During the last week of August, we did a children’s camp in two local villages. More than 20 children came and attended our Bible lessons, made crafts and participated in competitions.

All the children were presented with rucksacks containing different school supplies, and the children’s Bibles received through SGA. For many of these children, it was the first Bible they had ever received.

Pastor Vladimir Griskho
Borislav, Ukraine

May God richly bless you for your devotion to God and lost people! We thank SGA partners for the Christian literature you sent us. We have the opportunity to visit orphanages and boarding schools. You helped us buy fruit and sweets for the children, and we presented them along with the wonderful Christian books. They were so excited to receive all these things! Praise the Lord for the hearts of the children, which are fertile soil where the seeds of God’s truth can grow. On behalf of the boarding school in Dobromil and the orphanage in Sambir, we thank SGA staff and partners for your donations and prayers!

Across the CIS, there are more than 340 faithful missionary pastors sponsored by SGA partners and laboring for the Gospel. Through your prayers and faithful giving, you truly have a vital part in their fruitful ministries. Below are some brief excerpts from some of their recent reports.

Vladimir Mikhailov
Odessa Region, Ukraine

We organized a Bible study group and 13 people came to it. One new woman came to our meetings, repented, and received the Lord. Her name is Luba and she is a teacher. She reads the Bible and understands that she needs to be in our church. Formerly she had been singing at an Orthodox church. When she shared her salvation with her husband and relatives, her husband raised a huge noise and forbade her to come to our church, but she comes anyway. Her husband called me and threatened to hire people to harm my family. He even came to my house and made threats while I was at work. Please pray for him. His name is Anatoly. Pray for Luba also and for our family. Persecution awakens us, and threats can be very hard to bear. Despite all this, we held a baptism service, and several new members joined the church. I thank our God for His Son, whom He sent to this world. Thank you for your financial support of our ministry!

Gennady Solovyov
Kromy, Russia

Our ministry has had many opportunities, including being able to share on a local Christian radio station, which is unique in the North Caucasus. But late last summer, we held a major sports and ministry event in the city of Beslan—the site of the horrific 2004 terrorist attack on a school, where more than 340 people—including many children—lost their lives. We informed the local administration, police and mass media. Our prayer teams prayed 24 hours a day in advance of the event. About 150 children and their parents came, and our church team was made up of 25 people plus 10 teenagers from the Sunday school. Even the police officers were pleasantly surprised at the level of the event, and one said, “It would be better if all children could come to such places. Please organize activities like this for problem families, and we will give you their addresses!” We gave medals and diplomas, and we give glory to the Lord because we had the opportunity to tell so many of His endless love. Please pray for us, so these ministries can continue.

Valery Akelkin
Altai Region, Russia

As Valery’s church helps with community cleanup and other projects, it opens the door to fruitful outreach with local children.

In May 2012, we organized a street outreach. We went to the yard of a large apartment building, cleaned the property and posted advertisements about the event. We then decorated the landscape with balloons, set up music equipment and organized sports games for the children (You can see the turnout we had from the picture). We had more than 50 children participating in the games, and many others were watching and cheering them on. Afterward, we had a Bible lesson, and all participants received a children’s Bible and a chocolate bar, plus many other prizes.

On a separate matter, we saw the power of God in action in the lives of a drug-addicted couple. They have come to the Lord, and God did even more than we could have imagined. Their brother, who was also a drug addict, and whose apartment was a place where other drug addicts met, also came to the Lord. Today, his apartment is instead a place where we meet for Bible study! All of them serve God today! Praise Him!

By Tolik Strelkov

Young Tolik’s life has been changed because he learned of Christ’s great love. SGA partners helped make it possible.

I am 14 years old, and would like to tell you about myself. I was born in Tajikistan and this is where I live. I lived with my mother, grandmother and my grandfather. I also have a brother, Dima. We lived a difficult life. I would skip school months at a time, steal money, and go around the city and parks. But then we were told that our grandfather died. He drank too much and died from high blood pressure.

My grandmother and mother continued to drink and sold our apartment. While we still had money, we were able to rent an apartment. But often we would have no food, and so my brother and I would spend all day on the streets. I was not a good student in school and would often skip school.

Soon my mother died (she was disabled). We were left alone with our grandmother. She had cancer and no longer walked. We were then given to a foster parent, but she didn’t need us and didn’t care for us. That is when we found ourselves in a very difficult situation and started attending the evangelical church in the city. They helped us. We had warm meals. When grandmother died, we practically moved in to live at the church since we had nothing at all. There, Mr. Vitya and Ms. Tanya said it was fine, as long as we were not transferred to an orphanage.

So now, they clothe us, provide us with shoes, feed us, and watch after us at the church. Now I am enrolled in school and do not miss a day. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ms. Tanya does our laundry, looks after us, and goes to school for meetings.

Six months ago, I genuinely repented and know now that to steal and lie are sins. I pray that God will change me. Also, we have a bicycle club at the church. I am training in our team. My only friends are at the church. I have all that is necessary. But most important, I know God—the church has a Sunday school where we study the Bible. My brother Dima is also in the church. We are no longer orphans. Thank you very much for your care for me. Praise Christ that he does not forsake me; I can see that through your care.

I trust that the May issue of InSight will be a special blessing to you, as it has been to me. Being personally acquainted with several of the missionary pastors whose ministries are presented, and having visited many impoverished, forgotten small towns and villages, I have seen the precious boys and girls who are so ready to open their hearts to caring people who have come to visit them.

