Category: Russia

Posts relating to Russia.

A shelter in the Russian countryside

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I recently received this from MIR board member Marina Topoltsyeva.  Marina is also the director of Road of Life, a transitional home for graduate orphans in St. Petersburg.

Marina visited a shelter in the countryside –


Dear Friends,

Here are pictures I took at the shelter my friends from the church started in the village 1.5 hours drive from the city.

There are about 10 kids whose parents are addicted to drug and alcohol. They gave the children up and disappeared.

The youngest child is 3 months old, the oldest is 6 years. They have a building but it remained empty for 2 years and renovation had not been finished.

The children have no documents, no records, but need medical help. The director is very busy with paperwork.

Please pray for the workers to take care of children and funds to provide essential needs. We brought them chicken yesterday they cooked it and ate it right away.

The goal of this shelter is to try to bring mothers back, send them to rehab centers to become free from addictions. If it doesn’t work they will look for families for these kids so that they would not end up at the orphanages.

The Road of Life is going to help sending girls and boys to do some work there and take care of children. That would be great if the teams come to minister there. God bless you. Marina.

A Postcard from Russia — Back Home

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We returned on Sunday to a beautiful St. Petersburg, Russia.  The weather has been perfect, and it has been great to start reconnecting with family and friends after such a long stay in the US.  Olga took the picture above, in the park across the street from our flat.

We are thankful for the many people who have expressed their love and support for us after the loss of our unborn children.  It’s been a very real blessing to receive so much encouragement in so many ways.  Thank you.

Even as we battle jet lag, we face a busy schedule.  Today I (Mike) was at Elama while Olga was with her sister Alla who is visiting from Montenegro.  Elama is looking very good — the buildings have been painted, interiors have been remodeled, the pavilions are ready for use, and bunk beds are being built.

While we’ve had quite a few people working at Elama, in three days our first camp begins.  We’ll have 30 children from Novodvinsk and 10 adults as counselors.

In a week I go to Montenegro where I’ll meet a mission team from Athens, Georgia; we’ll run a teen camp there. Then I go to Estonia to meet our first mission team to that country. That team will minister in a summer camp with Estonian orphans and will also do some fact-finding for future mission teams.

We are very thankful for the many blessings we continue to receive.

A New Pavilion at Elama

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As many of you know, Elama is our camp in Russia. We’re gearing up for the summer, and a team from Athens, GA returned yesterday from building two pavilions at Camp Elama, in Russia. Click here to see a slide show of their first few days. Pictured above is the large pavilion which will be used for gatherings and meals. A smaller pavilion will be used as a summer kitchen.

We are so very thankful for all the hard work of so many people. One of the team members said he was very impressed by the quality of the people working on the project. So, now is a good time to mention a few of those people:

Allen Amason was the US team leader and made this all possible by his tireless work and enthusiasm. Sergei Tovstapyat is the camp administrator and was the project manager for this work. John and Karen Bull helped in innumerable ways. Masha Oshkina is the Executive Director of MIR and helped with team coordination and was with the team for a few days. My wife Olga handled food planning and team administration. Mia Häyrinen came over from Finland to work with the team.

We are very thankful for the relationships that God has given us. Our love for God and for one another is more important that the tasks we do. God does indeed set us together as living stones. And times like this show how true that is.

Lithuanian Swastikas

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Recently in Russia, Lithuanian products bearing a swastika have appeared. A Lithuanian court announced that the swastika is a part of the historic heritage of Lithuania.

“It is not a Nazi attribute, but a valuable symbol of the Baltic culture, an ancient sign of our ancestors, which had been stolen from them and treacherously used by other peoples,” one of the defense witnesses said.

I had a difficult time giving a title to this post — “A Sign of the Times”, “Hard to Believe”?  Even as the Lithuanians claim it’s not a Nazi tribute (which it surely isn’t), I know this will inflame tensions, since there is a rise in neo-Nazism in Russia and other European countries.

LIZA BACHI — Healing in Her Heart

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Here is another personal testimony from our church, Street Cry, in St. Petersburg.

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Liza Bachi, 26, recently received her medical degree from a University in St. Petersburg and works as a cardiologist in Mariinskaya hospital of St. Petersburg. God often moves through her in the gift of healing.

