A NEWSLETTER. 2011Jake & Anya KnottsChernigov, Ukraine

Winter/Spring

MINISTRY VIDEOCheck out this video our friends from the Halle Project put together for us highlighting our city and the vision of our church.

TRIP TO THE STATESWe spent last fall in the States visiting family and churches.

Some highlights included being with family for the holidays after 2 1/2 years of being in Ukraine without visiting as well as traveling, meeting many new people, and building new friendships with over four churches.

Anya and I were also able to attend Desiring God’s national conference where we made new contacts for our publishing ministry, listened to great teaching, as well as visited with missionary friends.

We also attended an Acts 29 Church Planting conference and became candidates with the Acts 29 Network. This proved to be a huge answer to prayer as we have been for some time looking to get connected to a network and we feel very aligned with Acts 29 both theologically and philosophically. Their mission is to plant churches and that is why we are here in Ukraine and I believe that we will be able to learn much from this network and are thankful for new the relationships we are building.

Our In Lumine Media publishing team with the Larsons at the DG Nat Con

THE CHURCHOur church has experienced an influx of new people over the last 6 months. Many of them have already placed their faith in Christ. As a church we are encouraged and seeing more discipleship taking place.

Our youth group, which started less than 9 months ago, is going well and has about 15 people in it, nearly all of whom are new to the faith.

The men in the church continue to meet regularly and it has proven to be a significant instrument for growth in the lives of many. Please pray for the guys in our church to become faithful and loving men with a servants heart.

One of the things our church has been considering recently is finding a facility that will serve the needs of our growing body. We are looking into purchasing or renting long term and praying for the Lord to lead us.

With the summer coming we ‘re really looking forward to evangelism and discipleship, teams coming and individuals joining us in serving the Lord.

The Museum downtown where our church meets each Sunday

CONFERENCEThis last March we had a privilege to host a conference with Walter Price as the main speaker. Walter is the pastor of Fellowship In The Pass church in Beaumont, CA. We had invited believers from other cities to join us and had many more come than we expected.

The conference was held in school #1 right downtown where we’ve done many outreaches in the past and the theme was “Loving God”. It was a great time of fellowship and learn-ing about how God’s love begins with the trinity and God himself and how we experience and are changed by his love.

Later this spring we’re hoping to have another retreat, this time for our church exclu-sively, in order to grow in unity and set time aside from our busy lives to worship Jesus together and talk about vision and mission.

Pastor Walter Price with Olya Velichko translating

THE HALLE PROJECTSome friends of ours from our sending church in San Luis Obispo, CA, who are very gifted in both photography and videography, came out for a visit in March.

Ben, Drew, and Tyler of the Halle Project and Cameron Ingalls, a professional photogra-pher, spent 5 days with us documenting our mission work.

They put together videos highlighting our work in the TB hospital, our church, our publishing ministry, and coached us in using Russian language video to influence the church at large here.

Cameron took amazing photos of the TB hospital and blessed all of the missionaries in our city as well as in Kagarlyk where our friends live with family photos.

It was very enjoyable spending time with all four of them and we were extremely blessed by their work. All of them see their vocation as mission and are uniquely being used by God.

Discover more about the Halle Project’s mission here.

Ben Potter of the Halle Project filming the kids in the TB hospital

TUBERCULOSIS HOSPITALOver the last winter with the help of believers in the States and Ukraine we were able to install 10 new windows in the children’s ward.

This coming summer our goal is to keep improving the living conditions out there as well as teaching the kids more about Jesus. At the moment, the kids there hear the Bible taught every other Saturday.

Our construction goals include:

Remodeling the bedrooms Remodeling the bathroom Building them a playground

A lot of the kids in the hospital have HIV and as soon as admitted end up living there in many cases up to two years. It’s a dark place to spend a good portion of your childhood. We hope to bring hope through the gospel and improving their living conditions.

You can see more photos of the kids and facility here.

