Pizza is served!

Well it’s done.  Or rather, has just begun.  Three challenging years later, the small tap of gas is legally turned on and our pizza oven is working away!

Yesterday we served up over 200 slices of free pizza for our town in celebration.  Here’s a short clip with some photos if you have 30 seconds.  Then today, our first ‘pizza on the menu’ day, we sold 10 pizzas!  From my numbers, if we sell 8 per day, we’ll cover all our expenses and be totally sustainable – so good first day, possibly our first profitable day ever 🙂

Alyosha flipping his dough already!

We had some fun tonight with the youth.   None of them had ever been in a kayak.  Last year we bought 2 used from a rental place in Kiev, and a 3-person ‘safe’ one that doesn’t ever sink.  They had a blast learning how to navigate around our local inlet.

Nastya (front), Sveta (middle) and Tanya, all three coming with us to Minsk next weekend!

We were proud of Sveta who can’t swim (middle) but braved the Dnepr River anyway.  Of course one of the boys, Dennis, got a little excited and fell in.

Quick update on our Kickstarter Skatepark Campaign for the building of a kids skatepark on our property- we’re at $2,100!  Only two weeks left and still $5,500 to raise so still quite a hill to climb, but encouraging to see folks share their heart to invest in youth – I only know a couple of the ‘backers’ so that’s neat too!

Remember if you can, to share this link around for us, its’ where folks can read/watch more about the project and back the project!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lighthouse/kids-skatepark-ukraine

Updated Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Things are now focused on our Minsk trip next weekend.  We will be taking 6 youth with us, plus Collins and our family – and then after the weekend the team will travel back and our family will stay for another 1-2 weeks.

We’ll be helping to host a week of prayer and worship – as well as speaking at a few church/evenings.  Please pray for me (Bruce) that God would inspire me to share His heart and His presence would bring Life.   Also pray for our youth, and our travel safety and logistics.  This is the first time many have ever left their borders.  We received two generous gifts for helping the student costs, totaling $700, and then yesterday another $200 which will cover all the costs for the students – thank you!!!

Gotta have a kid pic! Love these three – growing up so fast.

We’re excited to share that we have some visitors coming this summer – some for a short visit, others staying for up to a year!  We’ll share more soon 🙂  Our prayer is that God would bring in His Kingdom, and grow the vision and heart of God in this area through continued serving and Kingdom focused ministry.

Bronwyn took this, I was looking at the kids coming up the Cafe stairs – it’s a true joy to see so many enjoying the Lighthouse.

We need laborers for this, and we ask you keep praying with us for God to add those that share the same Kingdom focus – through the Cafe, Widows ministry, soon the Studio and summer Internship we are seeing the dream of God sown in our hearts slowly come to life.  None of the activity has eternal weight unless the Spirit of God moves and brings life – we cry out ultimately for this reality.  So many families we are meeting – even tonight another one that spoke english fluently (from Kiev visiting the Cafe) – so many opportunities.

We serve an amazing, living, and loving God.  We thank you too for your support!

“It is not darkness you are going to, for God is Light. It is not lonely, for Christ is with you. It is not unknown country, for Christ is there.” Charles Kinsley

Bruce & Deborah