friends with the church in Russia. We’ll be keeping in touch with them and praying for us to know how to help the believers there.

Dear brother I am thankful to God for you! I appreciate all the lessons which God taught me through you! You’ve become more precious to my heart now! I am sorry I can’t send you any pictures from Russia, my camera broke. But I hope that my letter will encourage you to go on in following the Lord.  I was glad to hear from you.  I am glad that you will be able to visit us in Zhmerinka.  I think that the students will enjoy seeing you as well.  Most of our students this year will be new, and for that reason it is a little difficult to say what we will be teaching.  As I see it, what really helps people grow a relationship with God, is a good atmosphere and helping the students to obey, humble themselves, and discipline.  I know that you have much experience listening to God and doing what He would like.  I would like you to prepare some lessons from your life, and second, from the life of Jesus Christ, because some of the students may be unsaved.  It would good to get them acquainted with the Savior.
We are ready to work this school year.  We are feeling bold, and though we have several troubles, God is helping me to lay it all on Him.  We are waiting to see what the Lord will do.

As you can read, this man has a heart for God and the mission of God.  He is exactly the type of pastor we asked God to allow us to work with – a national with a heart for reaching nationals.  Pastor Valera is an ethnic Romanian, who did ministry work in Moldova, married and Russian wife, and now has a church/ministry in Ukraine.
Annabelle and I will be there a week.  Along with teaching in the Institute, Pastor Valera and I will be talking about some ministry events in the upcoming year.  The church in London would like to do a missions trip this year to Ukraine and we will work out the details of this event.  Pray for this.

While we are in the States for the next year or so on this extended Furlough, we will be asking God to allow us opportunity to go back into the former Soviet Union and minister to the needs of  believers, pastors, missionaries, and to continue with evangelism and discipleship.  Perhaps this is something you would like to participate in?  Pray about it and lets do it.  We put this mission statement on our first prayer card:  “Our vision is to evangelize and disciple Russian speaking peoples;  to scripturally equip them to reach their own countrymen.”  That remains our vision.  Please continue to pray for us as we seek God’s divine appointments.

Finally, our financial support is now being handled by Central Missionary Clearinghouse.  You can look them up on the web at http://cmc.missions.net/ for any information about them.  Their mailing address is PO Box 219228, Houston, TX 77218-9228

We anxiously look forward to what God has for us in 2009!  May God richly bless you this year, too!

Pressing toward the mark,

The Nebel Family
Missionaries to Russian Speaking People

If you haven’t read my blog, then let me tell you about our trip to London. We received five year multi-entry visas for Ukraine! When we got to London we went to the Ukrainian embassy and submitted our paperwork applications for five year visas. The man behind the window just looked at it and said, “impossible”. I asked what he meant and he said it was impossible to get a visa for more than one year at a time.
So when we went back a few days later to pick up our passports, I immediately thumbed through the pages to the new visa stamp, and saw it was until 2013 – 5 years! We thank God for this.

A couple of events unfolded immediately after our arrival in Simferopol last Tuesday. First, we received an e-mail from Dolly. She told us that she will be returning to Simferopol the first of May (May 4th) with her children. There will be eight in their party and there is simply not enough room for all of us in the house. She was very kind and gracious in her words. Since we arrived in Simferopol, we have diligently explored every available contact and opportunity to find housing – without success to date. This has been frustrating and hard to understand. The Kings have been very kind to offer and let us live in their home and even use their car until we found our own housing and bought our own car.

The second thing that occurred was the e-mail Anita received from her mother concerning her father’s (Lupe’s) health. Through a series of events, hospital visits, and tests, it has been determined that Lupe (Lupe is short for Guadelupe) has 100% blockage in one artery and 50% in two others and will require triple bypass surgery next week. They need to wait a week in order for the blood thinners the doctors had given him to leave his system, which is why the surgery has been postponed until next week.

