Category Archives: Newsletters

August 2006

Despite of expecting from the month nothing but routing work of the period when the summer projects are over, but the fall projects are not started yet, the month became very special period of excitement and praises for the Lord’s work in our ministry and thru it.

The greatest news that expands the horizons of our ministry considerably is the extremely gracious designated gift by Genesis Veracity ministry for the office facilities expansion and two vehicles purchase. The gift had come right in time to meet the most urgent needs of our ministry immediately and practically all current need eventually.

The house we have purchased for the office facilities can be used right away for a long-term workers apartment with a garage. Small reconstruction would provide space for Science and Apologetics Society office and reasonably big (500 sq. feet) warehouse in the backyard.

However we would like to take a step of faith and do nothing with it (except building a warehouse) right now, in order to restrain from any reconstruction that would have to be altered later. We are going to use the facility “as is” till the spring. Meanwhile, are going to make the architect project and raise funds for major reconstruction which will give the space for:- Science and Apologetics Society / materials distribution office
– Video/multimedia production studio
– Technical support department office
– Conference room
– Long-term workers apartment
– Two short-term workers lodging rooms
– Garage
– Warehouse

The walls of the warehouse are raised up already. Soon we have enough space to move there all our materials from home closets, and yard storages.

This is a great strategic step for the ministry development! Please join our prayers for the funds provided by the time when heating can be switched off and the reconstruction can go ahead/ Pray also for us to use this opportunity for greater glory of our Lord, and for His wisdom and guidance in our plans. The estimate for the reconstruction cost is about $50,000. An additional $40,000 would allow us to purchase a neighbour lot for parking, for some technical buildings, as well as for a space for future facilities development when needed.

After some study, we found out that Ford provides much better quality/price ratio at local vehicles market, and have made down payment for two vehicles – Fusion (for mostly in-town use) and C-Max (for more universal use). The first one is going to be delivered in September, second one – in October. Both vehicles have big enough trunk space for the equipment we use during seminars, conferences, filming, etc.

Believe me or not, but no one of our staff (10 persons of age 20 to 50) drives! So the most courageous of us are signed up for driving lessons and study this science and art with the excitement currently. Please pray for our guys (and girls) be not too much excited on the road about their driving abilities J

Great joy of the month was mixed with grieve and sorrow. We grieved to part with Nikolai (a father of our video-production department leader Misha) whom we all love and respect very much. However we are excited to think about our future meeting with him in the clouds (1Th.4:17).

Misha’s home is our main video production site currently, and all the projects we are working on got delayed over again. I hesitate to point any specific day right now, but rather would say how much time is needed to complete the projects that are going on if no major interruption happens (like a storm couple days ago that cut off the power for several hours). Science and the Bible Lectorium, the workshops by leading Russian and Ukrainian creationists in Kiev – one week. ‘Walking thru the past’ documentary on paleontology – two weeks. ‘Urok’ (the lesson) video for teenagers – from six to eight weeks. Lacking of the studio of our own slows down the postscoring considerably.

However this is a great encouragement and excitement for us to think, that, God willing, in a year we will have a video production studio facilities of our own, and the future projects (those we are dreaming about already and those we do not have idea about yet) will go much easier technically.

Meanwhile, we do not slow down our work, and have started to work in a new project already – Ice Age Civilizations (http://iceagecivilizations.com) video Russian dubbing. We are doing voice actors casting for it currently.

Another excitement with a little sorrow in it is parting with Zhenya – she left for her last semester of studies in US. We are missing her very much; however we are excited about the opportunity she has to be trained better for the service. She flew thru London one week after the troubles happened there, but was allowed to take her computer to the cabin. All her luggage got lost, but arrived safe and sound in a week – nothing is missing or damaged. Thank you very much for your prayers about her travel safety, please pray for her vision on how the Lord wants to use on this side of the Kingdom.

‘Refuting Evolution 2’ book by Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Matthews got thru pre-press work and going to the press soon. Please pray for this very important project as well.

Another reason for joy, excitement and praises is the first signs we are receiving that confirm successfulness and availability of the strategy we develop for this new stage of our ministry growth – finding, training and equipping the leaders of local leaders everywhere. We provide encouragement and guidance for the initiatives of people; our final goal is for every local church to have lay people teaching others how challenge the worldview of nonbelievers effectively destroying the strongholds on their way to Jesus.

Here is the message we received thru our coordinator for Far East, who got it from people at Bouryateya (ethnic region in Russia between Siberia and Mongolia).

A church from Ulan-Ude has organized a six-day Creation Evangelism camp at Baikal lake. It was quite an unusual camp. First of all, it was not a children’s camp; all campers were adults. Secondly, most of the staff and the campers were people with speech and hearing disorders. There were two teachers among them. Thirdly, the program of the camp was unusual. It was called “Refuting Evolution”, and based on materials supplied by Christian center for Science and Apologetics and on the book of Romans. Unlike the program of the children’s camp, the one for adults is not full of various games and other entertainments – people came there to have some rest. However there were two items everyone was involved into – the evening service and the morning fellowship in groups. At the evening people watched various videos that refute evolution and prove the authority and reliability of the Bible. After the movies people were asked questions that were to be discussed during the time of the morning fellowship. In the morning the whole camp, including the staff, was gathered in the groups. Everyone had a note book with Bible texts, questions, and additional scientific materials. At the very first service, where both models of origins were presented, some people began to doubt the reliability of the evolution. The third time people met for the morning fellowship no one doubted about the Creator existence, and people were open for the call to accept Jesus.

Please pray for people who made this camp to provide proper follow-up to the campers, for the seeds that were planted, for the Lord providing ministers who can water the seeds and help the harvest to grow. Pray also for us to discover and equip more leaders for developing local ministries and initiatives like this.

I would appreciate special prayers for the trip to Uzbekistan we are going for in September 15-25 together with two great servants of God, our ministry board members Georges Carillet (board chairman, Commonwealth International University – Ukraine president) and Evgeniy (Zhenya) Shved (Pioneer Bible Translators) to visit our regional coordinator Andrey Gorkovenko and see how our ministries can partner in outreach at Central Asia.

Zhenya and I as Ukrainian and Moldavian citizens do not need visas to go there, however Georges does need it, and we did not receive a confirmation that he issued it yet. Please pray for his visa. Our visit program will include meetings and training workshops with the leaders of national home (unregistered) churches; this could be considered as a law violation (there is no clear distinction between private meeting and religious gathering there), please pray for the Lord provide us wisdom, guidance and protection.Please pray also for our preparation for two great projects of the fall that going back to back – Academic Symposium (a short-term trip to the tribes of intellectuals J we are doing twice a year, see http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/papers.htm) and Eurasian Apologetics Summit (networking, training, encouraging and equipping the leaders of the leaders in apologetics, see http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/anons.html)

Pray also please for my preparation and the trip to United States in January-February to continue my doctorate studies at Asbury Seminary.

July 2006

The biggest project of the month was the Camp for Christian Medical Students (CCMS) we have organized in Kursk (Central Russia) together with our coordinators, partners and volunteers from the region. Students from several medical schools of Central Russia gathered there for 7 days of the camp. The group of the youngest from of our team (included my daughter Zhenya) was providing technical support, workshops, worship and music, discussion groups during the camp. It was a great experience for the students in training to practice and defend their faith and stand for the Biblical truth in every aspect of it.

We have finished now with the camps we planned for this year and beyond the current projects and work our main focus is preparing the fall symposium and the summit.

The greatest production news is the completion of ‘Science and the Bible’ multimedia distance learning course. Having it done, we have issued a powerful ‘Study materials’ DVD-ROM which includes:

– Science and the Bible distance learning course lectures (12 hours)
– Systematic Apologetics distance learning course (the one we made couple months before) lectures (24 hours)
– Electronic library on apologetics
– The Rocks Cry Out video in Mpeg4
– Complete copy of our web-site
– Bibles of the World free Bible software (Bible text in 60 languages).

After some hardships, we have quite a progress with the video production. The shooting of the ‘Urok’ (the lesson) video for teenagers is completed finally. We are doing the cut and voice record currently. The documentary on paleontology ‘Walking thru the past’ is almost completed and about to be released in couple weeks. Also we systematize the materials we shoot during Kiev Science and the Bible Lectorium – the workshops by leading Russian and Ukrainian creationists. We have 25 hours of it recorded in total and plan to make it available in 3 forms – video on five DVDs; video in Mpeg-4 format with all of them on one DVD-ROM; audio CD-ROM in MP-3.

Another great development of our work in Russia thru the regional coordinator is publishing there ‘How Should We Then Live’ by Francis A. Schaeffer. This is a classical book on a Pragmatical Apologetics (evaluating the worldviews by the fruits they produce) that gives comprehensive comparison of the biblical theism and secular humanism influence on European culture and the outcomes of these worldviews in the various areas like philosophy, science, arts and society. The book is extremely valuable tool for the dismantle the secular humanism for people of former Soviet Union who for several generations was indoctrinated in this most ancient false religion that teaches that humans could be their own gods who themselves could decide what is good and what is evil.

We have completed the translation of another book extremely useful for demolishing the strongholds of atheism in the society where people accustomed to worship science. This is ‘Refuting Evolution 2’ by Jonathan Sarfati and Michael Matthews. The book pulls together the most powerful arguments that Christians are likely to hear from today’s leading evolutionary scientists. An aggressive crusade against Biblical truth is going on in the media with the use of the rhetoric of Scientific American collection of the best arguments in a combative cover story, ‘15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.’ As a sequel to Refuting Evolution, the book refutes the latest arguments to support evolution as well as very idea that creation is ‘nonsense’, ‘a religious view that has nothing to do with science.’

It is always a great joy to have a feedback from the people we serve to in various area of post-communist society. Very encouraging messages are coming usually right ion time we need them. Here is the letter we receive from a prison where we send a supply of creation evangelism materials recently:

“We are so thankful to God for your care and for the work you do that helps people to find answers to the question “Is there a God?” I and other Christians that are here want to tell you how highly we appreciate everything you are doing for us. May the Lord be praised thru people, who follow Him and spread the resources that prepare the soil for His Word. Thank you that regardless of the fact that we are criminals, you find time and the funds to send us so valuable materials. We praise the Lord that your work makes our faith stronger and enables us to demolish the strongholds of atheism. You and other Christian authors help us, people who live in a secular world, to spread the teaching of our Lord – the teaching of life based on the Scriptures and supported by scientific facts. I would like to let you know that as soon as I received materials from you, people got interested in it, even non-believers! Thank you again for your work that makes our faith stronger, helps to get closer to God, and provides the understanding of God’s world. Thank you very much that you have a time to answer even to such people like we are. There is no other way for us to express our gratitude but through only words of appreciation. May the Lord help you! May He bless you with love, joy, peace, strong health, happiness and many years of life! Please do not forget us and may the Lord be praised!” Alexei Kalashnik, penitentiary jail, Poltava (Central Ukraine)

Please pray for our ministry and all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. 

June 2006

The month was full of blessings and excitement!

The first part of the month I spent teaching two weeks intensive training course for the pastors of Donetsk (Eastern Ukraine) area churches. I had about forty of them in my class.

Teaching ministers is much better joy then regular students. It is always pleasure to see the people who immediately understand where and how they can apply the material they study.

A weekend between the classes I spend visiting churches of the region on the invitation of my students. It involved preaching, talking to the leaders of the churches, doing Q&A seminars on various issues of Creation evangelism, apologetics, church life and personal life in Christ. I have returned to the campus tired by rejoicing of great serving opportunities the Lord provided.

On the return I had a brief week with our team with the last preparations for TVORETS (‘Creator’ in Russian) Creation Evangelism children’s camp. We went for on June 20. For 10 days we were living in the tents in juniper grove at the Black Sea coast with 25 kids of age eight to twelve from various churches and family background (5 of them were from family-type orphanages). Together with the kids we studied how to stand more firm in our faith and how to be better faith defenders.

During the lessons we were going thru key points of biblical history – Creation, Fall, Flood, Babel confusion, Christmas, Redemption and New creation. During the games and activities we practiced how to apply our knowledge effectively in our daily life and Christian witnessing.

We have had lot of fun playing, swimming, trying to imagine a life at the Noah’s ark, searching for the young earth and Noah’s flood evidences recorded in the rocks. The camp was a great blessing for us and for the kids. And I believe it will be a great blessing for their families and their churches, where the truth of the Bible could be defended from the very youth.

Here is a feedback from the camp counselors’ leader: ‘The program of the camp made me see the Bible in some way differently. Now I am convinced that the Bible not just a book to tell us about Savior and the salvation, but also a true history of the creation. The program can be used both for believers and nonbelievers. Teaching it lesson after a lesson I observed how the worldview of the kids who did not know God was formed toward Biblical understanding of the world. On the other hand, believers were excited to discover various evidences and arguments on Biblical truth relevance for the real world. Both kids and counselors experienced great satisfaction in stage by stage study thru the Bible of the story of the universe- its past, present and the future’ (Irina Tsaritson, camp senior counselor).

In couple days after the our return from children’s camp, the biggest part of our office team left to Central Russia for doing medical universities students camp – the outreach project we are doing together with our former manager and now Central Russia coordinator Andrey Goorsky. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance and protection in it.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray for the fruits from the seeds that had being planted. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well.

May 2006

We are back from Vienna. It was a great blessing to have the opportunity to go there for graduation. After the graduation we spend three days more in the area. We rented a room at the village not far from the city (even with the local train tickets it was 4 times cheaper then the cheapest place at the city) and just had a little vacation. For 18 years we did not have an opportunity to go somewhere with my wife – just two of us – without any study, teaching or speaking appointments. We came back home greatly refreshed and full with the memories, experiences and new ideas!

The same time with the graduation, our team was doing technical support of the Man and Christian Worldview symposium. The regular participants say it was the best so far. The new translation and multimedia equipment we have for it makes communication of the ideas much easier. Synchronic Russian-English translation from the portable booth to wireless headphones saved much of time and helped Anglophone speakers to be more involved into the discussion. We had especially many top-level Russian secular Philosophy professors this year, and they admitted that it was the best organized conference they ever attended. Please pray for the seeds planted in their hearts during the symposium will bring the harvest eventually.

Another great news of the month is the Lectorium on Science and the Bible at Kiev ‘Planetarium’ progress. The seminars keep going on and has a great success – the hall is full, people even standing in the aisles sometimes! Most of people are quite young, but there are several professors-evolutionists attending every meeting as well. The discussions are going one even 1.5-2 hours after the session is officially closed. Every session the financial reword is offered for the proof of evolution theory, but nobody dared to claim it yet.

The mass-media got extremely interested in the issue and change their tone from sarcastic to supportive. The newspapers demand the Ministry of Education to consider our appeal to remove mistakes and fill the gaps at the textbooks on history, biology, geology, astronomy and even mathematics; to change phrase ‘Evolution theory’ to ‘Evolution hypothesis’; to provide equal information on both naturalism and creationism; to stop using tax-payers money to promote the atheism religion exclusively.

A regional TV put on the air the interview with me at the evening news in the extremely positive context; and the most popular national-wide private TV channel ‘Channel 5’ even made the 30 min live talk show with the discussion of our leading speaker well known nuclear physicist academician Vladislav Olkhovsky and leading national Darwinian biologist prof. Kharchenko on the prime-time Friday (May 19) night, 8:15-8:45 pm. It was obvious from the discussions, that the natural progress proponent is not aware of the theory problems, and just blindly believes in it. Both two of the TV commentators hosting the show as well as the audience who called to the studio admitted Olkhovsky’s position as more sound and grounded one. Please join our prayers to the Lord of the harvest to produce proper fruit of it in proper time.

Some technical problems (hard drive collapse, fore instance) and the desire of our video/Multimedia production team for the excellence slow down our plans a little bit, but the progress is going on.

Our second distant learning Multimedia course Science and the Bible is almost completed already. The course has the same structure with the previous one Systematic Apologetics. Both courses are going to be available on the DVD-ROMs alongside with the previously developed Apologetics Electronic Library and the Bible software program Bibles of the World.

Bibles of the World program is free software developed by our Kiev team. It could also be downloaded from our web-site www.creationism.org/crimea/zip/biblesOfTheWorld.zip

Family and the Bible Festival seminars DVD version is also completed. The great news related to the Festival we received from a lady who attended all of them we made. Couple years ago she got married to a minister from Germany. Now we got a message from her that she would like to organize Family and the Bible Festival over there in Germany. This is a great joy to see how our ideas are used and multiplied. Academic conferences, summer camps, family festivals are going after our model regularly in a few places in Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. This is the very first time we hear about the approach spread beyond the former Soviet Union. May the Lord help her in her ministry!Other productions plan looks following way currently:
June 10 – The Lesson video shooting complete
July 1 – Walking thru the Past video on Paleontology complete
August 1 – The Lesson sound recording and cut complete

Please pray about them.

The progress with the publishing projects is going on as well. ‘Transforming Leadership’ by Leighton Ford is printed already and is in the binding currently. The book will be printed right in time to be used as a textbook for the TCM International Institute (the school I just graduated from) Leadership course in Ukraine.

We have worked out the arrangements with the TCMII Ukraine national director and gave out to him enough copies of every book titles we have available for the libraries of Russian-speaking national TCM centers.

Also Strategic Problems of Evangelism brochure updated versions 1.000 copies were given out to the participants of the Christian ministers’ conference in Kiev. The conference had three tracks – on Church planting and building, on Christian Business, and on Worship. The brochure was received with a great interest. I believe it will be a great catalyst for our network development.

‘The Seven C’s’ curriculum for the children camp is printed already (instructors’ manuals and children’s handouts). We will use it at our camp in June as well as make them available for other churches and ministries.

The associate ministry in Russia started by our former manager Andrey Goorsky has completed pre-press work on How Should We Than Live? by Francis Schaeffer finally and are giving it to the press now. This book is very good for people looking for answers why ‘good old times’ of the communism collapse.

We have quite a progress with the translation projects at our Uzbek group. Different test assignment was given to three different translators groups to see who will be able to fulfill it. To our surprise all three groups equally slow (as usually in the world of Orient) but succeeded! Now we have three projects translated into Uzbek – What We Believe In; Global Flood; and Walking Through the Shadows. We are in process now of making arrangements for editing and printing. Nobody knows how long it will take since this is paralegal activity at Uzbekistan. Our contract person is coming to Ukraine for the strategy discussion tomorrow, and I am going there in September. Please pray for the safety, wisdom and vision from the Lord in this work.

The completely fresh news is that a German Christian publishing company Daniel Verlag has contacted me with the extremely interesting offer to publish in Russian their Bible-based science textbook CREATIO (http://www.creatio-buch.de). Nothing like this was ever published in Russian. This fool color book with plenty pictures gives both biblically and scientifically correct understanding of the creation as well as shows the shortcomings of the naturalism. Everything is presented in a way acceptable for the middle-high age schoolchildren. I believe this is a great opportunity! However the project would be the most expensive we ever had. Please pray for the Lord give us wisdom and resources to do it.

Supplying of the front line missionaries with the materials we need is a priority of our ministry. Here is one of the feedback notes we have received recently:“Greetings in the Name of Jesus Christ! I am so thankful to the Lord and to you for the work your ministry is doing. It is extremely important in our impious times. The materials you provide is a great weapon against the unbelief rooted in the hearts of people, who are used to thinking that we are just a product of evolution. May the Lord leads you in this important and hard work. I believe that a lot of people will change their worldview and turn to the Savior through your ministry.” Yakivchenko O.N. (by e-mail).

The most important upcoming events in our ministry are Systematic Apologetics training course for the pastors at Donetsk Christian University on June 5-17 and the Creation Evangelism Children Camp on June 20-29.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well. 

April 2006

With the help of the Lord and of your care and prayers, I have completed the last course I was lacking of at my TCM Institute program successfully. Now I will be able to talk with the Darwinists on the same page having MA in ministry, the same degree Darwin had (not counting my degrees in natural sciences he did not have) 🙂 Now we are going there together with Olga for the graduation in May.

Another great news of the month is the Lectorium on Science and the Bible at Kiev ‘Planetarium’, the most well-known facility of ‘Znaneye’ (‘the knowledge’) State Enlightenment Society (former greatest agent for communist/evolutionist ideological brainwashing) got started!

Before the first seminar of the Lectorium a press-conference was made, where leading scientists of Science and Apologetics Society declared their position on the need of deliberation of school curriculums from the naturalism/evolutionism ideology and equal access of the student to various approach of the scientific facts cosmological interpretation, including Scientific Creationism and Intelligent Design. Practically all national newspapers gave information about it.

However some newspapers recited ideas from Soviet Encyclopedia on anti-scientific nature of creationism, the names and scientific credentials of the Lectorium / press-conference speakers made this statements fall flat. Among them – academicians, professors and doctors; experts in Microbiology, Paleontology, Ecology; Cybernetics, Nuclear Physics, Medicine; heads of research institutes, laboratories and groups. I would consider having a vision-driven cohort like this as one of the greatest achievement of our Center 15 years ministry!

Both press-conference and the Lectorium is a precedent of great importance that encourages Christians in other regions of former Soviet Union to boldly confront monopoly of naturalism/evolutionism ideology in education, social and political life. We have arranged a video recording of the Lectorium workshops and will send the records to the regions for the better impact of it for the Kingdom spread. Please pray for the wisdom and guidance from the Lord in this great opportunity He has provided us.

We highly appreciate the prayers about our video production team. The studio relocation went fine and the team is back to the projects with a great joy now. Our ambitious plans are following (may God help us!):May 10 – Walking thru the Past video on Paleontology complete
May 15 – Family and the Bible conference seminars DVD version complete
May 20 – The Lesson video shooting complete
May 26 – Science and the Bible distant learning MM course complete
August 1 – The Lesson sound recording and cut complete

As for now, the multimedia version of the distance learning course ‘Systematical Apologetics’ is completed already. The course version is a multi (4) windows flash presentation. The student can see the instructor speaking in one window, the correspondent PowerPoint presentation in another one, the lesson outline in the third one, and the references in the last one. It came out really great!

Additionally to the distant learning courses (Systematic Apologetics; Science and the Bible) that are going to be distributed on DVD-ROMs alongside with Christian Apologetics Electronic Library, we have completed the on-line test taking program. After a student has studied lectures and completed the assignments, he/she gets the on-line address and disposable password, gets to the web page and has 45 min there to take a final test. Both we and the student are getting automatic e-mail report on the results.

One more book translation project is done and about to go to the press – ‘Transforming Leadership’ by Leighton Ford. The book has nothing to do with the Apologetics directly, but it is greatly needed for the Body of believers’ development in our part of the world impacted by totalitarism. The book teaches to follow Christ as a greatest model for a leader. Unlike many books on the issue, Transforming Leadership do not provide ‘what to do’ recommendations (relevant in particular culture only), but makes an analysis of Jesus’ leadership principles, introducing the readers with the idea of a perfect leader model, according to which personal qualities of a Christian leader should be developed and examined. The book analyzes various aspects of the leadership ministry of Jesus as the One, Who has fulfilled the supreme will (The Son), as the strategist, the seeker, the seer, the strong one, the servant, the Shepherd-maker, the spokesperson, the struggler, and the sustainer. The greatest lesson we can learn in the book from the work of Jesus as a leader is that the leader deals not with such abstract notions as roles and functions, but with specific people, the love to whom should be leader’s main passion and motivation. It is a great reminder that only the one, who is the true Christ’s follower, is the true Christian leader. This is extremely important for the post-communist society impacted by totalitarian leadership models mostly.

Another translation project close to its ending is ‘Seven C’s of History. Helping children defend their faith’ curriculum. It gives the general overview of the history of the world according to the Bible with its main points (“C’s”) – creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, cross, consummation. The curriculum is going to be tested at children’s camp we plan in June, and offered to other churches and ministries after the approbation.

There are good news and bad news from Andrey, our coordinator at Uzbekistan. The bad one is that the legal responsibility for the unauthorized meetings (classes, evangelism, worship, etc.) is increased considerably. It endangers the fee $400-800 (an average person annual income) at first encounter and an imprisonment with the criminal charge at the next one. However, on the other hand, Andrey has got the license as a teacher for doing the lessons at any public schools, and leads our Science and the Bible seminars right during the classes! (see the pictures attached) Please pray for him, his family and his team safety, guidance and wisdom.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above.

March 2006

Not much time passed since I sent my previous report on return from Russia, however God is working powerfully. His mercy and compassion are new every morning, great is His faithfulness.

The most exciting adventure of the month was visiting various places at the Black Sea shore searching for the venues that would fit the best the vision and the purpose of the upcoming Academic Symposium (May), Creation Evangelism Camp (June) and Eurasian Apologetics Summit (October). We found what we think would be best and have an agreement with the places administration now. It allows us to plan the details for the event more specifically. Please pray for those events proper preparation – both technical and spiritual.

But even more exciting is great news I would like to share – it seems that a wide door for Creation Evangelism opens! ‘Znaneye’ (‘the knowledge’) State Enlightenment Society, former greatest agent for communist / evolutionist ideological brainwashing has agreed to allow us to rent their most well-known facility – a ‘Planetarium’ conference center Kiev (the capital city of Ukraine) downtown for the weekly workshops on Science and the Bible twice a week in April – May! We are still working on the details, but it looks like a great opportunity to attack materialistic ideology right at its main stronghold! Many members of our Science and Apologetics Society agreed to participate and lead those workshops. Please pray for the wisdom and guidance from the Lord in this opportunity.

Thank you very much for your prayers about our video production team – it is great support, comfort and encouragement for us. We were able to move all our production equipment to a new place almost without losses, and going on with all projects again. We hope to catch up with our prospected schedule by the end of May.

The Lord keeps strengthening us providing the evidences on how the spread of the ministry keeps bringing the fruits. Here is a joyful letter I have received:

“Dear friends! I would like to express my appreciation to all of your co-workers in your ministry to the Lord! It is such a pleasure for me to read the materials you are sending. I often share them with my friends, and tell a lot of things I learn from there to believers I know. I really like the way the information is selected and arranged. You are so good in presenting the exact material needed to attract a reader’s attention. Your materials are so helpful in convincing unbelievers and strengthen believers in faith! I have been blessed with a wonderful opportunity to serve the Lord sharing the Word of God with students and school teachers. A month ago we have decided to plant a new church. Please pray for us, because we are just in the process of discussing the strategy for it. We feel so much responsibility before God, and we really need your support by prayer. May the Lord bless you and your ministry!” Tatiana Gontovaya, Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine).

The feedback like this is a greatest encouragement to us!

I am leaving to Austria Sunday for TMI Institute to take a course on Old Testament. This is the last course I need to take after eight years of studies there to get a degree like Charles Darwin had – MA in Christian ministry 🙂 Please pray for my travel, for studies, for our team works very well now even when I am not with them.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team.

February 2006

The major achievement of the month was completing of a great technical adventure of transferring all our videos from VHS to DVDs. The discs are much easier to duplicate, to mail and to store. Now the videos are available to the evangelists, pastors and preachers much easier and in a descent form. It is hard to imagine, but total of what we have made is 50 videos on 16 DVD-ROMs! Isn’t it amazing how great is a work of our God?!

As for strategic development, I have a very good and productive meeting with Igor Kurlyanov, a missionary at North China and Russian Far East. He was my student at Donetsk Christian University eight years ago, and back then he was dreaming already about the missionary work in China. Now his dream came true. He lives with his family at Blagoveschensk (Russia) right at the China border and doing the ministry in both countries. But the things he have studied on the Creation Evangelism at my classes a while ago as well as his current ministry experience make him concern about the desperate need of apologetics for effective Christian persuasion. That is why he desires to serve as our coordinator at Russian Far East and North China. Praise the Lord for sending the workers for His harvest and the opportunities He makes thru His faithful servants!

Another development of the month is making the textual resources we produced earlier more available! We have issued a new CD-ROM ‘Apologetics Electronic Library’ that includes many books on Apologetics and Creation Evangelism, PowerPoint presentations, video files and a complete copy of our web site. We have sent a copy of the CD to every Christian college, university and seminary of former Soviet Union for making all these materials available to the students at those schools local servers.

Also we got very interesting contact with the organization that arranges the conferences for 1000 Ukrainian pastors in Kiev and 600 in Kharkov. We have decided immediately to publish 2000 copies of the revised and updated version of ‘Biblical Strategy of Evangelism’ with the information about our ministry and upcoming Summit on apologetics at the back to give a copy to everyone who will attend those conferences. Please pray for more ministers will see the need for the apologetics in general and for Creation Evangelism in particular thru these materials we are going to give them.

We have a sad news and prayer concern as well. A manager of our video production department Mikhail Bankovsky found out that his father is seriously sick, and Mikhail had to move back to his parent’s home. It is at Mikhail’s apartment all our video production equipment was set up. Now it had to be reassembled, transported and installed again at new place. That has delayed our video production projects considerably. Please pray for the physical, emotional and spiritual strength of Mikhail’s family (all of them are reconciled with the Lord, and this is a great comfort!) as well as for the Lord’s guidance in catching up with the delayed projects.

The last (chronologically) event of the month was my departure to teach at Kursk (Russia) for two weeks. I love to teach! It is so great to see ‘Aha!’ in students eyes when they start to realize how important to go and challenge the worldview of secular people instead of just recruiting and indoctrinating them without proper change of the mindset called ‘conversion’. Please join my prayers for the seeds planted will bring a proper harvest in God’s time.

The students were young people mostly, but there are some middle age ones as well. Two of them were former criminals who served more then one sentence, but now they came to the Lord and ministry to the prisoners themselves. Another was a Gipsy missionary to his own people. Beyond the classes I also was preaching ate the churches, met with Christian youth groups and secular schools students. Also I had more time for doing the assignments on my doctorate studies than I have at home usually where much more things are at the plate.

The school administration is extremely excited to find out about the distant learning courses we develop now and they will be glad to coordinate their usage in Russia. It increased our outreach opportunities considerably.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well.

January 2006

It was a month of the challenges, adventures and rejoicing!

Uncommonly cold weather (we had about 0 F instead of 30-35 common for this period) was reinforced with the cold breath of the ‘big brother’. I do not know how much it is reflected in Western news, but Russia had undertook an attempt of neocolonial control over Ukraine as a monopoly natural gas supplier. Gas delivery system had to be reformed instantly, and we had extremely low gas (the major source of the buildings heating) pressure in the pipes, and even did not have it for half a day at all with the temperature about 0 F outside. The heating system of many houses and offices was destroyed by freezing. However our team had a good care of the equipment. The God’s care and brothers’ support had helped us as well – at the most critical moment we were able to purchase enough electrical heaters for our offices and rooms and prevent the disaster.

Another adventure of the month was a spontaneous video production to meet the immediate outreach opportunity. The TV version of the great religious mystical novel ‘Master and Margaret’ by brilliant Ukrainian XX century writer Mikhail Boulgakov had being broadcasted all over Russian-speaking world and raised a great interest to the novel itself.

The novel tells about Satan visiting Moscow in Stalin’s times to spread the alternative Leo Tolstoy style ‘gospel’ about just a good guy Jesus, a teacher of non-resistance morality. In the times when nothing but evil was around, the writer gave in artistic manner the ‘from Satan’ argument for God’s existence (‘the 7th proof’ as he coded it in the text, hinting on 5 arguments by St. Thomas and the moral one by Kant): if one agrees that evil exists – the author makes the reader to think, – there should be a the Good; if lie is real, there should be the Truth, if Satan is real (and from his work in Stalin’s Russia we can see he is), there should be God.

However the movie director, being an atheist, did not recognized the religious meaning hided deeply in the novel, seeing nothing but anti-communist satire (which it is very much) there only. We have used the immediate opportunity of how popular the movie is and have produced the video ‘Lie and Truth in Master and Margaret’ spreading the Gospel message and equipping the believers for effective evangelism among people who are impressed by the fiction story and the movie.

We have made the ‘Lie and Truth’ DVD pre-release order available at our web site. Just imagine – we got the first request for it from a Christian School just in couple minutes after the information was posted! It happened to be extremely in demand!

We also have changed our TV broadcast schedule to put the ‘Lie and Truth’ on air in two parts in January while the issue is hot. Guess what – we had to change it again, so many requests came up to repeat Part 1 again before broadcasting Part 2 – people want their friends to watch it as well. Skeptics are doing our job inviting skeptics to watch gospel program! Isn’t the work of our Lord amazing?

Strategically important event of the month was one-day follow-up team retreat on the team work development. We have planned to do one more in a month as well.

Right after the entire team retreat we had to do our video production team evaluation and planning conference. The main concern we had is that the planned projects are taking too long time. We do the broadcast in time always; we produce spontaneous works like, for instance, the one on Master and Margaret, or Gospel in Blues, etc. But major projects stagnate. It is extremely painful and especially vital for the projects that require continuity like distant training courses or Urok (Tough Choices) video.

We have decided to reform the video department technical and personnel structure. We are about to get another workstation that will give us an opportunity to split broadcast, current projects and pioneer projects into three separate tracks not overlapping on the computers to increase our productivity. We have decided to take Alisa Bankovsky as a full time worker (she was a volunteer by now, and we always prefer to take former volunteers to the staff – it brings together volunteer’s passion and employee’s responsibility) to be in charge of the computer works and oversee the technical projects (like distant learning courses for instance). Misha Klimov (another full-time worker) will be in charge of pioneer projects, Misha Bankovsky (still the volunteer) – of the broadcast and general leadership of the video production.

We have decided to set following target dates for the projects we are in currently:

  • February 25 – ‘Walking thru the Past’ to be completed
  • March 1 – ‘Urok’ shootage to be completed

Alisa starts with the distant training courses as a priority project for her and will come up with the target date for it later on. She takes flash design work from Yuri and frees him this way for the web-site interactive features developing. Please pray for all these projects and for the team work development.

You can see our web-site http://www.scienceandapologetics.org getting alive again with the apologetics/creationism news (in Russian) updating both in HTML and RSS formats as soon as we e-mail them out.

The feedback from the people we serve is always a great encouragement for us. Here is a couple letters we have received recently:

“I have studied Natural Science at the university. Even though now I am working as a production worker now, scientific materials in geography, physics and biology are still very interesting for me. I am 32. I have been a Christian for 11 years. I am a member of a Baptist church. I am so glad to know that there are scientists who believe in God! They live in my country! It is wonderful that they submit all possible scientific data with the greatest sources of information – the Bible. May the Lord bless you on His field, and help you be His witnesses” Igor Voloshkov, Nizy, Ukraine.

“I am a Sunday school teacher. I really like your materials. I believe they are very useful and valuable for us and for the generation that will come after us because they help to reveal the truth of the Scripture” Irina Zgonnikova, Evpatoria, Ukraine

There is another exciting news – the creation evangelism seminars for the nationals in Uzbekistan got started! Here is the message from our coordinator there Andrey Gorkovenko:

“It has happened! I have delivered the presentation on the dinosaurs to the Uzbek-speaking group with the Uzbek translation (if I am not mistaking, this happened for the first time in Uzbekistan). The responses are just great! People were even surprised that all that materials could be available in Uzbek so fast. One guy even confessed that he did not believe that dinosaurs ever existed (what he knew about dinosaurs from the school did not fit his biblical beliefs – SG). I am so excited, and so thankful to the Lord! The next stage is to go on with this and other presentations around various cities, and, eventually, – in schools and universities.” Andrei Gorkovenko, Tashkent (Uzbekistan)

Praised be the Lord!

Our publishing ministry keeps going slowly but steady. The ‘Case for Creator’ book should be printed next week, ‘Refuting Evolution 2’ translation is delayed till March probably – we do not want to loose the quality of the work.

Creation Evangelism children camp planning is at the team forming shape, Eurasian Apologetics Summit is in the program shaping and the participants enrollment currently. Please pray for these two pioneer projects especially.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well.

November 2005

The month was full of blessings and I invite you to rejoice and praise our Lord together with us for the great works he is doing in us, through us, and around us.

At the very beginning of the month a great surprise happened – friends of mine, unbelievers, who are working in tourism now, invited me to help them in organizing the National Conference of Active and Extreme Tourism Operators. They have invited me to consider me as an expert in conference making, but I was well acquainted with most of the participants because of my former active involvement with hiking, mountings climbing, speleology (caves exploration), etc. This made me one of them and gave me the opportunity to practice myself the strategy we are teaching others – to develop common ground with people first before we can discuss the worldview differences productively. We did have a common ground with them from the beginning and had a lot of fun together during the conference hiking the mountains around the venue and riding there on jeeps, bikes, and even … donkeys (see the picture attached)! And the Lord had opened a great door for evangelism there – I offered everyone to watch our video The Rocks Cry Out as a way to find some more interesting facts and ideas about Crimea – the area everyone there knows and likes, and they agreed! I was very afraid the message will be rejected since at the end of the video the Good News is proclaimed openly and directly. But only a couple of persons was sarcastic and defensive – the rest accepted it with great enthusiasm because they recognized the truth in the Biblical approach to the geology facts the all were well familiar with. The reaction was amazing! After applauding the video (right after the Good News proclamation), many unbelievers approached me for copies of the video to show it to other unbelievers! They wanted their friends to be involved in the joy of the mindset change they experienced! A leader of the national alpinism Federation even asked permission to demonstrate the video at the Federation congress that going to be at Crimea soon! Please pray for the seeds planted there to produce a proper harvest.

The second greatest event was at the very end of the month – we went with our ministry team retreat. We spent the time together in prayer, fellowship, networking, planning, and studies on teamwork (see the picture attached). Everybody came back home refreshed and full of enthusiasm and ideas for the ministry.

At the retreat, we were able to see the first completed fragments of the ‘Tough Choices’ video and rejoice about the progress of the project. The new editing station gives the opportunity to work on both video projects (‘Walking thru the Past’ and ‘Tough Choices’) simultaneously with the broadcast preparations and we hope to complete the former project by the end of the year and the latter one by the spring.

The website reconstruction (Russian part) is about to be completed and you may be will be able to see its new design by the time you reed this report.

The ‘Humble Defense’ book is printed finally and we will be able to supply the schools with it by the next semester thru the Eurasian Accreditation Association network.

Eurasian Apologetics Summit national participants registration is started and we see a considerable interest for it, so please pray with us for this upcoming event.

During the month considerable renovation of the Eurasian Apologetics Society was done and our manager Timothy and intern/coordinator Zhenya have an adequate working place condition now.

At the same time, we have started the strategy and curriculum development for Creation Evangelism children camp. This is another project we would appreciate the prayers for.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well.

October 2005

Dear board members, beloved brothers, and sisters,

Thank you very much for your care and prayers. With great joy, I present you October 2005 report.

It is hard to believe that six weeks of my studies in Asbury is over now. It was a great challenge, inspiration, and encouragement for me. But there is no place like home after all. I am very glad to be back with Olga and Dasha, with our team, and with the church – I had assigned preach on the very first Sunday on my arrival.

A great blessing of the time in the States was a visit of Zhenya, our daughter – she came for a weekend and we had a great fellowship. We sort of switched the roles this time since she was my cross-cultural coach now instructing me how to operate an American type of washing machine and how to make an order in a Subway. I hope I will not forget her instructions till my next session at the seminary. 🙂

This month became the greatest testing of our team’s ability to work autonomously – we were responsible for technical support of the greatest outreach event of the year, the Man and the Christian Worldview symposium. The first time it was made exclusively at the Commonwealth International University (former Crimean-American College) campus; for the very first time we used a simultaneous translation wireless system, and for the very first time the team had to do it in my absence. And they did a great job! I’m wondering now – do they need me at all? 🙂

Zhenya Medyanick became a great addition to our team. We took him for a year-long internship, and his main focus is studying right now – he is a very capable and teachable young man. He takes an initiative with enthusiasm when necessary, and I would consider him for delegating his public relationships and teaching responsibilities if he will decide by the end of the internship that our ministry is what God is calling him for. Please pray for guidance.

‘Tough Choices’ video shooting is on the way. It seems we have got the best casting we ever had. We have made most of the outdoor scenes while the weather was good. Please keep having this project in your prayers.

Web site redesigning takes more time than we expected – we have collected so many materials there during these years, and all addresses have to be re-written for the new version to work properly. I hope it will be completed by the end of November, at least – by the end of the year.

The ‘Humble Defense’ book translation is completed and it is at the press now. The book is a work of a group of authors, who demonstrate the logical, historical, philosophical, and moral reliability of the biblical worldview. The book is at the same time evidence for unbelievers, encouragement for believers, and a great tool for effective Christian persuasion. Publication of the book in Russian would be a great help for pastors, missionaries, evangelists, and all believers for well-grounded witnessing about Christ in the society, where three generations of people were brainwashed and indoctrinated with atheism and communism.

At the same time, we can see already how our materials, models, and approaches help Christian persuaders in other parts of the former Soviet Union to develop and expand their ministry

Apologetics training center in Tashkent (Uzbekistan) had its first training conference for national leaders. The amount of the literature we can send there is limited, however, every participant was supplied with the collection of 40 our videos in mpeg4 format on two DVD-ROMs they easily can copy and distribute in their areas all over the country. We are still working on developing the local team there for apologetics materials translation into Uzbek. Please pray for these projects as well as for these people who faithfully do the ministry under the threat of persecution. Please pray for our forthcoming trip to Tashkent in September 2006.

The group of our symposium regular attendants from Kursk (Central Russia) has made the first conference on the critical issues of worldview, following the model they have adopted from our practice.

A group of scientists, our coordinators in Kyiv (Ukraine) communicates Ministry of Education regularly on the need for equal representation of evolutionary and creation cosmogonies in school textbooks and of leaving to the students the opportunity to evaluate the evidence and make their judgment on the base of the known facts themselves. Right now they negotiate with the administration of state planetarium the opportunity of doing their monthly seminars on scientific creationism various issues.

Right now the main of our work is planning and developing the vision for future projects. Among them there are the following ones:

  • November 30 – December 2, 2005. Christian Center for Science and Apologetics team building retreat.
  • January 23 – 27, 2006. Teaching Apologetics at International Center for Christian Leadership (Kiev). Zhenya Medyanik is going to assist me to be able to teach the course himself in the future.
  • February 26 – March 4. Teaching at Holy Trinity College, Kursk
  • April 3 – 13. Studies at TCM Bible Institute (Vienna). This is the last course I have to take to complete my MA studies – to have a degree Darwin had J
  • May 10-13. Man and Christian Worldview symposium round table
  • May 13-15. Graduation at TCM Bible Institute (Vienna).
  • May 20-25. European Leadership Network forum in Hungary.
  • June 5-17. Teaching Apologetic course to pastors from former Soviet Union at Donetsk Christian University campus.
  • June 20-30. Creation Evangelism children’s camp.
  • September 18-30. Training Uzbek national ministers in Tashkent.
  • October 5-6. Man and Christian Worldview symposium conference
  • October 7-10. Eurasian Apologetics Summit.

My next session at Asbury Theological Seminary is scheduled for January-February 2007. I have to read couple of dozens of books and write couple dozens of papers by then.

Please pray for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team. You are in our prayers as well.

Yours by the love and grace of Christ Jesus

Sergei

August 2005

First of all, I would like to tell you how much I appreciated your prayers – all of them were answered this month! Despite many various things I had to do before leaving for two months (I had never left home for so long period since times of my research expeditions to the Arctic) to Asbury Seminary, God powerfully works in various areas of our ministry.

The greatest personal challenge for me was an unexpectedly huge reading assignment I had to do in addition to all current work (teaching, preaching, management, etc.). On the one hand, I did not expect any assignments at all before the orientation at the seminary, on the other hand, most of the books came late because of the postage delay and I had to cover more than 1.000 pages of reading of mostly technical stuff additionally to everything that was planned beforehand. I was shocked at first, but the Lord provided serenity, time, and energy to complete everything.

The greatest news of the month – we have started shooting the outdoor scenes for ‘The Lesson’ (‘Tough Choices’) video for/about teenagers and their specific challenges including gender roles and relationships, friendship, drugs, sex, abortions, values, faith (see the still picture attached). In one phrase, the video will be a story personal journey of a girl named Masha (on the right at the picture) from deepest conviction ‘Love is God’ to ‘God is love’. The video is our part of a greater Good News Production Intl. project with the basically same plot culturally adopted and locally produced in Kenya, the US, Mexico, Ukraine, Thailand, and Singapore. By our initial plan, it had to be completed by now, but various hindrances and adversaries did not allow us even to start it for a while. I believe this is a sign that a great door for effective work has opened here (1Cor.16:9) and Satan is very unhappy with it. Nevertheless, we got started due to the prayers of many people. Please keep praying for the project – we would like to complete it by the end of the year.

At the same time we are doing cutting, montage, and editing of the ‘Walking thru the Past’ video on paleontology, so this project, God willing is going to be completed this year as well.

However, God gives us a new vision as well – to start a TV show for children. It is more a dream rather than a project yet, but a very workable one. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance in the way of families outreach thru the children. Since the ability to be extremely busy and to dream at the same time usually does not work together, we fill this new vision as an answer to the prayers as well.

Another area where we experience big progress after a long period of struggle with obstacles is book translating. There are three projects that have to be completed and be ready for the press soon – Humble Defense by Scott & Moore (September), Case for Creator by Lee Strobel (October), and Refuting Evolution 2 by Jonathan Sarfati (December). The first time such big projects (the first two of them) are going to be in transition from translation to publishing project while I am away, and it will be a great practice/testing for our team. Please pray for them, as well as for the funds for the book printing to be available.

In general, training the leaders for both our ministry and for the church to be able to serve boldly and with confidence was a big part of what I was involved in during the month. It was done by the way of face-to-face fellowship, lessons, preaching, etc. I plan to preach one more time at the church before I leave as well as to lead a one-day retreat ‘God’s vision for the church leadership’ based on Acts 20:17-35.

Also, we almost completed the re-design of our website and it will have a new modern look in a week or two.

Another personal challenge I faced was to not neglect my family because of the business rush. I had to set apart and carefully protect the time I have devoted to my wife and children. Also, we made a trip to Kyiv to see Zhenya off to the school, as well as spend three days with the tent on the seashore.

On the way there and back I was able to explore some places looking for a potential venue for Eurasian Apologetics Summit we plan for next fall (see http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/anons.html).

The greatest answer to the prayers has been received from our coordinator in Uzbekistan Andrey Gorkovenko. He writes:

“Yesterday I attended the huge meeting of Uzbek pastors from many denominations. I praise God for such a wonderful “cloud of His witnesses”. Many of them were excited about our work in translating some apologetic books. I found some new connections that I believe will help to improve our work and the team that will be involved in translating and publishing process. I’m going to have some new meetings soon so we could talk about details on how to do our work more effectively. Please pray for the good team and success in my ministry here.”

Isn’t it a great answer to the prayers – such a development in the midst of fear and persecutions? We have received some words of encouragement also from other former communist countries, and glad to share with you a couple of them:

“I am really glad to receive the materials from your Center regularly. It is a great commitment to share the Word of God through science. It is such a pleasure for the intellectuals and scientists who are willing to share Good News with their colleagues. Praised be the Lord for your ministry! May He richly bless it! I have two extended degrees myself: one pedagogical, one – theological, and I work as a school teacher. Therefore, the materials you send are very useful and helpful. Thank you very much! Your brother Alexei Burtsev.” Astrakhan, Russia

“I am writing to you with great joy because your work brings the fruit of truth – the pure fruit on the way of getting closer to knowing the Lord. I am going to become a teacher of chemistry and biology. From the very beginning, when I just started learning the theory of evolution, I was protesting against it without having any sound arguments. I am willing to learn more, for every lie to be disgraced, and for people to no longer have any obstacle in accepting the gift of our Lord – salvation! I appreciate your materials about evolution and looking for more. I believe that your literature will bless and straighten more and more people!” Dribin, Byelorussia

So, with words of praise as well as great joy and peace in my heart, I am packing to leave for my studies at Asbury Seminary, where I going to be September 11 – October 22. Please keep in your prayers my travel and the studies, my family, our team, and all the projects mentioned above.

You are in our prayers as well.

Yours by the love and grace of Christ Jesus

Sergei

July 2005

The month began with the Crimean-American College board meetings. The college was established a decade ago as a way of evangelism thru education. The students were getting state-recognized secular training but had to study some courses offered by the Biblical studies department inscribed into the curriculum. Dozens of them had accepted Christ as a result. In time the school became attractive to the Christians to send their kids to the school where they can get both Christian training and secular profession. The changes of the education dynamics, in the political situation, as well as new opportunities of the ministry as well as an international partnership, required new approaches to development.

The board by its decision has finalized the vision of transforming the school into Commonwealth International University with two schools in it – language school (Crimean-American College) and Institute of Theology and Philosophy (former Biblical Studies department and International Association for Education). Please pray for the great opportunities it opens.

Another great event of the month was my studies on Theology and Practice of Prayer course at TCM Institute (Haus Edelweiss, Austria). It was a great time of study, fellowship, inspiration, and encouragement. Many ideas and materials I got there I am going to use at ‘School of Prayer’ weekly Bible studies the church elders decided to start this fall.

Our great Lord has arranged everything in an amazing way, so our Central Asia coordinator Andrey Gorkovenko (Uzbekistan) was able to come to Haus Edelweiss for taking the course on Apologetics and Ethics exactly at the same time I was there. As a result, we got a great opportunity for fellowship in between our classes. We have spent hours walking in the woods and discussing essential issues of the ministry in Central Asia development – like vision and strategy development, planning, reporting, personal and ministry accountability. Please pray for the ministry of Christian persuasion and persuaders training in the countries where preaching of the Good News is prohibited and persecuted.

Regretfully, it was not possible to work it out for me to take the OT1 (the last course I have to take for my MA program completion) as an independent study since this is a required course, and I will have to go to Haus Edelweiss again in April. Since the completion of the program was set as a priority for the ministry development, I had to reconsider my Spring 2006 teaching traveling schedule accordingly. There is a time to teach and a time to study, as Ecclesiastes wrote or something like this 🙂

We have made all the shootings we needed and made the cutting plan for the ‘Walking thru the Past’ video on paleontology, so the cut is about to be started. Please pray for this project as well.

The book ‘Stones and Bones’ by Carl Wieland was reprinted over again. This is the very first book published by our ministry 10 years ago, and still one of the most demanded ones.

The rest of the month beyond working myself and training the team in the daily management of the ministry, I was doing pre-class assignments for the studies at Asbury Seminary, where I am coming to on September 11. Please keep my travel and studies in your prayers.

Please pray for our ministry, for all the projects mentioned above. Pray also for my family and for our team.r team.