Thank you so very much for your continued prayers, friendship and financial giving to our ministry! We consider you a big part of what we are doing and are happy to share with you the exciting things happening in our midst in Russia and Estonia.
John and Sara just left for 2-3 months in the US where they will be visiting friends,churches and ministries that have been helping our work here. In order for our ministry to continue to bare more fruit in both Russia and Estonia, we need to raise our support base to previous levels. There is so much to do in both of these ripe countries and at present we see that financial provision is one of the greatest needs in order for us to get much more done! If you are interested in having John and Sara visit or minister in your church, or just for them to come and fellowship with you while they are there, you can contact them by email at john.office@earthlink.net or by phone at 603-322-3090 (John) or at 603-322-3089 (Sara).
NEWS FROM RUSSIA
THE HOME GROUP FOR NEW BELIEVERS keeps developing. Recently two new members were added. Both are university students.
One of them, Irina (photo on the left), came to our monthly worship and intercession night with a friend from another church. She was really touched by the moving of the Holy Spirit during that meeting and wanted to know more about Jesus. So we invited her to the home group for new believers. At first, she protested: I am not new! But nevertheless she changed her plans and came. As we began to get to know her closer, we discovered that even though she was in and out of different churches since the age of 10 she had no idea of what it means to be born again and have a personal relationship with Jesus. She thought that being a churchgoer guarantees her a place in heaven! Quickly that understanding was broken and Irina repented and accepted Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior.
Another student, Alyona (photo on the right), used to go to high school with Lilly from our church, in the city of Narian Mar (Far North of Russia) and met again as students in St. Petersburg. Alyona came with Lilly to a home group meeting where she heard and received the Gospel and opened her heart to Jesus accepting Him as her personal Lord and Savior.The home group lesson both Irina and Alyona happened to come to was on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. So in addition to the salvation experience they are now baptized in the Holy Spirit!
OUR MISSIONARIES
In December 2009 issue of our newsletter we featured a report from the mission field by one of our School of Ministry graduates Sveta Moroz (photo on the left). After returning from a short-term mission trip to Mozambique Sveta is back to work as a nurse in the children’s intensive care unit, saving money for the next trip. She is planning to return to Mozambique - this time for a year -starting the coming fall. Please pray for her preparations and if God puts it on your heart to donate any amount towards the total of USD 5, 000 needed for the roundtrip ticket and her support for a year in Mozambique, Sveta will be really grateful. Meanwhile God keeps moving through her in the gift of healing at her workplace. Here is one of the recent testimonies:“I always take the lives of the children we treat close to heart because God helped me to see much He values human life – He gave His Son Jesus to die for us! As I came back from Africa the cases we worked with were very hard. Despite of all our efforts a small girl died during my shift, another child was on the fine line between life and death and I was crying out to God – why?! And God spoke to me: “I want you to save lives – both physically and spiritually”. It inspired me not to give up and involve not only medicine but also the unlimited power of prayer! So the next child was brought in with meningococcemia, accompanied by septic shock. It is a very serious and dangerous condition – a patient can die within an hour since the mechanism of this sickness is triggered in the body. We had a similar case last May and despite all possible medical efforts, we lost that child. So the faces of all the doctors and nurses showed me there was no hope. He reminded us all of the boy we lost in May. But since I heard from God I could not agree to such an outcome this time. I began fervently praying for this boy to survive. The boy’s grandmother arrived to tell us that his Mom just died of a stroke in a different hospital – and it looked like the spirit of death hovered over this family. As I spoke to the grandmother, I discovered that she was a believer, too. So we joined our efforts in prayer. For a week, the doctors were fighting for the life of this boy. And a miracle happened! God touched the boy and he finally came out of coma. He will lose several digits due to the infection but his life is out of danger which is a great wonder for all the doctors and nurses. But his grandmother and I were not surprised – we were giving God the glory for His intervention and the miracle of His healing power at work in this situation! For Jesus nothing is impossible!”
