COMPUTER SKILLS

Posters placed on fences and personal invitations by church members announced the coming of a team from the U.S. to teach computers at the Birth of Christ Church in Kiev in April.  The response was, as always, amazing.

Forty students joined the team of eight from the Washington, D.C., area to crowd around eight desks during two classes each day for a week.  Some came curious about America and wanting to practice their English.  Others came though they’d never touched a computer, realizing the importance of new job skills.  Delight spread across their faces as they experienced the magic of cut-and-paste and the creativity of developing a colorful graphic design based on Christ’s empty tomb or John 3:16.

Often in a classroom setting, students remain strangers to each other and never talk personally with the teachers.  But the U.S. team found most of the students open and responsive, perhaps due in part to the many great needs in their lives.  One teenage girl was the oldest of 11 children, all of whom lived in one room with their alcoholic parents.  She began bringing her younger siblings to the classes; they loved decorating cakes in a computer game but really ate up the hugs and conversations with the teachers!  A young man who walked into the class using a cane bore scars of a near-fatal drunk-driving accident.  We learned that God had used his brush with death to reclaim his life and heart.

Several students specifically mentioned that they came to upgrade their job skills since computers are becoming more commonplace in Ukraine.  But teaching computer skills is not the primary course objective in a computer outreach.  The team came to Kiev to show Jesus Christ to a community through their love, service, and words.  At the beginning of the week, one student started openly arguing with the men who gave the gospel talks during class.  At the closing ceremony he asked for the microphone and spontaneously expressed his gratitude “not only for the opportunity to learn computers, but also to learn about Jesus.”

During the last class the students learned how to do e-mail.  Several of the students and their teachers have already found a very positive application:  they continue their new friendships – by e-mail, of course.