Wishing peace and grace to you the servants of the Lord.
I thank God for the opportunity to serve Him; for the grace to preach the Word of God. Most of my time has been devoted to the study of the Bible and preparing sermons. Each week I preach twice on the Sunday services, as well as on prayer meetings on Fridays.
This month, I started to teach the course named, “Fundamentals of the Christian faith” to a man and woman who wish to become members of our church. They were baptized in some other church in which little attention was paid to Christian doctrines, and I want to go over it before they become members of our church; this way they will have a proper understanding of biblical doctrines and our beliefs.
Also this month, God has blessed me with the opportunity to visit our church members who are ill. Last week I visited Ivan and Vera. They have families but mostly non-believers. I served them communion and preached the Word of God to them and their loved ones.
In early September, we plan to celebrate the harvest day [a Russian holiday similar to American Thanksgiving day] in the church. Now we are preparing for this event: We are inviting non-believers to church, preparing worship and I am working on the sermon. Also we invited members of the Central Church in Ulyanovosk to visit us on this holiday.
This month, we held a meeting to discuss the missionary and church planting work of our church; we had over a man named Sergei who coordinates the whole ministry in the state of Samara. We talked about the plans of the gospel missions in the area of our church. In September, we have a planned outing to share the gospel in our area plus we have agreed to take in our brothers from Samara city, who will be teaching the gospel in our churches. Also together with our members they will preach the Gospel on the streets. Now we are preparing for this event, and I encourage the church to pray and to actively participate in this opportunity to spread the Good News to our neighbors.
Prayer requests:
I ask you to pray for our brother Alexander and sister Valentine – with whom I teach my classes on the basics of faith.
Please also pray for the gospel in our neighborhood, that the Lord would open the hearts of people to take the gospel message and repent.
For my further training in Samara, I need wisdom in dealing/working with people and in the leadership of the church.
