Tairova

Vision

Developing passionate disciples of Jesus Christ who radiate the kingdom of God.

Who

The team working in Tairova is the ZurBurg family and Amanda Keeny.

What

This team is following Jesus in the least reached southern portion of Odessa, Ukraine. They have a strong focus on building relationships while keeping their structures simple, in order to serve the community and grow the church in creative and sustainable ways.

New Life Plastic Ministry

One exciting new part of the ministry in Tairova is the New Life Plastic program. Its purpose: to bless our community by sharing the life-changing story of the Gospel through local plastic recycling initiatives. From collecting and sorting bottles to washing and sorting caps by color and then making interesting new creations from the melted caps, this program has enabled us to connect with so many more local people whom we’d otherwise never have gotten a chance to meet and to have many conversations about Jesus along the way.

New Life Plastic has provided opportunities to help people in difficult situations. Some may be finding the strength and courage to work again after fighting a chronic disease, while others are widows looking to supplement their pension, which does not meet their needs each month. Still others are homeless or dig through the trash to look for things to sell in order to buy food this month. The plastic recycling program enables us to help people in a way that maintains their dignity and allows for increased connection with believers in Jesus. Through God’s working in the life of one of the men working in our project, Zhenya, we have become connected with a Christian drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. Men and women there are learning great life lessons through simple jobs like washing and sorting bottle caps and then shredding and forming them into sheets. These sheets are then made into something unique and beautiful, which gives new life to something once used up and discarded. Like the bottles we work with, we, too, have been washed clean by Jesus and become new creations in Him, and it’s an honor and a privilege to share this life-changing story of Jesus with people around us.

In all of these opportunities, God is growing His church as we disciple Ukrainians by following Jesus together.