Let me tell you about this guy named Max. We met him in Krivoy Rog, Ukraine…. where there are coal factories, an awesome team from Canada who we did ministry with for a week, and where we lived in a transition house with 2 teen girls who rock. It is 90 miles long and just 5 miles wide. It's a neat place.
Max!
This month my team is doing a ministry called “Ask the Lord”. We literally ask the Lord where to go. We have no places to live, no contacts, no specific ministry to work with until…we ask the Lord what to do. And He finds a way for us in every single thing He tells us to do. Also this month, we are working on a campaign known as the Unsung Heroes Campaign. This initiative is about finding those (unsung heroes) who are tirelessly working to further the Kingdom of God by loving on those around them. Our intent is to honor them by telling their stories and by blessing them by potentially creating short-term partnerships with them (i.e. sending World Race teams to work with them). So Team Luminous is traveling to different cities in Ukraine having meetings and doing ministry as the Lord leads.
Once we arrived in Krivoy Rog, we met Max, an unsung hero. This guy has 4 adopted kids (at one point had 12), is a grandfather, a lawyer, a pastor, is in charge of or connected to multiple ministries: transition homes, young mom's homes, orphanages, tuberculosis hospitals, boarding schools, homes for people with disabilities. He's in the process of buying, remodeling, and making this building a transition home/peanut butter factory/school/church/international house of prayer all in one.
The future transition home
Max found us a free place to live for a week and constantly blessed us every day by being available, hilarious, a translator, kind, and informative. Because he is a lawyer, he knows the right people and has connections to make things happen smoothly if someone wants to adopt. Like I mentioned earlier, we visited all sorts of ministries Max runs with the team from Canada. We got to know the lovely Canadians and they made our stay in Krivoy Rog especially spectacular. Kalina, part of the team from Canada, has been trying to adopt a boy from Ukraine for over a decade now. When Nicholas was little, Kalina and her husband tried to adopt him but laws in Canada changed and they weren't able to. Once Kalina met Max 4 years ago, Max was determined to find Nicholas. All Max needed was his first name and the name of the orphanage he was in as a child. When Kalina came to Ukraine last fall, Max picked her up with Nicholas in the car. Now all the paperwork (thanks to Mr. Lawyer Max), is officially completed and Kalina and Nicholas are headed home to Canada this week, hallelujah!
Kalina and Nicholas 🙂
We ran into Max at a pizzeria the other day and he apologized for not coming to ministry with us that day. He had to finish the paperwork for Nicholas and a girl showed up at his house who has tried to abort her baby on her own a few times. She started bleeding and he had to rush to get her help.
This is just the kind of person he is, the kind of life he leads. People know they can just show up on his doorstop in any condition.
It's quite the challenge to get wifi in these joints. We were at a coffee shop that said “WIFI!” on the window but it wasn't working inside. In our efforts to tell the barista about the internet not working, a man we've never seen walked in. They were speaking Russian, we were speaking English. Nothing was being accomplished. Until…. the random man pulled out his phone, showed us a picture of Max, said “Da?” (Yes in Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian…), we replied “Da!”…. called Max, gave the phone to us, and Max translated between us. How did the man know that we know Max? Max's explanation: “Everyone knows I know the English speakers around here.” Whaaaaaat? Are you a celebrity?
Woman's home
Orphanage
Tuberculosis hospital
Young mom's home
Max is only 25 years old.
TWENTY FIVE.
This guy is a rockstar.