She has a heart of compassion and love, which moves her to intercession for the poor, needy, sick, for people who do not know Jesus yet. She is a big blessing for everyone she comes in contact with. Here is her story:

image011I initially accepted Jesus in 2001 at the age of 17. Growing up in a Jewish family, I knew religion as a set of rules to obey. But when I began to ask myself questions like “Who is God? Why do I live?” that set of rules did not give me any satisfactory answers.

But one day my close friend Nastya Tsarevskaya (see her testimony in November 2008 issue of our newsletter) told me that she became a Christian. I saw drastic changes in her and wanted to know more about it. Thus, I ended up going to her church. Once the service ended in an altar call for repentance – I came out and prayed the sinner’s prayer led by the pastor.

Still for quite a while, I stayed religious as opposed to having a vibrant personal relationship with God. May be because I was always a good girl and even after praying the sinner’s prayer, I did not have an understanding that I cannot live Godly life by my own strength. Time went by.

I attended church, prayers, outreaches – because it was proper. Not even noticing how I was turning my newly found faith into just a set of new rules to obey…

At the same time, I studied medicine in a university. One guy in our group was direct opposite of me. I was a believer – straight, good and righteous and he smoked, drank, partied and skipped lectures more often than not… Nevertheless, we kept company and were buddies for a year and a half. Sometimes looking at him, I thought that he was leading a more honest life following his basic instincts than I did trying to obey my rules. Continue reading →

LEONID LEGKOV — Set Free

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Here is another personal testimony from our church in Russia, Street Cry —

We would like to share with you the testimony of a man who graduated from StreetCry School of Ministry. You will see not only how he came out of 18 years of heroin addiction to the saving knowledge of Christ, but also what the Lord has done in him and through him since. Here is Leonid’s story:

I was born in 1958 into a normal family. At 13 I got very active in sports. At 16 I began to make money. Crime became a way of life for me. My “business” was to steal from tourists who came to visit St Petersburg. I came up with many ways of doing that. I was athletic and considered myself smart. It was easy to grab a handbag from someone and run. At 19 during one of these “operations” I ran into a dead end street where the police caught me. I was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

In prison I smoked drugs for the first time. Then later I injected heroin for the first time. All the horrible things I heard about drugs at that point seemed to me not true but when I got out of prison at the age of 23 I was addicted. I thought I’d be able to control using drugs but before I knew it drugs were controlling me. After 8 months

I was back in prison for theft. This time for 4 years in a strict regime. When I got out I decided to live a different life.

I got invited to participate in a promising business. I had plenty of money and no need to get involved in crime. I thought I’d never be in prison again but I was in prison already – the prison of drug addiction. If you are a drug addict you can’t live a normal life. I tried **** my own to fight this devilish affliction. At first I was hiding it from those around me and on occasion I invited doctors to my house, paid money, they’d clean up my body but in a few months I’d be back to the needle.

Time went by, I grew older and in order to clean up my body I had to go through treatment in a hospital. I was ready to pay any amount of money but deliverance from drugs was just not a thing I could buy. I lost my job but I didn’t even care. I was going down, down, down. My wife lost hope that I’d be able to do anything with my drug addiction and left me. Very soon the only thing I showed any interest in was heroin.

Life made no sense, nothing gave me joy, I could find peace nowhere, no one really loved me, I loved no one. Finally, I told myself that death is the best way out. On October 31, 1998 – my 40th birthday – I went to my country house with enough heroin to kill me – more than 2 grams, plus a liter of vodka and a pack of very strong sleeping pills. I had no fear, no regrets.

I wanted to die. I took this deathly mixture but in 2 days found myself still alive. Continue reading →

Valera Pavlov — A Life

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By Le Ann Dakake, director of New Horizons for Children, a hosting program for Russian orphans –

n57702888_30198416_2635In the fall of 1986 a baby boy, Valera Pavlov, was born to a young married couple in the small village of Chubaksari, Russia. He was the 2nd child born of their 3 children and everyone was quite happy! However, in the height of the Soviet Union rule, the family did what they could do survive and lived day to day making money to buy food and maintain a place to live.

Communism was a part of their everyday life, and while it promised equality and provisions among all, not everyone actually received the care and support that was broadcast to the world in government’s propaganda. A couple of years later, the couple gave birth to a daughter as well, bringing the family to 5.

