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.