NEW MINISTRY - TO ABANDONED CHILDREN IN THE HOSPITAL
Zhenya Kopushu (in the photo on the right) graduated from the StreetCry School of Ministry in 2004. Since then she worked as the Russian language and literature teacher in the Harvest Christian School, served as children’s pastor in our church and is currently heading intercession. This year the Lord opened doors for Zhenya to minister in Tsimbalina hospital for abandoned children. Here are some of the most recent testimonies from her work there:“For several months we prayed for doors to open. The Lord touched the hearts of the doctors to receive us favorably, even though it is a rare case in Russia that hospitals would be open to Christian workers coming to help with the sick, to pray and preach the Gospel. Children are taken to this hospital from the streets and from broken homes of drug addicts, alcoholics, etc… Their parents do not care for them. Every child’s story is heartbreaking. It still takes a lot of effort on my part to hold back the tears while I am in the hospital – I do weep though a lot, as I intercede for the children later at home. Every child has experienced malnutrition, severe beatings, often times even rape. In addition to many sicknesses, they suffer from loneliness, rejection and fear of the future, which for most of them is uncertain. At best, it’s a Russian orphanage with very little true concern from the heart, for these children… They are hungry for love. When I come, they run to me, take me by the hands, call me Mom and do not let me go. At the end of every visit, they ask me to take them home with me and I just wish I could – I want to take them all.
Here is just one of many stories:
Masha Orehova, 10 years old (see the photo on the left) was brought to the hospital from a home where both mother and father are alcoholics. I first met her a couple months ago. She crawled to me on the floor, called me Auntie – her look was so miserable, and voice so faint that everything inside of me crumbled with pain. The same evening the doctors described her background. When she was 5 years old, her father being drunk threw her out of a 5th storey window. She survived but her backbone was badly damaged. She was bed-ridden for a long time and eventually lost her ability to walk. Nevertheless, she was given back to the same parents again. Both mother and father kept regularly beating her up and father even raping her. Finally, the authorities started the process of taking parental rights away from them, and Masha was placed in Tsimbalina hospital. Her first several nights in this hospital she refused to sleep in a bed but crawled under it to hide herself and slept there – she was bound by fear of everyone. In the doctors and nurses, she saw a threat rather than people trying to help her. She looked at them as if she were a small wolf, hungry and fierce, ready to bite. It is scary for me just to try to imagine the emotional and physical torment she has been going through all these years – I understood that only God could touch and restore her broken heart and broken body, giving her hope and a future. I began regularly praying for Masha and telling her about Jesus. I told her that Jesus loves her and wants the best for her. Slowly she started changing, fear was gone, and she began smiling as she saw me come. Every time I came, she asked me to tell her more about Jesus. Faith was birthing in her heart. Toys and games were not so important – all she wanted to do was lay there and listen to me speaking about Jesus. During Christmas, we brought presents to Masha as well as all the other children in the hospital. She was so happy – thanking God for all! She wanted me to read her the story of how Jesus was born over and over again until she was able to repeat it herself. Very recently, Masha received Jesus into her heart – I prayed together with her. Please join me in prayer for Masha’s complete restoration and for her future, for God’s will and plan to be done in her life rather than the devil’s plan for destruction. God answers prayers! There was another girl in the hospital named Lena whose parents lost parental rights for her, too and she was supposed to be placed in an orphanage. But she dreaded such a possibility (very rightly so!). As she was sharing her despair with me, I suggested prayer and encouraged her that God can handle any problem. We were praying together, she was praying alone and guess what?! Her aunt showed up, did all the legal work to become her foster parent and took her home in addition to her own four children. Lena was thrilled and accepted Jesus, too!”
Zhenya is seriously considering and praying through the idea of opening a small family type Christian orphanage where she and several other girls from our church, driven by the similar concerns and currently involved in different capacities in ministering to suffering children, could live and take such children in who have nowhere else to go, providing them with the atmosphere of God’s love, salvation, restoration, healing, hope and a future.
SPECIAL PRAYER REQUEST
One of our evangelists in Estonia, Gosha is now in the hospital for a medical check up due to hepatitis C. According to the doctors, the liver biopsy showed cirrhosis. He is currently undergoing more tests to have a complete picture. Please pray for Gosha’s healing.
