A roller coaster day

Selma and Gary Enns, participants in the September 2006 Discipleship Making International (DMI) mission experience, tell the story of an earlier and unforgettable DMI experience in Pavlograd, Ukraine, in 1998. (DMI is a ministry of Mennonite Brethren Mission and Service International.)

After sharing their testimonies on a local Christian TV program, a DMI group was returning to their hotel when they noticed two police vehicles following them. Entering the hotel, they were confronted by guards shouting angrily and demanding their passports.

Selma and Gary Enns

With fear and trembling, team members hurried to their hotel rooms to retrieve and hand over their passports to the Ukraine authorities. The DMI team was then informed that to get their passports back each person would have to pay $800 US or be put in jail. The team was falsely accused of not having the required registration papers for doing DMI ministry in Pavlograd.

When one of the local Christian leaders stepped forward and boldly requested an explanation for the treatment the DMI team had received, the police abruptly dismissed the team to their hotel rooms. Numb and fearful, the team huddled together in one of the rooms and began to sing praises to God.

The next day, DMI coordinator Feodor Fedorenko, who was also an army officer, managed to talk the authorities into returning the passports.

While the DMI team had been recording at the TV station and before the encounter with the police, local DMI partners were at the hotel expressing excitement and joy in the fact that the hotel owner and two of her workers had accepted Christ.

What a roller coaster of joy and fear, celebration and intimidation, that day was! The evening concluded with a praise and prayer banquet and the viewing of participants’ testimonies on the local TV station. It was an unforgettable experience of God’s great faithfulness.