I love it when a church youth group goes to a neighboring village to clean up a littered town square, then holds an exciting event for their children and gives them worthwhile gifts. What village administrator or officer of the law is going to oppose such a wonderful undertaking carried out by young people? With such a high percentage of teens using drugs, these Christian teens are a delight to everyone.

I first met Eugene, the founder of the Russian Bible Church (page 1) in distant Siberia. As a teen, he organized a summer camp program. He had asked secular businessmen to donate funds for the well-being of the youth and thereby benefit the entire community. Today, it is such a blessing to worship with these zealous young professionals that I try to schedule my Moscow visits to include Sunday morning worship with them. They have a special time of prayer focused on praying for one another’s witnessing opportunities. Through their faithfulness, many of their employers have come to faith and been baptized.

When Slavic Machinsky (page 5) was 20 years old, he asked me to help him plant a church. He agreed to serve under the oversight of an older Ukrainian pastor, and the Lord led the generous Byron Center Baptist Church in Byron Center, Michigan, to help him. The Lord has greatly blessed Pastor Slavic’s faithfulness and raised up a wonderful church with a beautiful House of Prayer (church building).

It is your prayers that the Lord has been answering, and your faithful support that has undergirded these blessed developments and many more just like them. We thank our Lord for His great blessings, and for your partnership through the years.

Eugene’s vibrant new congregation has been blessed with phenomenal growth in Moscow—Russia’s capital and largest city.

Even the huge capital city of Moscow can be difficult ground to plow for a young missionary pastor intent on planting a new church. Yet last September, SGA-sponsored missionary pastor Eugene Bakhmutsky celebrated the three-year anniversary of the new Russian Bible Church in Moscow. And the Lord is abundantly blessing through your prayers and faithful support. Eugene wrote to tell us of the day’s celebration . . .

On the day of the event, lots of our friends came to congratulate us. The hall hardly had room for everyone. We shared about the great mission of our church, which is “To Make Christ Known.” This subject was central to all that we did. Our guest speakers preached on this theme, and several members of the church witnessed about how God has worked in their lives through the church. I preached about the most important Name in the world—the Name of Jesus Christ. Russian Bible Church has no senior pastor, because Christ takes this position. Our ministers are only co-pastors. We also celebrated as Russia’s national youth ministry director, Vlad Treskin, joined our church as yet another co-pastor. We took a group photo so you can see how we’ve grown by God’s grace.

Russian Bible Church’s outreach in Moscow is wide and varied. There is a vibrant small group ministry, where non-believers attend Russian Bible Church meetings, and in home small groups. Church members are being trained to become small group leaders themselves, thus multiplying the outreach of the congregation. They just began their seventh study group theme called “Foundations of Faith”. God is bringing new people to the church through it. There are 32 now involved—some of them are new believers, while others have not yet come to faith. Eugene says that God’s Word is able to change people as they read two chapters from the New Testament, and then apply God’s truth to their lives. The church’s Sunday school ministry is growing, especially with young children. The focus is not only discipling young children, but also working to involve the parents in the process. This fulfills the biblical command . . . bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).

Discipling Believers for Christian Service

Adults are not forgotten in the ministry of Russian Bible Church. The church began a Leadership Academy ministry, which has now been transformed into a Discipleship Academy open to all. The classes take place every Saturday, and Eugene and two other pastors teach the nine topics. The purpose is to help believers grow spiritually, and to lift up the Word of God as the answer to life’s questions. The church reaches out into the community with a sports (soccer) outreach, Christmas ministries, teaching English as a second language using Scripture, and in many other ways.

We are thankful to God for how he is using Eugene and the ministry of Russian Bible Church in the midst of Russia’s most important city. Pray with us that many new men, women and children will come to saving faith, and go on to reach even more with the life-changing Gospel!

In addition, work is progressing with the translation and layout of the Russian-language version of Dr. John MacArthur’s commentary on 1 Peter. Resources are still being sought for the initial printing of 5,000 copies. Chris Osiecki, who is SGA’s missionary in Poland, is also working on a Polish translation of Dr. MacArthur’s commentary on the New Testament. We are thankful to the Lord for His gracious provision!

While persecution of churches has been increasing for some time in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, the plight of a pastor from Uzbekistan finally drew the attention of the United Nations late last fall. Protestant pastor Makset Djabbarbergenov had been held in Kazakhstan while Uzbekistan sought to extradite him on charges of “leading an unregistered Protestant community.” But the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees intervened and Pastor Djabbarbergenov was put on board a plane and sent to Germany, where he was reunited with his wife and four children.

In the meantime, evangelical churches in Uzbekistan continue to face intense pressure. Forum 18 reports that a Tashkent Protestant was fined 100 times the minimum monthly wage for allegedly “illegally distributing religious literature.” Christians were also fined for the same thing in Samarkand, but said that they merely had some neighbors, friends and relatives together reading the Bible and praying. Please intercede regularly for our brothers and sisters in these regions. May the Lord grant us his wisdom in determining how best to serve the churches as they stand firm for the sake of the Gospel.

In December, an excellent Russian language apologetics conference was held at Israel College of the Bible. At the conference, our February 2013 launch of  Russian-language curriculum at ICB was announced. Please pray for many students to register for classes, and for the Lord to provide all the necessary resources.