Pursuing Christ in Cyprus!

Hey guys!

So, I haven't been extremely busy since my last update, but I have been doing a few different things that I thought you would like to know.  Weekly I have pretty much the same basic routine; I try and clean up around the church by sweeping, mopping and organizing.  I also play drums in the worship team.  I have been practicing guitar quite a lot since I arrived and hopefully one day will play a song or two in church!  During the week I try to stay connected with God through daily bible time and by maintaining a steady prayer life.  I have become friends with Ollie, a 16 year old English dude who comes to the church.  I have also formed a few relationships with some other people here in Paphos.  One guys name is Koko, he is a 19 year old Egyptian kid.  He and his family are Coptic Christians (Egyptian Orthodox), and I try to spend time with him.  Ollie and I also met Koko's friend named Waheeb.  Waheeb is a forty something year old Palestinian man, who is really nice and I enjoy hanging out with him! He is muslim, so I am praying that God would use Ollie and I to be able to speak into his life and that God would use us to help transform his heart and soul, that he would come to know Christ!  On Friday nights I have started a guys bible study, so far it is only Ollie, Koko and I, but it is good and I am sure God will use it to strengthen all of our lives!  On Saturday nights we have Youth For Christ, a youth night where the kids can invite their friends to come in and hear the Word of God being taught from 5-6pm, and then from 6-8pm we have games and small lessons.  It is a really great time and we are trying to encourage many of the young people to come to it! 

There is a somewhat troubling matter that I am facing that is quite difficult.  Well it is somewhat troublesome to me being that I am but an insignificant human who unfortunately seems to have a slight problem with letting God take control of situations. But when I really stop and think about the situation, I realize that God is in control and I have absolutely nothing to worry about.  Here is the dilemma, as an American passport holder, I am only allowed to stay in Cyprus for 3 months without any documentation.  After the 3 month period I must leave for 3 months before I can return and spend another 3 months here.  It's the 3 in 3 out system.  So in order to stay it will require me to obtain a visa.  Getting a visa for Cyprus is very difficult though, so I really could use your prayer and financial support for my visa situation.  I say financial support, because in order to get a visa you must have quite a large sum of money (don't know how much yet) in a bank account here.  So, as of now God has given me a peace about leaving here after my 3 months are up (that will be May 7th).  I have been contacting other Calvary church locations around Europe and Israel and asking if it would be possible for me to come and help them for a period of 3 months.  I received a response from the pastor of Calvary Chapel York England, where one of the bible college campuses are located.  He told me that if my time is drawing near and I have no where else to go, that I could go there and help with their ministry. But yesterday I received a message from Calvary Chapel Helsinki, Finland.  The message I received was very encouraging to me, because through it God showed me that it is the clear option for me if the Lord should not provide a Cypriot visa for me .  Here is what Pastor Pecoraro said:

Hi Evan! 

Thanks for writing. And sorry about your visa situation.

The Summer months are probably some of the slowest months in Finland as many Finns take a whole month or more sometimes and go on holiday. With that can come a lull in activity. However it is always nice to have more people with us through the summer so if the Lord leads you our way we wouldn’t be troubled to have one more person around.

With the warmer weather in summer there are many more opportunities on the streets to reach out to people. It would be of great help to have someone oversee outreach activity once or twice a week, if not more...  Along with outreach we have weekly practical tasks that need attention too.

... We can see if there is a brother here that might let you room with him for that time. My house would be available for a part of the time but I wouldn’t be able to put you up for three months. Maybe we can shift you around several houses throughout the duration of your stay, would that be a bother? Not saying these things to deter you from coming but just wanting to let you know the reality of the situation. Honestly if housing works out here and you can afford to feed yourself then I don’t have any problem with you joining us for the time you need to be out of cyprus. 

We will be in prayer about this

Again,. thanks for writing.

Sincerely 

Bob Pecoraro

So this is what I have been up to over the past month and a half.  I can't thank you all enough for you support, whether that be through prayer support or financial support! 

With that said, I would like to just remind everyone that the support that the Lord is providing me through you guys, is incredibly important.  I hope you will all continue to be faithful to do as the Lord leads you.  Once again thank you for your help, your support and your encouragement! I hope you are all having a blessed day!

In Christ!

P.S.  I almost forgot to mention, that for my birthday I had the option of going to the city of Larnaca and watching the U.S. vs. Ukraine football (soccer) match! It was such a cool opportunity!  I had never seen a live soccer match before, and it was an experience I never thought I would get the privilege of, especially not while on the mission field in Cyprus!

New Adventures from Cyprus!

Hey everyone!

