Church Catalyst Director David Giles has been crunching the numbers and is really happy at the results he’s seeing for church plants and baptisms in the division’s fields last year.

“We estimated that we would plant 59 churches in 2011,” said David, “but I just got the numbers from Kenya so I have the total – 80 church plants in 2011 in CC fields!”

Highlights worth noting:

• There were 13 church plants and 1,026 baptisms in the Turkana, Kenya, churches in 2011.
• The Community Christian Church of Kenya planted 38 new churches in the Maasai and Turkana areas.
• The Maasai churches added 661 new members in 2011.
• Ten churches were planted in England through the Church Planting Task Force; three of the Great Britain field team members work with this partnership.
• Eighteen churches were planted in Ethiopia – 13 among the Oromo people and 5 among the Gumuz. There were also 200 baptisms in the Gumuz area in the last six months of 2011.

Other Church Catalyst fields such as Tanzania (5 new churches, 300 baptisms), Ivory Coast (1 new church) and Ukraine (8 new churches) also experienced significant growth in 2011.

“I’m thrilled with these reports,” said David. “These are the results of the Holy Spirit working through CMF missionaries, national church leaders and effective field partnerships.”

More than 140 participants, including 68 campers and 72 caregivers, attended a camp for the mentally and physically challenged in Bakchesserye, Ukraine, recently, reports CMF missionary June Johnson, a nurse who served on the medical staff of the camp.

Only about 20 percent of the participants were Christians. The youngest camper was 3 years old and the oldest is in his 50s. Each day’s program began with a “wake up/work out” to words and music that made everyone wiggle and grin. After breakfast, they studied the life of Abraham in small groups, and attended morning and evening worship services with skits, a message, puppets and songs.

Several of June’s colleagues assisted at the camp. Dr.Ludmilla works with June at the Premorski Church clinic and Era is an associate from the Berdanski Church clinic. In addition, a  team from the Ukraine Christian Medical Association traveled five hours south to serve all week. They brought a surgeon/dentist with two assistants who performed some minor procedures and pulled teeth. Another team member fitted reading glasses and another gave massages.

The families of the campers were overwhelmed by the care given to their special needs relatives. When June asked the mother of a 20-year-old autistic man how the camp had met her expectations, the mother responded with tears and amazement in her voice: “The attention . . . these young healthy leaders give so much attention to the children.”

“The Great Gardener, master and owner of His orchard, desired to share Himself with them and He did that by harvesting the fruits of the Spirit from the program team, teenage helpers, local church members, medical staff and kitchen crew,” June writes. “Love gets you out of bed after only five hours of sleep to help a wheelchair-bound 20-year-old get ready for the day. Joy makes you sprint up the hill to help carry a wheelchair-bound 50-year-old man down to the beach. Peace brings a smile when three boys with Down’s syndrome clamor to get your attention at once. Patience understands that her anger is out of fear. Kindness offers to feed him so that his mom can eat her meal. Goodness prompts you to play peek-a-boo with an 18-year-old just because it makes her smile. Self-control calmly answers the same question for the 32^nd time.”

“As believers, we are called to bear spiritual fruit for God’s use,” she adds. “The fruit is our gift back to God for His glory. Once again, it was an honor to serve alongside all of these Ukrainian Christians because they were like a free, you-pick orchard, open 24/7 to everyone. Their fruit wasn’t plastic but real and ripe, sweet and for the taking.”

Cory Lemke, a CMF missionary who worked with his wife Janice in Ukraine for 15 years, was recently honored by his alma mater, Northwest Christian University, with the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.

Cory’s road to missionary service began with a degree from a community college in 1980 and a career in business technology with Pacific Power and Light. But in 1986, convinced that God had called him into full-time ministry, Cory quit his job to attend NCU. He received a degree in cross-cultural ministry in 1988, and earned a master’s degree in leadership and church growth at NCU in 1993.

Cory and Janice affiliated with CMF in Nov. 1993, and joined the new CMF-Ukraine team in 1995 in Feodosia, a city of 100,000 on the Crimean Peninsula. They focused on leadership development and church planting in urban areas and villages.

Cory worked with two national leaders to create a training program for men to start new churches in Eastern Crimea. Less than 1 percent of the population there attends any kind of church. Most villages had no church of any kind.

In 1998 the first group of trainees began studying in the program. They went on to work in various towns and villages, planting churches through the cell church/small group strategy. Since that time, men from throughout Crimea have been trained as church planters and have planted more than 100 churches and brought many to Christ.

Cory and Janice are the parents of two daughters and now live in Eugene, Oregon.