Centers of Hope Part 1: The Winding Road to Ukraine
Long before Abe and Diane Bible met and began Centers of Hope, they each felt called to missions as children living on opposite sides of the world. In Holland, Abe saw a short film in school about a missionary and told the Lord that’s what he wanted to do with his life. In the United States, missionary stories surrounded Diane from retellings at children’s church to missionaries themselves passing through the area. Over time, the draw towards missions grew into a calling at ten years old. Neither Abe nor Diane received specific details as to what this would look like later in their lives.
As Abe grew up, he held to the notion that being a missionary meant going beyond familiar borders and immigrated to Canada at age nineteen. The Lord used those early years to shape his skills, attend Bible school, and stir in him a desire for further education, ultimately leading him to Malone University in Ohio. Meanwhile, Diane was looking in the direction of medical missions and attended the same college. By their own account, a shared passion for the mission field, not initial love, brought them together. About a year after Abe’s graduation, God gave them a love for one another, and they married.
The Bibles entered ministry by pastoring and doing a short missions stint in Alaska before returning to Canada, where their evangelistic efforts unexpectedly led to planting a church. After around nine years, the Lord made it obvious that ministry was coming to an end. Abe then sought direction at a nearby mission information center where he shared his experience and desires. The staff relayed details on a brand new ministry, Biblical Education by Extension (B.E.E.), starting up in Eastern Europe and as Abe listened, he felt the blood drain from his face. Recognizing the Lord’s hand, he jumped in his car, raced home, and proclaimed, “We’re going to Eastern Europe!”.
Abe began preparing immediately by taking various college courses, including classes to learn Russian. Having a wife and four children, however, made it more difficult to uproot and commit to an unknown ministry. Despite his initial enthusiasm, Abe felt it wise to actually go and see what he was committing to. As the Lord would have it, a chance to make the trip covertly arose through the college. A communist youth group, the Komsomol, invited university students to tour Russia– a form of propaganda to display the “success” of Soviet socialism. As welcomed visitors, Abe and his younger peers openly entered the Soviet Union.
During his travels, Abe became acutely aware of the harsh realities of life under communism and the severe restrictions placed on Christians. Freedoms such as possessing Bibles, expressing faith publicly, and pursuing religious education simply didn’t exist. As for basic provisions, scarcity was a way of life. Even little handfuls of sugar or a cup of milk were considered prized commodities. Despite this, Abe offered the Lord his willingness to follow His calling, regardless of the struggle or the threat of imprisonment. By God’s grace, Abe then visited B.E.E. in Austria and made the decision to join the ministry.
The people living behind the Iron Curtain eagerly desired spiritual food, but the lack of resources left them deprived. The Romanian government, for example, only permitted a few people a year to graduate from seminary. There were hundreds of underground churches throughout communist Eastern Europe, but pastors lacked training and necessary knowledge of the Bible. B.E.E. responded to this gap by deploying pastoral training and Biblical materials. When Abe and Diane moved to Austria in 1983, they helped fill the former role in this “seminary on wheels” while Al and Betty Baanna oversaw the huge task of smuggling materials in.
In the beginning, Abe conducted this work in Romania, Hungary, and Poland. As a “tourist”, he travelled every three weeks to the various locations while secretly meeting with and training pastors of these underground churches.
To further protect all those involved, B.E.E. ran this equipping program on a rotation. This meant that Abe would travel and teach, or facilitate lessons in several cities for 10 days, then leave. Later, a different teacher would follow up with the pastors to continue the course. Abe did this for four years teaching, training, and supporting hidden churches until the doors opened to the Bibles’ target destination– the Soviet Union.
Although communism did not control Austria, Vienna had a reputation as “spy city”. To avoid any associations with ministry, the Bibles moved to England for two years so that Abe could travel and minister from there. However, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and impending change, they relocated to Ukraine in 1990. Abe continued traveling and training pastors through B.E.E., but with less secrecy. When the Iron Curtain finally fell a year later, Abe could begin to train large groups of men, passing the training on to many more leaders throughout the whole country.
As republics across Eastern Europe became independent nations, people could freely express their longing for the Word of God for the first time in seventy years. Bibles arrived by the truckloads— a significant blessing, considering the many hand-copied versions in circulation. Despite tremendous economic chaos, both Christians and nonbelievers alike desired to learn about Jesus in the spirit of true revival. Abe trained hundreds of leaders through B.E.E., leading to many new church plants. This continued until a new cultural shift began in 2015, paving the way for the development of their current ministry— Centers of Hope.
To be continued . . .