     I first just want to say thank you for all of your support, whether you are praying for the 

work over here in Cyprus, or donating money to the work here or both, I really appreciate 

it!  Without your prayer and financial support, none of what I am doing would be possible. 

So thank you!

       To anyone who feels God leading to give to this ministry then you may do so by sending your checks (made out to Calvary Chapel Downeast, with Evan Valarik written in the memo) to the following address:
 

                                                     Calvary Chapel Downeast
                                                        513-1 Bar Harbor Rd.

                                                         Trenton, ME 04605

     I have only been in Paphos now for about 2 weeks, and God is already doing awesome    things here!  I have become a part of an awesome new group of Christian people and I 

really feel like I am already one of the family!  I was introduced to a really cool guy from 

Egypt last Tuesday, named Koko.  He and his family are Coptic Christians (See below for 

links explaining what a Coptic Christians are and what they believe?), he is 19 years old 

and he lives with his 4 younger siblings.  His father is still in Egypt working to help 

support the family here in Cyprus.  He is a really nice kid. We have hung out twice now, 

on Monday we took a walk down to the pier together. We got to talk about life and how he 

is doing, and also we talked for a good portion of time about the Lord and faith.  While we 

were walking, he received a call from one of his friends.  His friend wanted us to meet up 

with him so that we could all go to the mall and look for a phone for Koko's friend.  We 

eventually met up with his friends, they were Palestinian guys living in Cyprus.  So we got 

in their car and went to the mall.  After a bit of searching they could not find the phone 

they were looking for.  So we went to a coffee shop and sat a had a good conversation over 

a cup of coffee.  They spoke in Arabic about some business with a hotel they are 

managing, and then we just got to know each other.  It was a great time, getting to meet all 

of these really cool guys from the West Bank.  I hope we will meet up again soon. Please 

pray that God would use Koko and I to minister to them.

      There is a woman in the city here who is friends of Tim and Darlene (the pastor and his 

wife), she has a son who has been struggling with depression and feeling like he is truly appreciated, like many teens struggle with.  So Tim gave her my number and told her that if her son ever wants to talk to someone or to meet up and hang out with someone who can encourage her son, to call me and set something up.  So please pray that God would be moving in him, that he would call me and that God would use me to really pour into his life, and that he would repent and come to know and serve Jesus!

       I would also like to ask you all if you could please be praying for my visa.  It seems like 

obtaining a visa will be impossible, due to their checklist of requirements you need to 

even be able to be processed!  So pray that God will perform a miracle to keep me here! 

Here is a list of some of the things that I will need just in order to stay here beyond 3 

months:

- A copy of health insurance

- Multiple passport sized photos

- A valid passport

- A local (Cypriot) bank account with 850 Euros (in case of emergency)

- A bank statement from a local bank account, showing that I have enough money to support my self for 6 months. The bank statement they need, may need to show as much as 10,000 euros in the account.  Maybe not, but that wouldn't be unheard of.  I need a miracle!

      So please pray that God would provide for me, if staying here for more than three months is His will for my life.  If I can't get the things they are asking for then I will need to leave for three 

months.  So I am praying that God would show where He would have me go if this is the 

situation that I am faced with in May.  My options as of now are this:

- Go help at a Calvary in Israel

- Maybe go to the North half of Cyprus and help at a new church plant up there

- Go to the Bible school in Hungary and help out there

     The most practical option seems to be Israel.  It is the closest, and therefor the 

potentially cheapest of the options I have.  But ultimately God will have me wherever He 

wants me! Please be praying for this.

     There are a few other people that may be coming here to do mission work with me.  This would be awesome so that when I am gone if I will need to do that, then they will be able to work while I'm gone, then vice versa when they leave.  So pray God will send more help!

      Lastly, being that I am living in a place where many of my ministry possibilities are 

stretched out over a somewhat broad area, it would make things so much more 

convenient and efficient if God would provide me with a small form of transportation.  I 

have found  a few mopeds for sale around the city for around $550 - $600.  These are the 

cheapest forms of transportation that I have found.  Now what I need is for people to be 

seeking the Lord to see if He would have you help in funding me to be able to get moped. 

Being that I have my own daily agenda of ministry to different people I have no form of 

transportation to somewhat far away locations.  A moped would make doing what God has 

me here to do, much more efficient.  

      Thanks once again to everyone who is supporting the work that God is doing through me in different parts of the globe.  I appreciate your prayer and all financial support given to this ministry. God bless, and I hope you all are having a great day!

In Christ!

Evan
Info about Coptic Christians:

http://www.gotquestions.org/Coptic-Christianity.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_Orthodox_Church_of_Alexandria

Already a spiritual battle!

