Gospel Expedition

After breakfast, we set off again on the road. We were to cover almost 200 kilometers, and 70 of them without asphalt. It is hard to travel along such road by cars to say nothing about bicycles. Praise God for providing us with special bikes with wide tires. God blessed us with the weather. I would like to thank all of you! God answers your prayers! There is a saying, “Do not ask God to give rain, but ask for harvest.” It seemed to me that we needed only sunny and dry weather. But God gave us drizzle. What a blessing drizzle is! I never liked such weather, but we needed it, and here’s why.

The very first car we met left such a cloud of dust that that no earth or sky was visible. Somewhere in the dust there was the road and cars. It was possible to see oncoming cars only when they came very close to us — even with their lights on! How was it possible to see the cyclists in such a dust? The cars did not know about our existence and moved very quickly. And suddenly the drizzle began and the dust disappeared. The small drops of rain solved the problem. Praise God, it was not raining hard. Otherwise we would have puddles on the road. But it was just the kind of rain we needed most of all. I asked the Lord to forgive me for grumbling at such rain before, as I considered it as a bad weather. Once again I realized that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Certainly we did not move too quickly. We tried not to stop too often. Our destination, the town of Obluchie, is located in the Jewish Autonomous region, which means a new time zone and one hour forward. We had little time before the scheduled meeting, so we tried to do their best and travel along as quickly as possible.

Local church pastor Alexander Vitvenko and regional pastor Victor Lokaichuk met us in the vicinity of the town. They accompanied us to Obluchie where some people had already arrived. It took us only a few minutes to set up the sound equipment and start the meeting. There were many people in the square, more specifically many kids. The children were given a separate meeting, where they showed a puppet play and told kids about salvation and eternal life.

A kind atmosphere filled the place of the meeting. When brother Albert sang, a very drunken man came up to him. Albert took the man by the hand and continued to sing while the man stood by him. When Boris Berezhnoi, sang a little boy came up to him. Boris took him in his arms and continued to sing. It created a special atmosphere of trust. Singing, testimonies of the members of the Expeditionm and preaching were received attentively, and were followed by personal talks with people. After the service we had dinner and a meeting with local young Christians in the church.