A nurse getting ready to give the kids their daily shots of antibiotics

PUBLISHING PROGRESSIn Lumine Media, our publishing ministry, is currently working on our largest project to date. We are translating The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones into both Russian and Ukrainian. We are networking with different organizations in Ukraine that work with children to provide them with bibles at cost. We plan to print 20,000 copies in Ukrainian. You can learn more about the project here.

In Lumine has a new full time employee, Marina Padiy, who is also the worship leader in our church. She starts in May, will be our Project Manager, and is going to be a great addition to our small team.

Heaven by Alcorn was recently printed and Theological Clarity and Application by Thomas as well as Porn Again Christian by Driscoll were also completed as ebooks.

We recently contracted rights to publish both Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin, A Praying Life by Paul Miller, and A Gospel Centered Life workbook by Bob Thune. Work also continues on Mark Driscoll video and we hope to have some samples online soon.

One of our goals has been to publish Tim Keller’s books in Russian. We are dialoguing right now with the rights holder about The Prodigal God, Counterfeit gods, and Generous Justice.

The Children’s Bible we are currently working on

PORTERBROOK NETWORKThe Porterbrook Network is a church-based training program with a large emphasis on gospel transformation and mission. It is designed to be accessible, affordable, and flexible in it’s application. It is a two year program made up of 24 classes and is rich in gospel-based theological formation.

We are currently dialoguing with the Network and starting to raise funds to translate the 24 classes into Russian.

This church-based, gospel-oriented, missional type of training seems to be a perfect fit for where we are and our need for leadership development and church planting in both Chernigov and elsewhere. The great thing about Porterbrook is that it is reproducible once the material is available and can be used in any city all over the former Soviet Union.

Right now we are praying for a coalition of individuals and churches to partner with us financially to see this program become available. It is the equivalent of translating 24 books, so we hope to see many people come on board to make it happen because the long term fruit for the Russian speaking church will be significant. Please let us know if you are interested in being a part of this project.

“The Porterbrook Network is an excellent resource for equipping churches and individuals as we look at responding in a distinctive gospel manner to the needs in our nation and world.”

Tim Keller on the Porterbrook Network

OUR FAMILYLev is over a year and a half old, loves cars more than anything, and is a whole lot of fun.

Maia is now in pre-school and quickly began to speak fluently in Russian after being in the States last fall and forgetting everything. She really enjoys the social interaction with the kids in school and looks forward to going to school everyday.

Jake was able to get some testing done to see how his Kidney Disease is progressing and we learned that over the last two years it hasn’t really changed much, which is good news. We hoping to get more testing done to determine the cause of frequent migraines. We would appreciate your prayers.

Anya is doing great. She’s planning on taking a trip to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in early June with 3 girls from the church to help in the church there and visit with friends.

PRAYER NEEDS

Men’s discipleshipA more functional building for the church and publishing ministrySpirit-filled evangelism for all of the believers in our churchAnya’s trip to KyrgyzstanThe Porterbrook training project

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

PrayCreate awareness in your church about the work in UkraineNetwork with others to underwrite the cost of translating the Porterbrook curriculumRegularly financially support our family’s mission work

SUPPORTIf you are interested in supporting our mission work or any specific project financially, you can do so by debit or credit card by simply going to:

http://www.calvaryslo.com/missions/(Be sure to choose The Knotts Family when filling in the info)

Or you can send a check to with Knotts Family on the memo line to:

CalvarySLO Church4029 S. Higuera St. SLO, CA 93401

The makeshift soccer goals in the TB hospital’s play area that we would like to replace

CONTACTjakeknotts@gmail.comanyaknotts@gmail.com

38 063 563 0069 (cell)jakeknotts (skype)

P.O. Box 1842Chernigov, 14000UKRAINE

knotts.com.ua

The second oldest church in Ukraine, built in the 11th century, located in Chernigov

THANKSWe appreciate you taking the time to connect with us through this newsletter.

We would like to say thank you to the Halle Project and Cameron Ingalls for generously letting us use their photos throughout this newsletter, their video work, and their photos of our family.