God is clearly impacting lives through ESL ministry in Ukraine. Current and former students see Christ lived out in the examples of their teachers and gain a better understanding of His love for them during extracurricular activities and other times spent with teachers.

Cornerstone has been serving the people of Uzhgorod, Ukraine for more than eight years and has developed a very good reputation in the community. Many people come to our office before or during any given semester to find out how and when they can register for classes.

We find ourselves consistently short of teachers. Those who do come for a semester or more are met with warm reception by their Ukrainian students and receive strong support from the team of long term missionaries and teachers who are here. While not always easy, the experience is definitely positive.

Unfortunately, the shortage of teachers we face limits the amount of ministry we are able to do, and many potential students are turned away each semester.

Students at Cornerstone are ten years old and older, and range diversely in background and in purpose for learning the language. This diversity makes ministering to them collectively a unique and interesting challenge.

The local public schools are very open to have Cornerstone teachers visit their classes and share with the students. School directors have invited Cornerstone teachers to attend their conferences and to hold seminars for them. This is a wonderful opportunity to impact teachers in a secular setting with Christian values. I believe this can help to reshape and expand current perspectives on the role of a teacher in teacher-student relationships.

There is also a great deal of potential in the business sector of the community. Government agencies and company employees alike stand to benefit from learning English. One big advantage Cornerstone has over other schools in the city is that our teachers are native English speakers, and this has given us credibility. While students don’t necessarily realize it, though, the fact that our school is a ministry rather than a business is the real reason they are drawn to us. We have heard many students comment about the difference they see and feel in our school and in our teachers. It is a lot of fun listening as they try to describe this difference. We know without a doubt that this difference is Jesus Christ.

Following are glimpses into ESL life:

Students hard at work

ESL Activity - Thanksgiving

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 1:12 pm by Kent and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.