• Pray for Ukraine!
• Right now Will is in North Carolina. His grandmother died, and he went to be with his family for a little while. Please pray for him and his travels.
• Will gets back on Tuesday. On Wednesday we will travel to Odessa to spend the night and renew some passports. Please pray for that travel, too.
• Pray for the next family coming to adopt. They will be arriving next month.
• We are enjoying our new neighbors. Please pray for our relationship with them and for their people, the Crimean Tatars.
• Pray for Will to be able to catch up on office work when he gets back.
• I have had to miss some time at the orphanage because of Will's absence. Please pray for me to be able to jump back in there.

• Pray for peace in Ukraine and for President Poroshenko.
• Our landlady's sister is here, and life is much more peaceful now that she has someone to be with.
• Please continue to pray for the family adopting here.
• Wisdom, patience, and compassion in my counseling relationship.
• Praise God for a wonderful vacation for us! You can pray that the refreshment from it will stick with us.
• Saturday is the orphanage picnic. Please pray for all the details involved, safety, good weather, and for the children to have a wonderful time.
• Will has a lot that had can do for Agape to catch up after being gone.
• Jaan and Raia are going to camp next week.
• Pray for "healing" for our computer: that it will spontaneously work better, or that I'll have time and brain power to figure out how to fix it. You can pray for our internet connection, too; it's been really off and on lately. (Maybe this is weird, but God takes care of small things, and this really is technology that we use a lot in daily life!)

• The Ukrainian elections went well. Now please pray constantly for the new president, Petro Poroshenko, and continue to pray for peace.
• We're getting used to our landlady, and--more importantly--she seems to be getting used to our weirdnesses. You can pray for her health; she keeps scaring us with falls and heart trouble!
• Keep praying for the adoption I mentioned.
• Keep praying for my "counseling ministry." I am in way over my head with the it.
• Praise God for a good end to the school year.

The next two weeks should be quite fun and busy. Right now Will is on his way to the last session of Agape ministry school for this year. We'll need lots of prayer Thursday and Friday, as we travel Papa-less to join him in the western part of the country. Praise God for this opportunity, and please cover us with prayer while we're gone. Thanks!

• Our unregistering trip went beautifully. The government office there even stayed open late for us! That's a miracle.
• Still working on registering here and extending our residency.
• Still visiting the orphanage on Saturdays (Phyllis).
• Still working in the Agape office (Will).
• Fighting some sickness here.
• Andrei Nalivaiko is out of jail! (I had asked for prayer for his situation on our blog.)

PRAY FOR UKAINE! Things do seem to be getting better, but there's is still a long road ahead for this country.

I used to update here most Saturdays, but that has gotten hard lately, because my Saturdays are busy now. I need to find a new day of the week and get in the habit of posting then.

New prayer requests:

• On Saturdays I get to visit an orphanage for disabled children. I love them! Please pray for me each week and for the children I get to spend time with.
• We're in the middle of getting residency for the next year. Please pray for that process.
• Pray for our trip tomorrow, and for our children who will be with friends while we're gone.

I'll try to write again here more often.

Thank you again for your prayers about our Kherson trip! It really did go well. Even though there were many hard moments, there were many highlights, too. Please continue to pray for wisdom in future plans.

And then chicken pox... Our three younger children have it now, so it's kind of overtaking our life. Please pray for endurance and quick healing. I'll be very glad to have this behind us!

This first half of this trip to Kherson was quite hard and quite good. We could really tell that people are praying for us. We're staying for another week now. Please continue to pray!

Please pray for our family's health. Jaan is just recovering from chicken pox, and it would be so nice if no one else comes down with it before we get home! Will and I can't get chicken pox, but we're both quite tired, so please pray for our strength and health, too.

We're leaving tomorrow to travel to Kherson.

Also, I wanted to tell about an answer to prayer: it may be funny to pray about computer problems, but God definitely cares about what is worrying us, and there was one that was worrying me terribly. I updated software for the Ambleside Online forum that I administrate on Monday, and it wasn't working right after that. It seemed like an impossible mess to me, and I wasn't getting answers from the people who usually know how to solve those technical problems. On the second day that the problem continued, I asked people to pray, and I prayed a whole lot myself. And then I was able to find and fix the problem! Praise the Lord!

Our prayer requests this week are pretty much the same as last week.

You can also pray for Will, as the lovely spring seems to be making his allergies even worse than usual.

Thank you for praying!

We had a great Easter! At the last minute we also got to visit a village church with an Easter program for them, too.

After lots of last minute rushing around to pull it together, Will actually went to a training session put on in Khmelnitsky by Agape, the mission that he had been trying to get in touch with. Our whole family is also going to Kherson May 24-30 for a special program they're doing.

I am meeting with someone almost daily for counseling and even Bible study. This is the first time that she has ever been open to that! It is very draining emotionally, though.

Traveling soon

I need to do better with updating here! Is anyone still reading?

Here's an email that Will sent out to both our home churches:

We wanted to ask you all to be praying with us over the next couple of weeks. We need to make a trip to Kiev that we've put off for a while now.

