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.