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.