Last week I had the great privilege of participating in an evangelical outreach with a team of about 15 people in a small city called Kirilov and a small village about 20 km. away from Kirilov. I was the only foreigner; everyone was from a group that Igor and Abner have been training to be missionaries in the church we have been going to call the Good News Church. There are one or two believers in the small village who have been praying for a church for a while so we were hoping to get something started there. And the small church in Kirilov pastored by a great new friend of mine, Yura, has a hard time because there is an old Russian Orthodox monastery there that has a pretty tight hold on everything. We went all around the town handing out invitations to evangelical meetings and four spiritual law tracks. I didn’t do much accept take pictures because I don’t speak Russian quite well enough to share the gospel.
The first day in the village was great. About 15 kids came and we had a skit, some testimonies, played Frisbee and loved on them. I did a short martial arts presentation on how we need to stand on the word and trust in the Lord, it was wonderful. One lady accepted Christ. The second day I was walking around the streets again with Dima and Sasha when I got a call from Igor saying not to come back to the camp because the Police, FSB, and the Migration Department had come and where giving us a hard time. Apparently there are three informants in that village that had reported we were handing out tracks and that there was an American preaching. The police were saying they hadn’t given us permission to do this and that we had to stop, because we were on public property. It wouldn’t have been too big of a deal for me if I had come, all my papers are in order, but it would have been a big pain in the butt and my name would be marked as a sectarian and it would be much harder for me to get permanent residency. Eventually I will have deal with this stuff but I need to get established here before I can expose my name to this harassment. So I had to flee from the village to Kirilov in secret to avoid the police.
We shared the gospel and prayed for healing for this man.
We tried to tell this cow about, but she just wouldn't listen so we asked her to chew it over and we will come back later.
Igor boldly knocking on doors till people came and listened to us.
The girls helped an elderly gentleman weed his garden.
He taught me how to use a scythe.
The lady in the green shirt on the right accepted Christ.
Sveta gave her testimony.
So did Andrey.
We showed the film Facing the Giants.
My little martial arts evangelism.
