I am back in Kentucky completing my studies at the seminary. This final year my program looks like army service: short periods of running alternate with long periods of doing nothing 🙂 It provides me more opportunities to be involved with the ministry back in Ukraine through Internet. While the studies are reaching the point of extreme (defense on Monday), good updates are keep coming from the ministry field.
The ripple effect of the November Creation in Education conference is going on. The Ministry of Education of Ukraine initiated a national conference of district inspectors/supervisors (people who control advanced training for high schools teachers) in the beginning of the months. The organizers of the conference contact us themselves to ask if we could and would like to providebooks on Creation for the conference. Could you believe in this? Of cause we sent them a supply of books right away! Every regional high schools state inspector was supplied with the set of Creation Science resources. Since it was done as part of the official state-organized event, nobody was complaining of the ‘cult’ attempt to impact the system of education (three generation of communism trained people to believe in infallibility of state system). Please pray that the seeds sown produce a harvest in a due time.
“New Look”, a paper the Amur team issues and distributes in Russian Far East is available to everybody in electronic form now at http://scienceandapologetics.com/biblioteka/novyy-vzglyad/
One of the most postponed book projects – Starlight and Time by Russell Humphreys – is completed finally. Communist propaganda in Soviet Union was using science as a tool to build strongholds preventing people from believing in God. Christian apologetics disproved most of false ideas and theories used for it, however one question is avoided often: if biblical account of Creation is true, how could we see the light from the stars and galaxies located billions light years away from us? The book provides an overview of various possible answers to this question, as well as provides the one developed by the author on the base of latest concepts of astronomy and theory of relativity.
The editors are done with other book that took a while – None of These Diseases by McMillen & Stern and it at the publishing now. Apostolic model of evangelism shows us how important is itto find a common area interests with your audience for challenging their unbiblical beliefs. That common ground provides and effective starting point for Good News. Regretfully, this is not an easy task in the contexts of postcommunism and postmodernism atmosphere of relativism and apathy. Nevertheless, there an area everybody cares and seek the improvement in – the area of physical health. The book is a great model of medical apologetics. Dealing with the issues no one can afford to ignore, it provides undeniable evidences of biblical truth and demonstrates deep care of God for people He created. This book is an effective tool for winning people for Christ in any culture.
Ice Age Civilizations book translation is finished and the project is at the last stage of final editing before going to the press. The book brings really powerful evidences for the historic account of Genesis accuracy, unreasonably neglected by most modern creationists. So, we are back to our publishing schedule after the delays caused by the need for experts’ check and additional editing of these books due to the lot of special terminology. Please join our prayers for the effectiveness of these recourses for the Kingdom!
God continues to open various doors. Few weeks ago a young man (his name is also Sergei) has volunteered to be our local coordinator for high schools in Kiev. We have supplied him with the recourses, and by now he met with more than 30 schools teachers and convinced them to use our books and videos for their classes.
We made a presentation at Christian conference “Personal Faith in Times of Global Crisis” in Orel, Central Russia. The message we communicate is importance of faithfulness to a Biblical account for personal faith. We tell that crisis is not a disease, but a symptom. Sin is the disease and entire world is terribly sick. And Jesus is the only cure. So, the question “Why God makes Christians suffer of a crisis (economical, political, etc)?” is wrong. God does not send crisis to Christians – he sends Christians to crisis because He wants to be there through them!
We got an encouraging proof for our approach right there at the conference. When we were doing media training courses in Russia last year, a young man Sasha, who was not a believer, got involved (he is the one who hold a girl’s arm on the first picture of the September 2008 newsletter http://scienceandapologetics.com/en/index.php/newsletters/2008/itemlist/date/2008/9?catid=12). He definitely had few opportunities to hear about Jesus before, but working side-by-side with a team of young people who are faithful to the Bible message and practice what they preach became the real evidence for him to accept Jesus, and he is a church active member now! Praised be the Lord! We found out actually that there are two (!) self-governed youth video production ministry teams formed by our former media courses participants are working in Central Russia already! What a joy to see the works of the Lord there!
Our production team has issued “Useful for Life” – a new (#7 at http://scienceandapologetics.com/en/index.php/multimedia) comic issue of the PSA-style “Simply Essential” short videos serial.
Here is the dialogs translation:
A boy plays a street fight computer game.
Mother: “For how long this fight will go on? I am sick and tired of it!”
Father: “Easy! The fittest survive in the world. Go on, son – it will be useful for your life”
At http://scienceandapologetics.com/en/index.php/multimedia we have placed also a 4 min. video in English that reflects general information about our ministry. Please praise the Lord and pray for us while you are watching it and feel free to share it with others.
The busiest month of the year is on! I am finishing my studies. The manuals for summer camps curricula are in the page layout process – we plan to present them at the youth and children ministries national conference at the end of the month. The team that makes “Gift of Gratitude” musical for children video version has finished the basic casting and is working on the costumes and choreography currently. The landing party to the churches of Makeevka (Eastern Ukraine) is about to be launched. And Creation outreach, debates and conference in Kiev is at a hand. Please keep all these projects in your prayers!