I accompanied Eastern European Mission workers as they made unannounced visits to three public schools in this western Ukrainian city. We found the ministry’s illustrated children’s Bibles in libraries and classrooms. We asked elementary school kids to tell us what they were learning, and they related stories about the fall of man, the birth of Moses and the crucifixion of Christ. The highlight of the day was talking with a seven-member academic team.

On the second leg of my Ukraine reporting trip, I’m in the country’s “Bible Belt,” where Churches of Christ are strongest since the first missionaries visited in the mid-1990s. Now, two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, we’re seeing the first second-generation preaching students at the Ukrainian Bible Institute, a ministry training facility affiliated with Lubbock, Texas-based Sunset International Bible Institute. Miroslav Seliverstov is one of them.

More than 300 church members from across this Eastern European nation are praising God, getting to know one another and baptizing new believers on the shores of the beautiful black sea. My shorts are still wet from kneeling in the frigid water to take photos of 11 new souls added to the church just minutes ago. I’m in Ukraine — where Churches of Christ have found the most fertile fields in Erope — at a church-planting conference.

Church members in Ukraine are mourning the sudden death of Natasha Tsvyashchenko, Ukrainian Operations Coordinator for Eastern European Mission. Tsvyashchenko, of Donetsk, Ukraine, died Jan. 3.

Montenegro has no known Churches of Christ. I confirmed that with a member of the church in Belgrade, who also told me that, in a recent census, only a handful of Montenegrins (that’s what citizens of Montenegro are called — I looked it up) identify themselves as “evangelicals.” I’m not even sure that we have had a baptism in Montenegro — at least not until July 19, 2010. That’s the day when a young woman named Marsida was baptized in the Cen River by Bledi Valca, a minister for a Church of Christ in Tirana, Albania.

Greg Perry, who helped launch YouthReach International in in 1993, has stepped down as a member of the ministry’s staff. The ministry, formerly known as World Wide Youth Camps, “provides positive adult relationships for orphans and at-risk children through mentoring opportunities with local Ukrainian and Russian … mentors,” according to its website. Greg will continue to serve on YouthReach’s board.

I just got a report from Sokol Haxhiu, who works with the Church of Christ in the European city of Tirana, Albania. Sokol and a team of Albanian Christians put together a three-week Bible camp recently, including week-long sessions for kids ages 10 to 14, 15 to 18 and 18 and older. Here’s a snippet from Sokol’s report: “In reality, by faith we started thinking and planning a couple of years ago about the possibility of conducting a summer Christian camp in Albania in order to serve all Churches of Christ. This was a sizeable undertaking considering that we didn’t have much experience in setting-up and running Christian camps and also lacked the necessary financial resources for realizing such a project. However, we trusted God and asked for his wisdom and power and we did all we could to make this happening. And God blessed us beyond our thinking and imagination.”

We received a record number of comments when we asked you to share your favorite church camp stories. But the U.S. isn’t the only place where church camp makes a tremendous difference in young lives. I got a message from Eric Williamson, minister for the Chesmont Church of Christ in Pottstown, Pa., with an update on Camp Hope — a weeklong camp for orphans in the former Soviet republic of Latvia. “We had over 80 orphans at the camp and about 40 workers,” Eric writes. “Lives were changed, relationships were built and children as well as staff began studying more.”