Hey everyone!
     This isn't a very exciting update, but I really just wanted to let you all know how things are going, and to ask you all for prayer for the mission work that I will be doing in Paphos, Cyprus.  I am currently at a hotel in Portland, Maine, as my flight that was scheduled for this morning was cancelled.  So I will be flying out early tomorrow morning and will be arriving in Cyprus later than I initially intended.  But I know that God is in control and I want to have faith that He has a reason for everything!  Please pray for my time of travel, that everything from this point on would go smoothly if it is Gods will for it to be that way.  I hope you all are doing well, and I will send you another update letter once I get to Cyprus!

In Christ

Evan

SUMMER UPDATE FROM KYRGYZSTAN!!!

                                 Summer Update from Bishkek!

Dear friends and family,

                It has been quite a long time since I have sent an update to you regarding what has been going on here in Bishkek.  I have posted some pictures and small daily updates on Facebook occasionally, but I will try and be more diligent with my updates in the future.  Before I get into what has been going on here I would like to thank all of you who support the work that the Lord is doing here! It is greatly appreciated.  The people who give to me financially make everything that I am doing here possible, because you provide me a place to sleep and things to eat.  And to everyone who is praying for the work here in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, I can’t even describe how effective that is.  I truly don’t even know all that it accomplishes.  I just want to say thank you all so much for your faithful support, and will continue to appreciate that support in the future!
          The first big event of the summer was having Jeremy Camp come here!  Jeremy and that whole team was so incredible.  His team consisted of Jeremy and his band, his father pastor Tom Camp, another pastor named Chaz, and a girl named Lika Roman from Ukraine.  Lika is a former model who was named Mrs.  Ukraine in I believe 2009.  It was a huge blessing having them come here and bless this nation with their ministry and their main performance.  For the team of missionaries here in Kyrgyzstan, we got to spend a lot of time with the team.  It was awesome getting to have some great fellowship with them. 
          They arrived on a Monday afternoon, and we met them at a local restaurant.  And at first, I’ll be honest, I was a little excited and giddy just before they got to the restaurant.  Because I was finally acknowledging the fact that we would be meeting Jeremy Camp.  And I was thinking, “what if he is like the stereotypical artist and is conceited and maybe a little jaded and rude?”  But my jitters/mental pre-judgmentalness (not a word) was stopped quickly when Jeremy and his band and crew walked in.  They were all some of the nicest dudes, and girl, that I have ever met.  Jeremy walked in and started shaking all of our hands and giving us nice big hugs.  I was the last one, because I didn’t want to be the first one and act all weird, haha.  So he finally made his way to me, and trying to conceal my excitement in meeting Jeremy I said, “…Hey, what’s up?” in a very unenthusiastic tone, and gave him my hand to shake.  He then swatted that hand away and said, “Come on brother, let’s do a hug!”  So we embraced, and it was grand!  Ok so once all of the intro’s were over, we sat down to order some food.  I sat next to Jeremy’s father Tom, and a friend of Jeremy and Tom named, Chaz.  Jeremy sat two seats away from me.  Once we began talking, we all totally didn’t care that he was a famous musician.  Jeremy and the whole band just became brothers and sisters in Christ.  That day was one of the biggest highlights of that whole week.
           Every night during their stay, we had different events at our church and one other church.  Monday night we had our regular prayer night.  It was quite intimidating, because our worship team played music, because Jeremy and the guys were still tired from their flight and didn’t have the strength to play.  So we played worship in front of them, and it was a little stressful.  Even though we knew that the worship was for the Lord and not them, it was still easy to occasionally look out and make sure they didn’t hear any mistakes.  I was playing drums, like I often do here, and I dropped one of my sticks.  I quickly grabbed it and was really embarrassed because, I haven’t really messed up like that since I have been here.  But, of course the first time I did make a mistake it had to be when Jeremy Camp and the band was listening.  I quickly looked right at their drummer named Leif, and he just smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up, and I could read his lips saying, “It’s all good, dude.” 
           Wednesday night Jeremy and the band led an exclusive worship night for many of the worship leaders of different churches in Kyrgyzstan to come and listen and get to ask worship related questions.  Tom Camp gave a message about boldness and not having fear.  Fear here is a very big issue amongst Christians, just like it is in the States.  However, the fear that the people have here is a little different from the fear a lot of believers have back in the States.  If we share the gospel with someone, people may say, “You’re crazy!” or maybe, “Stop talking to me.” Something to that degree.  Nothing you can’t get over in five minutes.  Here if people share their faith, word may get around that so and so is a Christian and to stop talking with them, and eventually they are totally avoided by just about everyone, even their families.  It still is not an excuse to not share the gospel though!  So the pastor here, Paul, asked if Tom would share about being bold and not having fear of man but rather fear of God.  If you fear man to the point where you don’t dare share the gospel with them then that means that you do not fear God!  You can only fear one thing whole heartedly.
          Thursday night Jeremy and the band played a bigger concert type thing at a different church that has a much bigger stage and sanctuary.  After the band played, Lika Roman gave a message/testimony to encourage young girls and even boys to not worry about their appearance to much but to find their security in God.  I don’t know entirely what she spoke about as she spoke in Russian and I didn’t have a translator so I didn’t catch everything, sorry.  It was a very awesome night!
          Friday night we got together with the band and Lika in their hotel.  We gathered in one of the upstairs rooms and got in a big circle and listened to a brief message from Tom and Jeremy Camp. Then we had a very good intercessory prayer time.  It was soooo awesome!!!  Another cool part about that night is that Tom Camps message was on Philippians 1:21 “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  Which is my life verse.  We were potentially going to take a lot of heat from the government for this concert, so that’s why we were praying so intently and studied such an intense verse.  We were just preparing for the potential aftermath of the concert, because Jeremy said “I’m not going to give a sugarcoated message on stage. I’m going to speak the truth!”  While I had a blast having lunch with the band on Monday, Friday night was still my favorite part of that week, by far!
          So during the concert, which was incredible, he spoke the truth, and as a result, the government wasn’t too happy.  And we are still currently feeling pressure from the government.  What I mean by pressure is that anyone who is not a Kyrgyz citizen can’t really do anything involving ministry in the church.  You might be thinking, “well this is kind of a bummer,” because we can’t really do anything.  However, we can see that this may be a blessing!  A missionary does not intend to stay in a place forever.  We will if that is the Lords calling for our life, but the goal of a missionary is to plant and establish a church in a city somewhere.  Then after some time of building up locals in the church and setting them in place as the pastors and leaders, we leave an move on somewhere else.  Paul gives us this example in the Bible, of going into a place, helping them get going, then leaving them in control while periodically checking in on them to see how things are coming.  That’s our intent here.  So by us not being able to really do any ministry, it’s kind of forcing the stronger believers in the church here to step up and give sermons and be the leaders God intends for them to be.  And normally forcing someone into a situation like this if they aren’t ready would be spiritually irresponsible, however, this is all happening according to Gods timing.  Maybe this is how He is going to move things along!  Like one of my favorite quotes not from the Bible states, from William Shakespeare, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” 
 

