Ukraine Missions Report
September 2-13, 2004

By Ramesh Naraine

Team One: Steve Long and John McCubbin

Team Two: Ramesh Naraine, Rob Shaw and Dan McMahon

We had a great time on this mission trip. The main purpose for going was to release the river of God into the Partners in Harvest and Friends in Harvest churches which Dan and Gwen Slade oversee. Everywhere we went the people were so receptive to the Holy Spirit. We felt right at home seeing all the manifestations and fun the people were having in the River!

We spent half of our time in two teams. We were together the first weekend when we went to churches in and around the Kiev area. Then we went by overnight train to two separate areas of the Ukraine. We didn’t congregate in Kiev (or rather Boyarka where Dan lives) until the night before our departure for home.

Steve and John ministered to some churches that are part of a network of about 20 churches in the south east of the Ukraine. Sergei, the senior pastor of this network was insisting that they all get in the River! So Steve and John spent most of his time getting the people filled with the Holy Spirit and being at ease with the manifestations. They were at 3 churches in the network and had 3 meetings over two days with each group. He even had to get them comfortable with the idea of a fire tunnel – something that we take for granted now! As with the other team, it was a great delight to see the “babuskas” (grandmothers, or older Russian women) embrace the River and hopping, skipping, jumping, dancing, laughing and crying as the Holy Spirit touched them.

Steve also had a healing meeting where an older lady with a number of aliments was progressively healed of each illness as Steve addressed each issue. Steve felt strongly that if there were more time she would have been completely healed and able to walk again. One of the pastors said that more was done by Holy Spirit in those two days than in the last year.

Ramesh and his team spent most of their time with one small church in a poorer, coal-mining district of the country. The pastor of that church has been to the Leaders School in January and wanted a TACF team to come and help them.

Because the church had only arranged evening meetings we took it upon ourselves (on Rob’s insistence) to go out to the markets, an orphanage and the local hospital and pray for people. We saw many people touched by the Holy Spirit, some were healed and we saw two genuine conversions of a father and son. It was a glorious thing to witness the process of transformation in these two men as they came to all three of the remaining church meetings.

We also had some wild church meetings! The people were so hungry for the Holy Spirit and ministry times were like any hot TACF Holy Spirit meeting! There were lots of bodies on the floor, groaning, jerking, laughing, and crying, as the Holy Spirit ministered deeper and deeper as the meetings went on. We even had one “babushka”, probably in her 80’s, dance a little jig during her testimony of how she had prayed for so long for the Lord to come and touch his people and now it was happening! It was fun to watch!

We all agree that the churches were hungry for God and wanted to go deeper. We also felt that they would be greatly helped if we had them go through the material included in our Encounter Weekends – both versions. We thought that encouraging teams to go over to work for a week or so with one church doing both Encounters would be a very useful thing.

Ukraine is at a very pivotal time right now. Elections are coming up in October and apparently, depending on who is elected, the country can move even further towards democracy or to oppression, religious restrictions, gangsterism, etc. At the same time there have been a number of prophetic words about revival in that nation. As that River is released more and more in that nation we know that this will happen. We need to pray for the Ukraine.

We would encourage cell leaders, with their spouses if possible, to go on a 1-2 week mission trip to the Ukraine to take a church or two through our Encounter weekend material so that they can make room for even more of the River.

Dan and Gwen Slade, and their team of local Ukrainians, are doing an amazing pioneering, sacrificial job of getting the churches that are open to this move of the Spirit into the River. They currently have a loose network of about 20 PIH/FIH churches. They have run Schools of Ministry in the past and are looking to establish a permanent training base as well as being able to take the SoM “on the road” around the Ukraine. They welcome any help that comes from people who are sold on the vision of getting the River of God, and the core values of PIH, into individual hearts and churches in the Ukraine.

If you have an interest ingoing to the Ukraine, or any where else, contact Ramesh at or 416 674 8463 x2247