NOVEMBER, 2008

NEWS FROM RUSSIA AND ESTONIA

Thanks to all of you for your continued prayers, friendship and financial giving to our ministry. We are very thankful for all of you, and our friendship and gratitude is not based on what you do for us, but is based on what Christ has done for all of us! We are just thankful to God for you, plain and simple!

The world is in and we think will continue to be in a time of financial crisis for an extended period of time. It seems like most of the industrialized world is affected, but we also know that God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of need. Our life styles and decisions regarding finances and 'needs' may change, but our God never changes, and His priorities of saving the lost never change. He is continually concerned about His people and the lost of the world, and we hope we can continue to have an outward focus during these changing times.

We are glad to share with you the wonderful things Jesus is doing among us, bringing salvation and healing! Our evangelism has shifted from street concerts to personal witnessing in dorms and other locations. We are continuing with the School of Ministry and will be featuring a different student each month in our “Student Spotlight.”

Jesus Heals Today!

We eyewitness it in our church services quite often, especially when our students and graduates move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here is a testimony from this month. Galya (photo on right) visited our church service. During worship, a word of knowledge was given that there is someone in the audience who has a back problem that God wants to heal. She immediately responded – her spine had been bent for seven years as a result of pregnancy. Even though her daughter is now 7 years old, the pain never left her and she lost mobility in her back: she could not bend either forward, or backward. As a result of laying on of hands and prayer for her healing, she felt the pain leave immediately and she could freely bend for the first time in all these years. She happily testified to the whole church and we gave glory to God for this miracle!

We also pray a lot for the brothers and sisters whom Jesus delivered from drug addiction but they still have the consequences of drug abuse in their bodies such as HIV, hepatitis C, etc… Recently one of the girls who is going through rehabilitation in our center – Lena (on the photo) went to the hospital for a scheduled check up related to hepatitis C. To the doctors’ great surprise the tests could not detect any virus in her blood! This is the fourth healing from Hep C that we have seen in 2008. All of them are documented, both the original tests and present tests stating that there is no virus in their blood.

Evening Bible School

Recently we added Monday Evening Bible Studies to the School of Ministry for those in our fellowship who came to the Lord not so long ago or felt the need to get a systematic foundation in the Word of God, but due to other obligations could not commit to coming to School every morning. We are having a fruitful time feeding the spiritually hungry. At the same time, the students and graduates of the School of Ministry have a wonderful opportunity to practice and develop their teaching gifts.

Christmas Feed-In Preparations – We Need Your Help!

Every Christmas for the past 12 years we have gathered either Christian rehab centers of St. Petersburg or street people together to worship, fellowship, have a Christmas meal, celebrate God’s goodness and testify of His power to save, heal and restore lives. Last year more than 300 people came together from 12 rehab centers, sharing that such events brings us closer to Jesus, brings hope, encouragement and increased vision, and contributes to unity and cooperation between the rehab centers. It also produced fruit in helping the young people of Russia to fight drug addiction which is a national plague and to focus on winning more souls by the transforming power of Jesus Christ. We are planning our next feed-in for this year and are making invitations and preparations now. For this, we need $5,2000 USD. Please prayerfully consider making a donation to make this very worthwhile and fruitful celebration a reality again this year. On the left is a photo of several former heroin addicts, now strong Christian sisters, fellowshipping together at last Christmas’s Feed-In.

News From John and Sara Russell In Estonia

We have moved!!!

Hello everyone! We love you and thank God for you! Sara and I have moved from St Petersburg, Russia to Tallinn, Estonia. That is a move of about 5 hours from a city of 5.5 million to a capital city with a population of 400,000. Our ministry in Russia continues under the capable leadership of Pastor Arkady Bizyanov, along with Vera Abezina running the School of Ministry/Bible School and Sergei Tovstopyat heading up the Rehab Center. We have been in Tallinn for 2 months, setting up a base here, while visiting Russia for at least one week each month.

What we are doing and why we are here.

