DISTINCT

Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”-Exodus 33:16 

Singing "My Redeemer Lives" in Russian in Calodisnaye

Moses after pleading for God's wrath to be calmed and his presence to come upon the people of Israel asks/states this powerful question. He knew that the presence of God that made the Israelites distinct amongst all people. This passage was the focus for my sermon this last Sunday at a church in Calodisnaye, which is a town in the area of Crimea. For there are people around the world that are doing great things for people in need and they are doing it all without showing the love of Christ, so how are my good deeds different than theirs? The Israelites asks to be like the other nations, they created a golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai to lead them out to the promise land, and they asked later in 1 Samuel 8:5 for a king to rule over them. They were wanting not to be different but to mold into living in a lifestyle like everyone else...but followers of Christ are called to be DISTINGUISHED! The presence of God in our lives has called us to be the lights in the world that are not hidden but standing out,  "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."-Matthew 5:16. Not only am I called to be a light but also I am called to be the salt of the earth. Salt as we all know is a very bold taste that adds flavor to many different things. Let us be distinct, let us fulfill what it says in 2 Corinthians 2 when it calls us to be the fragrance of God and the aroma of Christ. Let me carry the presence of God with me everywhere! Lets not live empty lives apart from the presence of our living all powerful God, I need him to make me DISTINCT.

Teaching Guitar at Orphanage 3

This has definitely been on my heart recently as I have been here in Ukraine. Our team is different than the people here in physical, social and cultural features but we still are all human beings. I needed to read and have that confirmation that if I follow God diligently, His presence will flow in and through me in everything that I do. No matter if I can speak the language or not, because if I carry the aroma of Christ, no words need to explain it. If these past weeks we have been doing a lot of work in the orphanages in Zaporozhye and also in Volnyansk. We had the great privilege of being asked to make an Easter presentation for both of these orphanages. In Volnyansnk we sang songs that Jesus has been risen from the dead and that he lives in our hearts, we played games, gave out candy and had a huge easter egg hunt over the whole property. The relationships that we have been building at the orphanage are very encouraging and our team is told that they are so excited for us to come every Saturday.

Another great ministry that our team has been doing is what we call Games Night. Every Thursday night at 7:00 we have people come over to our apartment and we hang out together. We have snacks and dessert and of course we play a variety of board and card games together. A lot of students that we teach from School 40 have been coming for the past few weeks and they say that they absolutely love it! Apart from playing games, we also have a short 5-10 minute testimony given by one of our team members and we talk about what God has been teaching us in the past week. This ministry builds friendships with the students and evidently leads to us inviting them to talk about God and to come to the New Hope Church on Sundays. Some names to pray for are Kristina, Karina, Ann, Marina.


Please Pray for a girl named Alona. We have been praying for the healing of her tailbone which has given her trouble for the last 2 years and she has already been feeling much better since we have started praying so pray that the LORD will bring healing and through it her father Olek will come to know Christ. Also for a guy named Vasiliy, I have been meeting with him every week and I have been inviting him to church, pray that he will see that God can be the orchestrator of his life. God is moving amongst the students that we are teaching at School 40 and pray that we may see a harvest of believers spring up from these kids. God is good and together let us continue to pray against spiritual darkness amongst these students and also the orphans in Ukraine that the light of Christ may shine through all things and that they may come to know Christ!
Many Blessings and thank you so much for your support!
-Mitch

Spreading Easter's TRUE Meaning

"If the church does not go out and make disciples, the culture sure will"

If we do not go out into this world and spread the gospel and tell others about Christ, the ways of our world will grab them and mold them into its warped and twisted views. As we are told in the Great Commission, in Matthew 28 from the mouth of the Son of God...make disciples & preach the GOSPEL to all nations

Playing Easter games and eating a traditional meal with my students

Our team had such an opportunity to go out and spread the good news of Christ and Easter (celebrated this coming Sunday in Ukraine) at the school in which we teach English. Our theme for the lesson was Easter traditions and what we believe. After hearing so much about the culture in Ukraine and the way that they live out this season, legalism binds the people to the church, not a relationship with the God who defeated death and not by faith. So to put it in the simplest terms, we each gave a full GOSPEL presentation in each one of our classes. In my classes, I went through the main points of the truth of Easter with a picture to explain each main point and a few verses from the Bible. I started with saying that I know that I am a sinner and I am not perfect, and because of His love, God sent Jesus to come and live in the flesh and He lived a perfect life.