In lieu of these circumstances, I have been in communication with our pastoral leadership at KCBT. We have concurred that it would be best at this time to take a short break from the field in order for two things to
occur: 1) Anita and I can be with her family during this life threatening surgery, and 2) we can take some time to sit down and evaluate the recent events of the ministry here, such as the passing of Al King. KCBT has even helped us by paying for half of the cost of our airfare. We are already ticketed and will arrive in KC late Tuesday night.

This is an especially difficult time for Dolly and her children. They will all be back in Simferopol next week in the place they all knew as home for many years – but Dolly will be without her husband and the children will be here without their daddy for the first time. Pray for them. They plan to have a memorial service a week from tomorrow. They will all be here for 10 days.

Please pray for us as we seek to use this time to re-define our future and roles of ministry in Ukraine. We need God’s clear direction. We thank God for the wisdom and experience of our pastoral leadership God has put over us. And we thank God for all of you who have been so faithful to pray for and support this ministry. We will be in the US for a little over two months and have return tickets to Simferopol for the 9th of July. I look forward to the opportunity to see many of you face to face soon. Please pray for us as we travel, too.

Pressing toward the mark,

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

Al was in the US when he passed. Below is what Dolly had written in an e-mail. You can click the link for funeral information.

link
Last Wednesday Al had a seizure that rendered him bedridden. He was able to speak for two days after that, was able to communicate the third day, but not the fourth. Sunday night, the Lord took Al home to be with him.
We miss him, but are happy for him. He got the ultimate healing and where he longed to be!

Please continue to bathe the family in your prayers.

Pressing toward the mark,

The Nebel Family

Just wanted to send you a note to let you know that Al King is with the Lord now. Please pray for the comfort of his family and friends.

Pressing toward the mark,

The Nebel Family

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

Praise God for your faithfulness to pray for us these past two months. We are definitely on the front lines and the battle rages all around us with its destructive force. Our flesh wants to quit but the Spirit enables us to continue. Keep the prayers coming!

Praise God for all of you who were so diligent to pray for our travels.We could really sense it the whole way. We got on the plane early Tuesday morning in Kansas City. After around 24 hours of travelling from Kansas City to Atlanta to New York to Moscow to Simferopol, we arrived safely with all of our luggage – a miracle! And people were at the airport to pick us up. So we have managed to unpack and get settled a bit, go to the store, and start working on some logistics. Today I worked on a couple of toilets in the church and cleaned up outside a bit. I know what your thinking and you are right – missions work is so glamorous!Well, we have many things to attend to and accomplish in the next few weeks and months and we won’t be able to without the power of God on our lives through your prayers. Please continue!Pressing toward the mark in Crimea,The Nebel FamilyMissionaries to Russian Speaking PeoplePS I promise to start keeping updates on my blog – you bloggers check me out and keep me motivated! 

Only a few days left until we get on the plane. We leave KC early Tuesday morning – a day later than planned. It seems that Aeroflot decided to move our flight from Moscow to Simferopol back a day, so we made changes to adapt. That seems to be a pattern for our lives! We are almost finished packing and have many last minute items to attend to, as you can imagine. Please pray for us fervently and specifically over the next few days and weeks for the following:

I hope you have had the chance to visit our new web site (www.teamnebel.org). It still needs a little tweaking but it is coming along. We all have blogs and you can even post comments. There is also a link of particular interest to the ladies (and men, too). My wife has spent countless hours over the past few years writing a Bible study titled “Visualizing You Full Potential”. We have joked with her about entire forests of trees being cleared to supply her with the paper she used to write and re-write her notes and rough drafts. But it has been a labor of love and she is excited to have it in completed form. She has posted it on our website for anyone to view or download. Just go to the site, click on ‘Anita’s blog’, then click on the title on the right hand side of the screen. I hope you are blessed by this – glory to God! “Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judaea (Crimea); and that my service which I have for Jerusalem (Simferopol) may be accepted of the saints;”Romans 15:30-31