Dear brothers and sisters in Christ and churches, True, the time we are living in is the most unusual in the world's history. As far as I know, there has never been a pandemic of this scale. We all are learning to live in a different mode with the new rules. All courses in our Bible Institute are online now. It was easy to make it happen in Ukraine.
We have well-developed webs of Internet connection in the cities, and most providers charge reasonably. So we established teleconferencing with all of our students, and this way our first-year students had Jeremiah and Lamentations (taught by Vitaly Rodichev), Gospel by Luke (Viktor Semikoz) and Ezekiel (Dennis Sopelnik) and second-year students had 1 and 2 Corinthians (Dennis Sopelnik) and Revelations (Andrew Zhuravlev). For this kind of teaching, we had to change the textual part of the course. Some Instructors assigned additional reading, some had to implement timed testing. We are hoping that next year we can return to normal way of teaching while being able to utilize the newly acquired methods of teaching.
The graduation is postponed to the beginning of September. This year we have 7 graduates. Our country doesn't allow travels between the cities yet and the government doesn't announce any definite plans of reopening the railroads and bus charters. So we conduct a lot of classes via online channels such as YouTube or Facebook. The same applies to the Sunday services which we are forced to stream online. Usually, a few men from the congregation meet in the church building and divide the responsibilities during the online worship service and then just conduct and stream it. We have difficulties recruiting students for the next school year. Usually, I travel a lot, visit with a lit of congregations, make our Bible Institute presentation. But now I record a video presentation, place a call to the local preachers, and then call potential students. However, so many are not certain about tomorrow. So I ask for your prayer for the next year recruitment.
And I'd like to ask your prayers for our graduate Taras Danilenko. He was diagnosed with thrombosis in the leg's vein. He is hospitalized and is waiting for the planned surgery. He is ok but his leg is swollen and he has back pain. May God keep you and guard you! All students and Instructors send their greetings.
Your brother in Christ,
Dennis Sopelnik.