Jesus paid a debt He didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay

I explained the word "debt" and told them that I deserved death for my sins, but Christ through his life, death and resurrection has saved me from this payment. Another picture I showed was stating the verse
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” Something that I stated with great importance was the fact that this is a belief of FAITH, we are saved not by good works of through baptism but through confessing our sins and declaring our love and allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The students and the teachers we very curious at what I had to say and the response was so great. We brought invitations for the Easter service being held at The New Hope Center this Sunday and all of the papers were taken! I am praying that God will bring some of the students and hopefully some of the teachers to come and see the truth and the faith that they can have in Jesus. One of the teachers spoke to me and said that she can see such passion inside of me and that I have been given the gift of teaching and of being a pastor. I was at lost for words, this was not a believer speaking to me but just a bystander to the powerful message of the love of God and she noticed and could see the Lord working through me...All the glory to God!

Earlier in the week I was blessed to speak in church in a village two hours out of Zaporozhye on Palm Sunday (Willow Sunday in Ukraine). It was such a loving congregation of about 20 adults and about another 15 kids that were so excited that a group from North America would come and share with them.

We also went to a town called Tokmak to visit the local orphanage. We put on a presentation of games/songs and a message about Jesus. The kids were so active and very welcoming to our team and they were excited to be able to play soccer with us and listen to our songs.

Please pray for a harvest amongst the non-believers coming to our Easter service this Sunday that we may see people come to know Jesus and that they will have faith in the living God! Evil will try to attack and deceive both our team and the non-believers into a lack of faith and pray with the authority that we have in Christ that this will not be so and that they will be bound and forced to the feet of Jesus for judgment. I am asking also personally that you will pray for me that I may have a peace of mind and that all my focus will be directed to Ukraine and not focusing on the things I will confront when I come home. 
 God is good, He is faithful and His love is beyond anything we could ever imagine...JESUS let us see the lost come back into your loving arms! Thank you for your prayers, many blessings from Ukraine.
-Mitch (aka Meesha) 

Seeking and Building Relationships

Last Sunday, our team had the great opportunity to go to a village called Nikolipolia and help run their local church service. David, Megan and Katie-Sue shared a little bit of what God is doing in their life, we sang two songs and I had the privilege to preach. The congregation consisted of fifteen 40-80 year old men and women and we had so much fun. We stayed for tea and pieces of bread lathered in mayo with a little piece of sausage on top. The LORD put on my heart to talk about his great power and how he is living and dwelling inside of us, and because of all of this we should not limit His power in the church and in our daily lives. We should all dream big for the church, for a harvest of new believers and unity among the Bride of Christ (all-Christians). I also am speaking this Sunday at another church that we are visiting, and Easter is one week later in Ukraine this year than in Canada, so I will be speaking about Palm Sunday.
  
 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
        Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
    Behold, your king is coming to you;
        righteous and having salvation is he,
    humble and mounted on a donkey,
        on a colt, the foal of a donkey.(Zechariah 9:9 ESV)

 Well David and I finally got to see the gem of Zaporozhye this last Monday, Hortitsa Island. A lady from the English Club that we help at invited us and how could we decline? We did not know who all was coming or what we were going to do but we just went for it and it turned out to be amazing! It ended up being our English Club friend Ann and her two daughters, her friend named Lienna, a man named Dima, another missionary John Charlier, David and myself. We were told in the morning that we did not need to pack a lunch because Ann was going to bring chicken....we did not know how she was planning on bringing chicken but it is Ukraine, so we just rolled with it. We ended up touring around part of the beautiful island and having a picnic along the Dnieper River. Out of Ann's little mickey mouse backpack came a pot filled with fresh chicken wings that she cooked that morning, a homemade thermos with tea and a pan with an apple cake, it was a delicious picnic meal.

The bridge to Hotitsa Island

The most exciting part of this day was just the fellowship and conversation that we had together. They are not believers in Christ but I was able to have a very good conversation with Dima. We talked about a very large range of topics, starting with me trying to explain the fact that legalistic/political churches are just buildings and not a strong community of believers of Jesus and we went all the way to the question of why Christians disagree with having sex before marriage. He says that he believes in God but he hates "religion" and he wants freedom, so I did explain the true freedom that I have through the LORD and it was a great conversation. We exchanged phone numbers and tonight he came to the English Club and we talked more and plan to meet this week and talk more. Please pray that God will reveal to him the freedom that he can have through Jesus and that he will come to know Christ.

