Friday evening marks first Ukraine concert in Poltava (corrected)

The first concert was held Friday evening. Here's Bert Logan's report sent after the Friday evening concert:

Happy Sabbath from Poltava this evening!! God's grace, peace and mercy to everyone!!  He has been so good to us this week in many ways.

We had our first concert this evening which was very well attended and the venue was at least 90% full.  More on that later in this post. Following are pics from today.

Getting ready to leave hotel in Bucha.

We have three buses to transport everyone:  two (one of which is a double decker bus) for all the singers and a third for the orchestra. After breakfast we pulled out around 8-830 a.m. local time. Definitely was excitement in the air!!

It took at least 1.5 hours just to leave the massive city of Kiev, population 3+ million people. Traffic was heavy this Friday morning.

 Ukrainian singers and wife of one of the singers. We are blessed to have many young men on the tour with us! They bring much needed energy and vitality to us all!

The countryside of this pretty country.

This is Sergy Litovchenko, who is an amazing man and Adventist pastor. He lived in the east of Ukraine, but was forced out due to the war conflict there. God intervened on his behalf and now he lives in the safer region of western Ukraine. 

He was the pastor who was taken from his church during Sabbath services and jailed for 20 days. To read more about his awesome testimony, go to this Adventist News Network story or our previous blog posting. 

  

Arriving for lunch prepared by Poltava SDA church after 5 hour bus drive.

Amazing food and beyond amazing hospitality from our hosts!! 

Poltava concert venue this evening 

Quick tune up prior to the concert 

In concert.  I had one woman come up to me after the concert and enthusiastically hug me for a while. "Bal'shoye spaseeba" she said, over and over, which in Russian, means "Thank you very much!!"  She was so happy and pleased that we were there. Who knows the other individual stories of people's lives touched by God's Spirit this evening? Only Heaven can tell.

Post concert fellowship. A beautiful, cool summer evening. Laughter and joy filled the air.

Lots of picture taking as well. Samuel and Cristi on the left are from Romania. Sadly, Rune Saur (purple shirt) had to sit out our first concert due to a pretty bad sore throat and not feeling well. Sickness has started to occur in others as well. Please pray for healing and good health for all!! 

The elderly woman in the middle is a local who sat on the very first row. 

After the concert

Alex Siderenko (2nd from right) was born in Ukraine, but has lived in the US and Portland area for several years. His wife is to his right.

We leave at 7 a.m. by bus to our next city for Sabbath worship where we will perform a few numbers, and then a full concert at another venue later in the day.

God blessings to you!! 

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