For the past 3 years, we have been bringing teams from Russia to both Estonia and Finland. We have ministered in churches, rehab centers and done evangelism on the streets in these countries. Just as God broke our hearts for the unsaved youth of Russia, He has done the same thing regarding the youth of Estonia and Finland. We have known for quite some time that we were to start a work here, but we just did not know His timing until recently. When everything fell into place, with several confirmations, including new visa laws in Russia prohibiting my staying for more than 90 days out of every 180 days, we moved. We were able to move into the first house we looked at, with a minimum of difficulty and the owner agreeing on a lower rent than we were paying in St Petersburg. Our plans and vision include starting a work reaching the lost youth from the streets, having an evangelism and worship group and teaching on evangelism, worship and prophetic ministry in the local churches who are hungry for this. We have applied for residency and are also working on visas to bring a team from Russia to assist us. About 30% of the Estonian people are ethnic Russians, and they are some of the people we are called to minister to. There are a number of Russian speaking churches and pastors here that we have already become friends with and whom we are ministering together with. It is not our desire to take people from existing churches to work with us. As we did in Russia, we want to build things from the ground up by going out and winning youth off of the street and seeing them raised up. This process is much longer, but we feel that this is the proper way to build the Kingdom, or at least the way we feel that He has called us to do things. We will be translating some of our Russian literature and tracts into Estonian for evangelism, until the time that we have fresh, local tracts. We have quickly fallen in love with the country and people here, while not losing our love for the dear Russian people who still need Jesus as much or more than ever. Tallinn is a medieval city dating back to 800 AD. There are parts of the city with buildings that are several hundred years old and you have the feeling you are going back in time. Under Soviet domination, 1/3 of the population of Estonia were killed or exiled. (yes you heard right, 1/3 of the entire population were gone in 2 years after Soviet occupation). They were replaced by ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and other Soviets. Hence, the now mixed population of the country. Right now, Estonia has the highest per capita HIV rate of any EU country, and is going through huge, rapid changes from being subjugated to being part of a free democratic Europe. It is also experiencing the same financial crisis as Europe, the US and the rest of the industrialized world. There are a number of Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Charismatic and non aligned churches throughout the country, although the overall protestant population is in decline, and most church growth is because of people changing churches. By God's grace, we expect to see many young people coming into and staying in the Kingdom of God. We would appreciate your prayers for grace, favor, financial supply and ever-unfolding vision from God, and that we are able to find the keys to the hearts of the young people here. As we are and always have been a faith based missionary work, we need financial support and would appreciate any help that God would put in your heart to give. Our monthly expenses are presently $3,000. For more info on this very exciting and fascinating country, you could click on the following link: http://www.worldinfozone.com/facts.php?country=Estonia

God bless you abundantly, John and Sara in Tallinn, Estonia.

Evangelism

Do you ever feel like giving up after you share the Gospel with people but do not see immediate results or change in someone’s life, or even receive mocking or persecution? Here is an encouraging story from Gosha, a School of Ministry graduate and a tireless evangelist:

“In my life before Christ I was a drug addict and 6 times was in prison. During one of those times, I met a guy named Roma. He was a musician, a punk rocker and was in prison for much lesser crimes than I was – we became friends. He preferred alcohol at the time, but after I demonstrated to him that drugs are “much cooler”, he very soon became a user, then an addict, just like me, and got his brother hooked on heroin too. In and out of prisons, we kept company for years. Then once out of prison, while Roma was still in, I repented, went for rehabilitation, then School of Ministry. I remembered my friend and visited him many times to tell him the Gospel of Jesus. Unfortunately, he only mocked. One day when he was out of prison, I managed to bring him to a church service. It was obvious that the Holy Spirit touched Roma but he was too proud to surrender under God’s conviction and ran away cursing and swearing at me when I tried to stop him. Shortly after that, he was arrested again for selling drugs and put in prison. To my great surprise I recently received a phone call from him. With tears of joy, he shared with me how he kept thinking of what he heard from me and in the church, obtained the Bible, started reading it in his cell and prayed to God asking to forgive his sins and change his life. Roma really sounded like a new creature. Moreover, he asked if I could send him some Christian literature for Bible studies and Gospel tracts to distribute among the prisoners. In addition to that Roma wrote and shared the Gospel with his brother, Sergei, who is also now in prison for the same kind of crimes, only in a different city, and Sergei is responding and reading the Bible and also called me with a request to send him Christian literature!” (these young men are receiving persecution for their preaching, but are standing strong by God’s grace. Please pray for Roma and Sergei).

Student Spotlight: Nastya Tsarevskaya

Nastya is currently in her second year at our School of Ministry. Here is her story:

“Many people reflect on the meaning of life, including myself. I wondered, why am I here on this earth? And, in general, why are we as human beings here, is there any purpose, any meaning in this life? I often went with these questions to my friends and acquaintances, but the answers I would get were not satisfying. Almost all said that they live to receive a good education, to find a prestigious highly paid job, to get married, bring up children … etc, etc. For some reason this scenario did not attract me. I felt there must be more to life than that… There must be something more worthy to live for, and even precious enough to die for! But I just could not find it!