        Jeremy and his band left the next morning to head back home.  Our time with them was truly incredible! The week after they left we had Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the kids.  I had the job of dressing up like a clown and walking through one small area of the city to invite people to VBS.  The clown outfit was to look non-threatening, however, like I suspected, it scared more people away than it attracted people.  During the actual VBS time, I was in charge of games!  The first day we played some ice breaker games so they could get to know each other.  Then the rest of the week we played different games involving water.  Everyday they would get very wet!  Overall it was a great week!  “Jesus is our example,” was the theme for the week.  The bible verse to support the theme was john 13:15:  “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”  I think God worked in many of the kids lives, and it was a great time!          
        Since VBS ended, it hasn’t been super busy here.  I have been helping when I am needed, but a large part of my days the last couple weeks has been spent prayer and reading the Word.  I am trying to see what God would have me do, or where God would have me go next.  Still waiting to hear what the Lord wants for me to do.  However in my waiting I know that God is growing me into a stronger follower of Jesus!
           Coming up on August 17^th our church is having a conference at Lake Issyk-kul!  Lake Issyk-kul for those of you who don’t know, is one of the largest lakes in Central Asia or the Middle East.  The place where we are having the conference is a beautiful place next to the mountains and alongside the beach of the lake.  It will be a good time of relaxing and meditating on the Word of God and listening for His voice in our lives.  We are having a few guest speakers, but I am not entirely sure who yet.  I will send another update in the end of August going into detail what we learned while at the conference.  Please pray that God would do a mighty work in the lives of those people from our church that actually come to the conference!

            I would like to end this by asking all of you to continue giving financially and in prayer for the work that is going on here!  There is some awesome stuff going on and your prayers and financial support is vital to this work continuing! Thank you all and I pray you all are having a Great summer!  And I pray that you are all being bold witnesses for Christ back in the States! 

For His glory!
Evan

Hey Guys this is Jeremy Camp talking about coming to Bishkek! It's dubbed over in Russian, but I thought you might want to see it still!