I was also able to have a great conversation with another youth named Vasiliy. He speaks very good English but would like to get even better, and he enjoys talking with me and says that he would like to be my friend and show me around the city. He is not religious and says that he does not need a God in his daily life. I am just building a relationship with him and I am sharing the gospel when I feel that the Holy Spirit is leading me. I enjoy talking with Vasiliy and it is great to learn more about the city through him. Please pray that he will see that God is a living and loving God that desires a relationship with him and that he will enter into relationship with Christ.

Praise God these past few weeks for his financial provision. We have found out that roughly $40,000 dollars has been given to The New Hope Center and now they can begin working on some of their bigger building projects! Also please pray for the healing of a girl named Alona, an unusual pain in her tailbone is not allowing her to sit and this has been going on for quite a while now and we believe that God wants to heal her of this and He is the only God that can bring healing to her body. I have really been sensing the presence of spiritual warfare and darkness in the last few days so prayer that God's light will shine through and that we may see a harvest of believers come to know the love of JESUS CHRIST in this Easter Season.
Blessings,
Mitch

Giving Anything to Advance the KINGDOM

 "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"-Philippians 1:21

My life on this earth, according to Paul is not only dedicated to serving Christ but it says that the definition and meaning of my life is to strive to be like the Son of God. It is a hard concept for my mind to overcome. When I started this TREK program I had to think of all of the things that I would have to give up, like time, comfort, a loving family, an awesome girlfriend and work/time to name a few. But in all actuality, do I even have the right to these things if my life is to serve Christ. If the path for my life, laid out by the Lord of Lords, directs me one way or another, and my life as Paul says is to serve Jesus...do I even have rights? Following Jesus=laying down our "rights". Now I am not saying that it is bad to have a girlfriend or a loving family, but what Jesus wants has to come first in our lives, because all that we have is His.

I have been reading a lot from the letters written by Paul in the Bible and also an awesome book Back to Jerusalem by Paul Hattaway within the last week. Both of these awesome literature's speak and talk about examples when people have been bold in faith and have laid down not only comforts in life but also their own lives! Racing through my head is the question, am I that dedicated on the WORD that I would right now lay down my life for my God? Or even, am I that bold in faith that I would be put in a situation where my life was on the line for the sake of the gospel? Now I have talked a little about the first part of this verse at the top found in Philippians 1:21 but look at the end "...and to die is gain". When I die, I can be firm in the belief that I am going to enter into eternity with my LORD and Savior...but then why am I contemplating if I would give up my life for His namesake? This book by Paul H. talks about a missions movement in which is within the church in China, it talks about leaders and the torture and jail time that they have faced because of their faith. It has talked about our brothers and sisters that have laid their lives in means of spreading the good news of Jesus, but you know what else it talks about, it talks about people coming to faith, it talks about miracles, visions, supernatural healings, a bond of believers, church unity and an advance in the Kingdom of God, AMEN!

So as I am reading this book and also some of the letters written by Paul I am surrounded by texts of boldness and the laying down of human rights that I would feel obligated to have. This has kicked me in the pants and reminded me what my life is and why I am here in Ukraine. Whether it is serving at the New Hope Center, or at one of the orphanages, or teaching english or even walking through the market, I am carry the truth to eternal life and why should I try to hold it in, what should I feel afraid of?
If I say, “I will not mention him,
    or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
    shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot. - Jer 20:9
I should be weary and afraid to try to smother and trap this good news, I need to just spread it every where that I go and in everything that I do and not be afraid of the consequences. The news of Jesus is offensive to people, not everyone is going to agree with it, but it NEEDS to be proclaimed.

So I am not here in Ukraine looking for persecution or looking for trouble, but I am here for one purpose and that is to advance the Kingdom of Heaven and that is what I am going to do. Thank you for all of your prayers and support for me while I am here and I welcome you to join me in praying for the advance of Jesus Christ's name here in Zaporozhye through the current missionaries and my team and I. Pray for boldness and a firm remembrance of the powerful name that I carry with me everywhere that I go. Please remember our friend Natascha who has shown a deep interest in Jesus and for the other relationships that we are building amongst the Ukrainian people.
Blessings from Ukraine!