At the same time, Gosha is Gosha! He preaches the Gospel to everybody in the hospital and conducts Bible studies with the rehabilitants from several Christian rehab centers whom he found in the hospital for similar reasons. As a result, one woman there already repented and accepted Christ and joined the Bible studies (her photo is on the left!)NEWS FROM ESTONIA
As we continue to minister in women’s prison we would like to share with you the testimony of one of our precious Prison Bible School students. Her name is Aigi Otepalu and she is 28 years old (see her picture on the right). Here is her story:“I never knew my father, because he died when I was a baby. My mother is an alcoholic. She is sick and bedridden. I started to live on my own when I turned 14. My education at that moment was only 4th grade. I still remember that before I left home I used to visit one small church in the other town with my brother who already believed in Christ. When he discovered that I smoked, he wrote the 10 Commandments on paper and glued it to the wall near my bed. Needless to say, it did not improve my condition.
I have lived with three different men. The first one was very cruel and used to beat me very violently. At that time, I was not addicted to alcohol yet but we broke up and I started to live with the second man. With him, the situation changed. I stopped caring for my life. I was always drunk. In one year, this man left me, too. To reduce the pain I decided not to sober up ever. I wanted to drink myself to death. I did not want to live because everything that was going on in my life was too much. I could not take it. Then came the third man. We were always arguing and at the same time, we were always drinking. Once I made a decision to commit suicide. I planned all the details, but something prevented me from doing it. Looking back now I think God did not allow it to happen.
In my heart, I always realized that there is God but I did not know Him personally. I even tried to read the Bible, though I did not understand anything.
Being in prison, I tried to kill myself again. I was in a bathroom when suddenly a bright light entered into the room and I heard a voice: “Do not do it. It is sin. I gave My life for you and I love you”. I could not do anything but cry and ask God for forgiveness. From that moment on, I knew how precious I was in His sight. God is real; I encountered Him and experienced His love. He is always near.
I received Jesus as my Lord and my Savior in April 2006. During enforcement proceedings, I met with a chaplain, who gave me a New Testament. God is constantly teaching me and He is showing me things and attitudes that are wrong inside of me.
I have 3 brothers and 2 sisters. When I was put in prison, they rejected me. It was very painful, but then the Lord showed me a Scripture where Jesus said that those who believe in Him are His family. This way He gave me a new family – my brothers and sisters in Christ. He took all pain away from my heart”.
PRAYER POINTS FOR MARCH:
• For physical and spiritual protection for our church and ministry, divine health and strength for all of us during the cold season
• For John and Sara’s itinerating in the US – that it will bare much fruit.
• Unity, love and wisdom for the leadership team
• For the students in our School of Ministry in St. Petersburg – for growing in wisdom and maturity, hunger for God’s constant presence and power to transform the hearts and lives; for releasing the gifts of the Spirit; for discovering the callings and destinies God has for them; for immediately putting in practice all we learn in classrooms and for open doors for them to minister
• For the outreach to the student’s dorms in St. Petersburg to be fruitful bringing many new souls to salvation
• For the home group for new believers - growth in faith, strong personal relationship with Jesus, hunger for the spiritual things and power to resist temptations that the world and the devil are constantly bombarding the young people with
• For Sveta’s preparations to go to Mozambique for a year
• For Zhenya’s ministry to abandoned children in Tsimbalina hospital, especially for complete healing and restoration of Masha Orehova
• For Gosha’s healing from hepatitis C and restoration of his liver
• For monthly financial supply for the work in St. Petersburg and Tallinn. We need more regular support. Every single person, church and ministry that gives to us helps our ministry to preach the Gospel. Every single donation is needed and received with much gratitude. Thank you for your continued help!
• For the work in Estonia – more souls saved, drug addicts delivered and placed in the rehab centers, and for establishing a greater, stronger presence there
• For prison outreach in Estonia as we in addition to already flourishing ministry to women began outreach to men’s prison – for more salvations, deliverance from drug and other addictions, peer pressure and fear of men, for physical and emotional healing, renewing of the minds of the inmates who just got born again, for their spiritual growth and developing steadfast personal relationship with Jesus
• For John and Sara as they are traveling to the US
• For a breakthrough with an abundant supply of finances for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. We have debt, but are continuing to press on in spite of the difficulties. Please pray for a release of $40,000 to cover debt and infuse the ministry. Thanks so much!
Thank you again so very much for your prayers and continued support of our work! If you are not doing so already we would like to ask if you would prayerfully consider helping us on a regular basis. We need your help to help others! All help is much needed and highly appreciated!
God bless and keep you all,
John and Sara Russell and your StreetCry family