In fact, if there was no meaning there was nothing to lose. Therefore, I stopped taking things seriously. Why limit myself by the boundaries of common sense and morals that society adheres to and play by the rules that someone else came up with…someone whom I do not know… and who does not care… It was better to simply enjoy life and do everything that would be desirable (or so I thought).

In addition to listening to music, I started taking interest in Buddhism and other religions, smoking hash, going to drunken parties, discos, indulged in "free" way of life, and "free" love. So I proceeded in this direction until one day I discovered that I was pregnant. I was 16, still in high school and did not know any way to cover up for it than to go and have an abortion. Afterward, the pricks of consciousness were unbearable and in my attempts to overcome the guilt I turned to hash and drinking again and quickly returned to the same “free” way of life. After a while I found myself pregnant the second time. I was aware that again I am about to commit a murder which an abortion was.

Slowly it was dawning on me the grave consequences this “free life-free love” leads to… My stoned and drunk friends kept telling me: “Relax, what are you so up tight about? Smoke this, your troubles are such nonsense, all the girls have abortions. It’s normal. It’s okay”. But I knew it was not okay! Theirs was cold comfort. I did not want to live like this and I felt that I did not want to live at all. Suicidal thoughts started to bombarded my mind.

One day I was ready to put those thoughts into practice. But as I sat down to leave my last note and make the final records in my diary, I don’t know how it happened but it turned into writing a letter to God. I kind of always believed in His existence but I never actually knew how to get in touch with Him… When we want to get in touch with someone far away, we write letters to him or her, so I guess it was logical of me to want to write a letter to God. In the process, and out of the blue, I started unexpectedly repenting and asking for forgiveness for all I’ve done wrong, asking Him to somehow help me out of the mess I got myself into. I cried and cried all night long, and felt that deep down in my heart something had changed. The suicidal thoughts were gone. Instead, my heart was filled with hope. It was my initial encounter with God.

Since there was nobody near me to explain what happened and what to do next, I went on and had another abortion, but I never went back to the old way of life. I had decided to devote my life to God, and was looking for a church to go to. At that time, I only knew Russian Orthodox temples.

So I decided to visit one and asked an acquaintance of mine to accompany me. As I opened up to her, she opened up to me, and I discovered that she was a Christian for 8 years, she was attending a protestant church and invited me to join her instead of going to the temple. In the church, I was amazed and deeply touched by the love and sincerity of the believers. I started attending regularly, gave my life to Jesus Christ, gradually began to pray, read the Bible and understand the Gospel. My life began to really change. My former friends did not understand me, and soon, many of them, almost everybody stopped fellowshipping with me. But it did not stop me from following Jesus. In fact I found what I was looking for all along, that One thing which satisfied the deep longing of my soul: JESUS – THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. In Him, I found all: the way to go, the direction for my life, the only true love. He is the ONLy ONE WHO IS WORTHY to live for and if need be, to die for!

As I continued to follow Him, I completed my studies of Serbian at the language department of St. Petersburg University, met a wonderful Christian young man, and got married. My husband loves Jesus. Now we have a young daughter. Several years ago, my husband graduated from the StreetCry School of Ministry, and now the Lord has made a way for me to enroll while my husband is helping to take care of our baby. My studying in the School of Ministry is the most exciting and challenging experience ever and I can’t thank Jesus enough for making it possible for me!”

Prayer Points for November:

• Please pray for righteousness, peace, and joy for everyone in our church; physical and spiritual protection for the entire ministry;
• Unity, love and wisdom for the leadership team ;
• Compassion, boldness, power and fruitfulness for evangelism ;
• Spiritual growth of the girls currently in rehab and the Lord’s grace and anointing for the staff to effectively minister to them and to further develop our rehabilitation program;
• For fruitful training and equipping season in the School of Ministry;
• For the breakthrough with an abundant supply of finances for the advancement of the Kingdom of God;
• For direction, anointing and grace in the pioneering work in the neighboring nation of Estonia;
• For Christmas preparations as we want to use the season to touch as many lives as possible with the Gospel.

Thank you so very much for your prayers and continued support of our work here! We especially thank all of you who responded to our urgent financial need and would like to ask to prayerfully consider helping on a regular basis.

God bless and keep you all,

Your StreetCry family