Please email me if you haven't received my newsletter and you would like to: mitchell.claassen@gmail.com

Seeking and Expecting

"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ" -Galations 1:10

The question is to be asked in our lives, who are we desiring to please? This verse has been sitting on my heart all week. I begin to think of the amazing opportunity that I have to serve here in Zaporozhye amongst a majority of people who are not living under the care of our loving God. So I get excited about sharing the news of Christ, because it is filled with so much life that at times I feel I could not hold it inside even if I wanted to. But where is the line of being outward with faith but not jamming it down peoples throats? I just look at the apostle Paul, I look at the way that he was bold to share his faith wherever he went no matter what the consequences. Now at the same time I understand that different people groups need to be ministered to in a variety of ways, and I am praying for God's counsel in revealing to me the most effective ministry that I could do with my team here in Ukraine.

Playing the game "fruit salad" with the orphans in Volyansk

The first way that seems very obvious to me is to build relationships. The New Hope Center, is a great place to start some of these relationships. During the week, youth from around the area come for the free computer use, ping pong and fooseball that this center has to offer. We have been hanging around the center and playing with the youth and in doing so allow them to feel comfortable with us. With the Center, we attend and help at a class called English Club on Friday nights, we serve at an orphanage in Volyansk on Saturdays. I have played on the worship team at the New Hope Church and I am also playing this next week. We attend a Bible Study started by John and Ev Wiens and we hosted the study at our apartment this week in which a youth name Andrei attended and he is not yet a believer. We are in the process of setting up two days in the week that we will be serving in a local orphanage in which I will be teaching guitar, Megan will teach piano, while David and Katie-Sue help with the carpentry class.

Showing the class picture of family and friends

As of yesterday, I have become a teacher and I don't even have any professional schooling, who would have thought? Every Thursday from now on we are teaching students at a local school English for a full day. It was so much fun and the kids had a great time. We all introduced ourselves to each class and came with pictures from home and we shared our hobbies and interests. I am not going to lie at all when I say that I am right in my element. I do not have any fear of talking to basically anybody and I love teaching. The main goal of us being there is to get the classes to really use the english words and phrases that they know in discussions and conversations. It is going to be very fun to have the responsibility to lead a class, and most likely use some Psalms for reading practice.

Exciting news today, a girl that we just met at English Club is coming to church on Sunday and told Katie Sue that she is very interested with Christianity and she thinks that it may be the missing piece in her heart!  We will be having her over next week as well for supper and for a hangout/Bible study evening. I have been praying in the last few days very specifically that we will see fruit from our ministry and work here. I know that we need to pray for the power of the LORD to work and pray with faith, but also to expect that we will see Him work. I prayed the entire 30min walk from our apartment to the church this evening and following every request was the statement that "I am expecting to see you work LORD", God is so good. This girl seems to be very close and I am praying and please expect with me that we will see her come to know Jesus Christ as her Savior.So prayer for this girl would be appreciated, her name is Natascha.

Please Pray for Natascha that the LORD will reveal himself to her in undeniable ways and also a boy Andrei that attended Bible study this week that he will see the love of Christ as well, for deeper relationships with the youth (especially the boys) that hangout at The New Hope Center and that as a team we can learn Russian quickly for a greater ease in communication.

Thank you so much for all of your support and prayers, they are definitely felt! Please email me any prayer requests you have and my mailing address if you are interested is:

5 Mera St.   Apt. 14.
69037
Zaporozhye, Ukraine

Blessings-Mitch

Going back to my ROOTS

Zdrasfuchye (hello),

Now as I have been in Ukraine for about half a week I am all settled in at our apartment in Zaporozhye. My expectations have definitely been stretched, pulled, perplexed and broken and most actually better than I could have imagined. Our apartment is a lot bigger and nicer than what I thought it would be like. We have two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen…oh and I don’t want to forget about our living room which has one table and four chairs and is serving mostly as a clothes drying room.

As for the actual city and people, it feels to put it in the simplest terms that we are living during the times in WW11. Most of the buildings are made of brick and they do not have names but are all numbered and this has been the same since just after the bombings from the war. The people here have very "dry" expressions but on the inside they are so sincere. We have walked around our apartment a few times and we have had a couple encounters with locals because we look american and they start talking to us, but I can just feel the darkness that they are feeling and experiencing and I just want to tell them about Jesus. If you would ask them they would all say that they are Christians but they are orthadox, and since it is a free place for religion we have to be very sensitive about talking about faith. If you bring up Jesus in a conversation too fast you can tell that the people are turned off, so we need to just build relationships then witness through our actions.Another thing I have been blessed by is to see all of the deep Mennonite roots that are here in Zaporozhye. John took us out yesterday and showed us some of the monuments, old schools, hospitals, houses and villages created by the Mennonites in the 19th century, and how they are still standing now to this day and structurally very strong. It really touched my heart to see how my ancestors lived and worked in Ukraine.