Bogdan still isn't American, and Raia currently isn't either! We need to get a new Passport for Raia and a first-time Passport for Bogdan. The process shouldn't be too difficult, but it isn't cheap, either.

We've been wanting to make this into a little more than a 3-day, there and back again trip, w/two days on trains. We want to have time to do funs stuff with the kids and spend a week or so there. (We haven't done anything like this in almost two years.)

Right now we're looking into housing, which is a bit pricier than we were thinking, but we're trying to look into as many options as possible.

Please be praying with us, as this trip is shaping up to be more of a challenge than we'd thought it would be.

Pray for God's provision:

-as we take our 2nd train trip with Bogdan (4 kiddos now, fun on a 12-hr train trip!)
-in finding affordable housing.
-in quick and problem-free processing of Bogdan and Raia's passports.
-that this could be a 'mini-vacation' for all of us.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

We're leaving on Friday. I think we have a place to stay, but I'm not quite sure about that yet. Please also be praying that we will be healthy before we go and not get sick again while traveling. We all have the tail ends of a cold hanging on.

Youth conference

Will just left for a youth conference in Kiev. He's taking a pretty big group with him: 12 people, I think. This could be a little interesting, because most of them are the ones who show up once a year or so, not the regular church crowd. Also, pray for us while we're home without Papa. He'll be back on Tuesday (after staying an extra day to renew my passport).

Various updates

Camp went wonderfully. Thank you so much for praying! So far, I've posted a few photos and a little recap, if you're interested. Please also pray for our family (and everyone else) as we settle back into normal life; it's almost hard to believe how tired we are and how fussy our children can be.

Our computer is working more reliably the past few days, and I've also heard rumors that a new one is on its way to us. Thank you so much to anyone who has contributed to that! I really don't know how much longer this one would have kept limping along. (Please keep praying for it to last until its replacement comes.)

Will went to visit K. yesterday. He's doing okay, but please keep praying for him. He's had some problems lately.

And then the next big event: on Monday Will is leaving for a quick trip to Charlotte for his sister's wedding! Please pray for everything connected to that trip.


As always, thank you so much for supporting us in prayer! Please let us know how we can pray for you, too. Leave a comment here, or write to us at mayakovsky@willphyl.com.

After-holiday update

Once again, I'm sorry that I haven't updated! We recently finished the busiest holiday season we've ever had. Thank you to everyone who was praying for us, even while I was silent here.

Updates on older prayer requests:

• I had asked for prayer for electricity at church. They got it turned on! It was a huge project, but God gave strength and success.
• We had a wonderful Thanksgiving trip. Our children slept on the train!
  
• We haven't seen Anatolii.
• Lena's mother is doing somewhat better, but still needs prayer.
• Vova left the rehab center, but he hasn't come back here. (That's good.) He's in Kiev and seems to be doing well. He calls us often, and is very lonely, but he's working and says that he's not drinking. Keep praying for him!
  

And new requests:

• I am going to be teaching a preschool Sunday school class! I haven't agreed to do anything like this before, because Asya takes so much of my time and attention, and I'm still a little apprehensive about how I'll keep up with her and teach. We're going to give it a try, though. Please pray for me, for my wonderful helper Alina, and for the little ones.
• Health and rest: actually, we're doing pretty well in that area, but please do pray. We were absolutely exhausted after the holiday season. We've mostly been able to catch up on now. Will and I still have colds dragging on, so please pray that we'll be all the way healthy and rested soon.
  

Thanksgiving trip

Tomorrow we're leaving for Odessa!  We'll be away for almost a week, visiting Will's sister and celebrating Thanksgiving with her.  Please pray for safe travels and a good visit.  Please pray especially that our children will sleep on the train (16-17 hours each way!).  We'll be back on Tuesday.

Leetra is coming!

My sister is coming soon! Please pray for her travels and a good visit. We always like to "use" guests as a good excuse to get together with people, too, so please pray that we would be able to introduce her to lots of people here.

Youth conference

Will and some of the youth will be going to a youth conference in Kiev Feb. 23. Please pray for safe travels and a really good time there.

Will's cold and travel

Will and his parents are flying to Texas tomorrow. Will's cold hasn't been bad, but please do pray for him (and them) as they travel.

Also, I mentioned that our trip from Russia went well. I forgot to say that the drive from Florida to North Carolina also went smoothly. I wrote about that. . . .

Going home

We need to vacate this apartment, so we'll be going home to Kovrov on Tuesday. Please pray for safe travel.

Also, pray for wisdom in what to do next. We feel like we're in a better legal position, now that we've tried to get exit visas and been denied. It doesn't seem like they would press charges against me for being in Russia, when I can't leave! But we'll see. If we need to, we can stay with friends.

Will's travels

He let me know that he made it to Ivanovo and stopped there for the night. Now he's on his way to Vladimir, to talk to the regional head of Migration. Please pray that man will be kind, merciful and able to help! Pray for Will as he goes before this influential and intimidating man!