🫶Leonid Oglo shares the exciting news:

💕”We sent gifts and children’s Bibles by post to children from remote villages who attended our camps but were unable to come to church because they live so far away. There are no minibuses to one of the villages, so the road is a real challenge for them.

✨But distance is no obstacle to love and care. We do not forget these children: we remember them, pray for them, and strive to bring the Word of God to each of them. May the Lord touch their hearts, bless and protect every family.

🙏🏻Thank you to everyone who joins us in this work with their prayers and support.

Over the past few weeks, our organization’s representative, Dmytro Baurda, had the opportunity to hold a series of meetings in various cities across Ukraine to talk about the ministry of the PBU, share its vision, and establish new partnerships.

📚 Lviv. Meeting with teachers from general education schools

A warm meeting with 11 teachers from Lviv schools took place at the city media library. They discussed how teachers can instill a biblical perspective in parents at schools with the help of volunteers, as well as the possibility of conducting training courses for teachers to help them develop a biblical approach to raising children. They also talked about how teachers can be useful to the PBU within their qualifications—as translators, literacy teachers, and consultants.

🙏 Lviv. Pastoral meeting

About 70 ministers gathered at the Perlyna Educational School and the Bilsha Blagodat Church. During the meeting, they discussed family ministry, learned about the activities of the PBU, and discussed the importance of the translation movement. The meeting concluded with a prayer for missionaries and a call to joint ministry.

📖 Lviv. Church “Source of Life”

A meeting was held here with doctoral student Robert Petrilak, who is already familiar with the PBU program. During the meeting, educational programs for missionaries were exchanged and ways of further cooperation in the field of biblical education were discussed.

⛪️ Chernivtsi. Pastoral Council

In Chernivtsi, Dmytro presented the ministry of the PBU, afterwards, participants discussed current challenges facing local churches. The meeting ended in a friendly atmosphere with an exchange of gifts, contacts, and mutual support.

🔥 Pushcha-Vodytsia. Youth Leadership Conference

The organization “Bible Translators of Ukraine” was presented among youth movements at the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary. About two hundred young people had the opportunity to see our presentation, inspiring books, and main mission idea—that every nation should have the opportunity to read the Bible in their native language.

🙌 We are grateful to God for these opportunities, as well as to all our partners, pastors, teachers, and young leaders who open their hearts to the Bible mission. Together we can do more—so that the Word of God can be heard by every nation in Ukraine and around the world!

✨The journey of this children’s Bible has been long and difficult, but today we are happy to announce that the book has been published. The translation of My First Picture Bible began in 2022, but due to the outbreak of full-scale war, the process took almost two years. Many translators were forced to leave their homes, move to other countries, adapt to new living conditions, learn languages, and work in situations where there was not always stable electricity or the opportunity to meet regularly to work together.

💫The translation required much more than simply transferring the text into another language. After each text translation was completed, face-to-face meetings were held with the translators to proofread, discuss wording, and clarify content. The texts were then sent for layout, followed by several more rounds of proofreading to eliminate errors, inaccuracies, and typos. Only then was the final version approved for printing.

☺️Initially, it was planned that the translation would be completed faster, but organizational circumstances made adjustments. In addition, printing was planned only after the completion of all five Romani translations, so we had to wait until the work on each language was completely finished.

🫶Most of the texts were translated back in 2024. This was our first experience with such a large-scale project, so there were delays and learning curves along the way. In 2025, the final steps were taken: the layout was completely ready, the book design was agreed upon, and the final preparations for printing were made. Printing took place at the end of December or early January, after the New Year.

✍️The book was published in five Romani dialects: Transcarpathian, Crimean, Servyckyj, Lovarskyj, and Vlashskyj. The following people worked on the translation: Ruslan and Iryna Surmay (Transcarpathian dialect), Dmytro and Zolushka Vakarenko, and their children Isaac, Zhemchuzhyna-Esfir, and Sulamita (Crimean dialect), Volodymyr Shcherbakov (Servyckyj dialect), Petro Portanenko (Lovarskyj dialect), Yanush Panchenko, and Mykhailo Oslon (Vlah dialect).

📚Work on My First Bible in Pictures continues. Currently, the book is being translated into two Romani languages spoken in Moldova: Laezh and Ursary.

🙏🏻This project has shown that even in difficult times of war, instability, and forced displacement, it is possible to work together to see a project through to completion and give children a book in their native language. 

🤍We thank God for the opportunities and blessings in spreading the Bible.