John and Ev have been showing us around the city and some orphanages this last week just to slowly put us into the Ukrainian culture. We have gone to a Bible study held by John and Ev, and we met and talked with some Christians from the area and we are hosting this study next week. We also been hanging out with mostly orphan girls lately, we have gone ice skating with them and taught them some English and they have taught us some Russian. The girls are a lot easier to talk with and they open up faster than the boys but I am going to continue to strive to build strong relationships with the boys so that in the future they can be strong heads of their households. 

 Old Mennonite Girls Finishing School in Zaporozhye

Please pray for continuing opportunities to talk with the locals and to show them the love they can have in Christ. Also that the LORD will bless us with fast language learning so we can carry out a conversation and build stronger friendships and trust with the Ukrainians. I have a strong feeling from God that he wants to do healings and work with freeing the oppressed, so please pray and expect that He will use us to show his love, authority and supernatural strength through that. Thank you for your prayers, I can definitely feel them lifting me up everyday. We are trying to get WIFI in our apartment this next week so I will be able to update more regularly. GOD IS HERE AND WORKING!

Blessings,

Mitch

Give me more JESUS!

What an awesome God we have, I get to be a witness of Christ in Ukraine as I leave Abbotsford this Sunday on March 4th! Continually I am being reminded as I am on this journey of faith that our God is the orchestrator of all things. I have been thinking about the fact that we were created so uniquely, God meets with us each uniquely, the plan for our lives is unique and the ways that we worship and dwell in the presence of the LORD is unique. I get so excited when I start thinking about this because it is a reality that we each get to personally interact in intimacy with the only living God.
Now as we were all created, God did not just put us here on earth to mope around, make money, buy stuff and be lazy. We are sent out to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth "And he said to them, 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation." Mark 16:15. We need to continue to be good stewards and push for advancing the kingdom. But as we are pushing to increase the Christian faith there WILL be opposition, so what do we do? Well I see Luke 10:19 as a verse that we all need to have memorized and use against the evil one in times of battle and attack. "Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you." Luke 10:19. Jesus sends out 72 people to go and spread the Gospel, heal the sick and cast out demons. When they returned they were amazed at the fact that even the unclean spirits listened to them and Jesus states in verse 19, that we have been given authority over the power of the evil one Satan and nothing will hurt us; authority is not in our own names or our own bodies but it is the LORD JESUS CHRIST flowing through us, we carry His authority. He dwells in us, and we dwell in Him. This authority is not a spiritual gift but it is given to absolutely everyone!

During our All-Night Prayer with MB Mission

 What is one of the key things that we need to have as we encounter the evil one, or when we are witnessing to those who do not yet know the living God? It is a knowledge of the WORD, the Bible, if we do not know our Bibles (swords) we cannot expect to put up much of a fight against the enemies attacks. That is why I am so fired excited about Luke 10:19, that verse is a strong strike on the enemy in battle, for in what way does he have a greater name than that of Jesus Christ? Through all of this, I have been pursuing a knowledge of the Bible because I can grow closer to my Father above and protect not only my own faith but I can assist in defending the faith of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and show to the unbelievers the truth in the scriptures.


One way that I have been gaining a knowledge of the Bible is through memorizing. For me, there are so many verses that I wish I could remember what and where they are but I never actual get around and just memorize them. I decided a week into TREK training that I wanted to memorize the Book of James and this last week I have finally finished memorizing the whole book. It has been a blessing that I cannot describe, I feel like the verses that I have read numerous times now make so much more sense. They are ingrained in my mind and I am able to lean on them in times of trial, joy, prayer, sickness, defense and attack. Memorizing is something that I am going to be working into my daily life and schedule.


To sum up what God has been pushing in my heart over this time of training at the Mark Centre is this, I need and desire to be rooted in the Word of God, I thrive on intimacy with God because He wants to talk with me and provide for me so I should listen, and I feel empowered to Spread the glory of the Lord wherever I go with a humility and confidence.

Prayer Requests: Peace for this transition into Ukraine, team unity and bondage, knowledge and intimacy with God, a boldness in faith to step into this new culture and to carry the fragrance of Christ with me wherever I am.
Blessings- please email me at mitchell.claassen@gmail.com so I can put you on my email list