November 2025 Australia, UK, Ukraine
AUSTRALIA Wonderful news from Phil & Miri's group in Ipswich QLD. MALACHI, basketball team friend of brothers Kon and John Chol, the son of their basketball coach, was baptized! Another example of the amazing witness being made by our Australian-South Sudanese brethren, under the guidance of Phil & Miri. It's a great example of how the Gospel spreads in ripples. Malachi had for some time been coming along to Bro John Chol's twice weekly Bible Study or joining online. At the same time he had continual contact with Bro Kon and Bro John as part of the basketball group.
Video at
https://youtu.be/3SMD1h4brCg 
Lena, Lyesh, Roma, Lud Panina
UKRAINE
This week Mark & Duncan continued their work in Ukraine, and this is the closing part of their report:
We spent several days in the east of Ukraine not far from the front lines. The air raids are day and night and clearly are taking a huge toll on everyone's mental health- along with power and heating outages. Exacerbated in many places by windows constantly being shattered, not from direct hits but from the blasts of the explosions nearby. Boarded up windows are everywhere, and it creates a cold and gloomy living environment. It's estimated that nearly 14 million windows have been smashed in Ukraine. The mayor of Kharkiv, where we spent some days, reported that up to 5000 windows can be smashed by just on air raid. There's little point in replacing them because they're likely to smash again.
It was wonderful to reconnect with sisters like Elena and Ludmila, faithfully holding on in their faith despite living up many flights of stairs in tower blocks where the lifts don't work due to lack of power, windows are smashed and water and heating are often off. Dear Ludmila says she reads and re-reads Bible Basics and just keeps remembering the Kiev Bible Schools. She needs a walker to mobilize, but is up several flights of stairs. With no working lift. Getting food is hard for her. But like many, she doesn't at her age want to leave her flat, where she knows every square centimeter. Her family are all in Russia, the border is just a few miles from her, but communication is now so difficult. Her first request as we entered her humble flat was to break bread:
Sister Lena is in a similar position, but her son brother Lyesha is able to help her. And we were able to baptize a contact in Lyesha's bath tub, ROMAN. He has only one functioning arm which is strong as iron from his work as a porter in the market - although his disability saves him from the draft.
Video at https://youtu.be/nOfzItsm2n8
We distributed potatoes, honey, cooking oil and other food, welfare and cash to many brothers and sisters. There's a video of the pure joy this brings, and also invalid sister Nina reciting a poem of thanks for the funds and other support you
have provided- https://youtu.be/JCd_tVP__zQ
We had a lovely breaking of bread with sisters Vera and Svetlana, but they are really without water. The well you can see in the background has all but dried up, and they collect rainwater from the roof. And have to buy water and walk a long distance with it. But they don't own the property and if they improve it by letting us fund a new well... that creates many problems and could mean them being turfed out of it. We're weighing up what the best way forward, as this is a family of five, known to us 30 years, three of them baptized... and they have no water. Which they need not only for washing and cooking but to water their land, which they depend on for food. They work it very hard and well. So please pray for wisdom for us all in working out what the best path forward is for us to assist them.
A huge amount of welfare was provided, both spiritual and material, and we thank God and you all who enabled this. Apart from three baptisms, we also sowed quite a bit of Gospel seed with some really very good contacts which we really do hope and pray will come to fruition.
UK
We returned to London from Ukraine via Poland and a stopover in Glasgow, in order to meet two of several serious contacts there- both followers of Croydon Church in a Pub. Both are tradesmen who started searching for God in spirit and truth but didn't find answers in standard churchianity- the case with so many young people in the UK. MARC had been turned away by church legalism but had recovered and earnestly sought personal relationship with the Lord. He was absolutely ready for baptism and we followed his tradesman's van to the Clyde Canal where we baptized him after dark but in the light of the van's headlights.
Video at https://youtu.be/SNnfVxLsV7Q
And then there was DYLAN a roofer who likewise was convicted of the need for baptism and also wanted to do it in the open air. He took us to a river which as a wild youngster he had tried to daredevil jump over on his motocross bike. In fact it was a serious motorbike accident that prompted him closer to spiritual things. This had led him to the JWs, from whom he took some truths before seeing through them, and thence to us online. He had taken the day off work for his baptism and we had a truly great time together in the Lord before flying back to London.
Video at https://youtu.be/X92z7sZBE4c
- a very muddy as well as cold baptism, emerging covered in mud. And then the sun came out brightly straight away as he emerged.
And some chit chat about baptism and questions folks ask about it,
at https://youtu.be/OHOz-GkmTjo
Back in London, we then took Daniel with us to go and baptize JAKE, another tradesman, living in a flat over a very standard parade of shops. No light in his bathroom and cold water, actually it felt colder than that river water in Scotland... yet again, a man who had been searching for God's Truth but his one visit to a church put him right off, not having been brought up religious. Mark as a tradesman was able to make immediate connection with all these British tradesmen... and was amazed at the huge amount of interest there now is in the Bible and Christianity amongst ordinary folks in the UK, especially younger males. This is a trend noticed not only by us in our work, but reported widely in the press. It's most unexpected, but then given the world situation, perhaps in fact it was to be expected, after two generations of general disinterest in Christianity in the UK.
Video at https://youtu.be/_yTfmDxVVX4
We're now looking forward to a great weekend at Carrotty Wood with so many others like this.
PRAYER POINTS
- For those recently baptized
- For our traumatized brothers and sisters in Ukraine
- For those without easy access to clean water in Ukraine and worldwide
- For our upcoming weekend at Carrotty Wood
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks