December 2009

Walking with the Lord is a great adventure! We did not plan anything specific for the last month of the year – a common routine only. But the Lord has blessed us with two great unplanned opportunities!

Our ministry to the public schools teachers gaining a snowball effect! School teachers’ advanced training supervisor at another district of the country (Novograd-Volynsky – it is 1000 km / 14 hours Ukrainian roads drive away from us) found out about our August seminars from his colleague at Soomy and asked if we could visit them as well. As Russian proverb puts it – “forge iron while it still hot”. We agreed immediately before the person change his mind, and went off to present “Science and Religion” seminars to the schoolteachers of the region. “Religion” is a euphemism for Christianity at the public institutions. But we have an experience how to provoke proper questions, and when we are asked, we free to answer! The Lord kept us safe in the road as well as during the rich time there. Praise Him!

Novograd-Volynsky is a town with 50.000 habitants, but it has 11 public high schools because of several military bases with the officers’ families around it. Because of the recommendations school teachers’ advanced training supervisor got about our seminars, the teachers and the superviser himself were less suspicious then Soomy audience was and we got the opportunity to cover much more issues during the seminars. But the Lord has prepared even more for the questions/answers session. Several good questions became the serves that allowed preaching the Bible directly at the end!

The first good serve was a question about UFOs and aliens. It allowed starting a discourse on metaphysical realities. The second one was about global warming, and it initiated a discussion about atmosphere balance changes and involved issues of Noah’s flood, Ice Age, Ice Age civilizations and Genesis veracity in general, and it paved the ground for a Bible-based confidence. The very last question was “Why Christians believe men should rule over women?” (all teachers at the seminar were ladies), and it allowed to tell about God’s plan for human race, about marriage, about the fall, and, finally about the redemptive work of Jesus! And do not forget – all that was going on at the public institution! Our resources manager told me later: “I was scared you are going to make the altar call!” Believe me – that was my desire! But remembering the responsibilities to not frame people who recommended and invited us, as well as wanting to have the door still open, we planted the seeds in different way – supplied everyone with follow up literature as well as left a set of all our books and videos for the city department of education library (see the picture attached). Urok (The Lesson) video was specially accepted for showing teenagers in schools as a visual lesson on the issues of responsibility, trust, premarital sex, abortions, reconciliation and forgiveness.

The story goes on even more amazing way – the supervisor told that the framework we offer is the most important one for the school students’ proper ethics development, and we should present our approach to the Mayor of the town – that will give the educational department more freedom and authority. Reference that the program is approved by the mayor would be a good sign to the parents since the Mayor is much respected person in the town (not a common situation in our corrupted society). The meeting was arranged and we had very good positive discussion with the mayor (at the picture he is in the middle between me and Vadeem, the resources manager) and supplied a City Hall library with a set of books and videos as well. I still hardly believe what happened! Definitely the Lord has prepared the hearts of all those people according to the prayers! Please keep praying with us for the soil prepared and seeds planted will produce a harvest in the due time.

The last project of the month (and of the year) was “Basics of Christian Faith” and “Evangelism Strategy for Post-modern Audience” seminars at Kiev. A new online media ministry is about to be started there. They has involved a great bunch of young extremely gifted and motivated Christians, and doing several workshops (mostly – professional training) for them now. But one week they devoted to development of the team as a mission and invited us to run the seminars. That is a great opportunity to build a Bible-based worldview among those who reaches a multitude of youth audience!

Since the features of what is called “postmodern culture” are exactly the same Roman world had in the times of Jesus and His apostles, we had a great feast of exploring the Bible together (see the pictures attached). We arranged the seminars in a way we discussed the fundamentals of Christianity every morning and the application of them to the realities of today’s culture after the brake. No doubt we spend most of the time in the Book of Genesis since that is exactly where all important concepts are rooted in – even Jesus refer to it all the time, and who could be better model for us then Jesus Himself?

All our discussions were videotaped for the sake of the workers who are going to join the team in a future – for everyone to be at the same page on the strategically important issues. We left a complete set of our books and videos for the library of the ministry as well as supplied everyone with the follow-up materials. Please pray for the fruitful outcome from equipping that young gifted Christians for the effective spread of the Good News with the powerful media tools they have!