Soon after the arrival of Valera’s sister, while trying to survive and provide for his growing family, the father was forced to take on odd jobs working on other’s farms to make ends meet

In 1991, Valera’s father took him, at about the age of 5, to tag along for a day’s work on a farm to chop wood. This had become a normal part of Valera’s life as mom was now at home with his toddler sister. On these days, Valera would entertain himself while his dad plowed fields, watered farm animals, sheered sheep, butchered hogs, milked cows, did simple repairs or like today; he chopped wood for the coming winter.

At the end of the day, if the work was satisfactory, the family might invite them to have leftover dinner portions. On this particular day, the father’s work seemed satisfactory, so he and Valera were given some food to eat. After dinner, as is customary, the woman who owned the farm handed the boy’s father a glass of wine.

However, this day’s glass of wine was very unlike any previously offered to his dad. Apparently, the family didn’t have the money to pay for the day’s wages and some alternative was sought to get out of doing so.

Not quite understanding what he saw, Valera would later remember something: the woman took a thermometer, broke it, and poured some liquid from it into the glass of wine. She then handed it to his dad. Continue reading →

Tromping Snow at Elama

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Sergei Tovstopyat, John Bull and I went to Camp Elama today to look things over and make a few decisions about the upcoming work.

Sergei is building brick stoves in cabins 2 and 3, so we took at look at that work.  We also were deciding how to upgrade the water storage system, where to install the new(ish) water heater, where the work teams will sleep, what to do on an upcoming work day, and how best to start building a fence.  It was a good day.  It’s always great to have fellowship with those men.

The snow was chest high a few days ago, and now it’s down quite a bit and really melting quickly.

Spring is here!

Luba Timofeyeva

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This was recently posted by friends of our, Charlie and Miki Chastain.  I’ve known Luba for many years.  She faithfully serves women in prison in Ryazan (in picture below).

I was a schoolteacher of history and a strong atheist.

I taught my students that the religion had been a deception and that exploiters had devised it in order to wield power over poor people.

I thought only about my family welfare and my work at school. I was sure that my lifestyle was good and virtuous and didn’t understand that I was a great sinner.

Life was not easy and was unpredictable.

My mom died from cancer at the age of 49. My brother was killed in Afghanistan at the age of 31. Even having my own family (a husband and two daughters) I often felt myself lonely and unhappy and started to think that there had to be more to life.

When the Soviet regime collapsed and many people rushed to Orthodox churches (we were not allowed to go to a church earlier), my younger daughter and I went there too. Later I had a desire to know about the real faith and wished to have the Bible.

It was in 1996 when I first heard about Jesus Christ and His gift of forgiveness and salvation. Two American ladies, believers, came to our school and had a meeting with the staff.  They showed us the Jesus Film, told us about the love of God and suggested to have a Bible study with us.

I and four more teachers started to visit the Bible study and at last could hold the Bible in our hands and read it. I was really interested in reading the Bible and later my knowledge of the Lord reached my heart and for the first time I felt the reverence for Him.

I repented and received Jesus into my heart. In 1998 at the age of 49 I was baptized.

The former atheist had become a Christian!

I am now a child of God inseparable from Him. Praise be to God!

And I am always very grateful to my American brothers and sisters in Christ that they’ve helped me to come to know God, that they helped us, Russian believers, to plant a church in Ryazan. And of course I understand that it is God who has made those amazing things possible.

God has blessed me abundantly with wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as with a wonderful family.

Charlie Chastain continues, “one of my fondest memories of Luba is one of the times she worked with us in St. Petersburg. Our team was staying at a guest flat owned by a ministry partner here in town – but the unique thing was that it had a large bookshelf full of Christian books: anything from novels to C.S. Lewis to deep theology. Luba was in heaven!

“She explained that access to this kind of literature in her town was next to nothing.  But because these books were only for the flat, she knew her opportunities were limited to dive in.

“So what did she do? At night, after all of our work was done, Luba would COPY these books by hand so that she’d have an opportunity to read them later.

“Ever since witnessing that, this has been one of the clearest examples to me of what desiring God looks like.”

A Postcard from Russia — Camp Elama

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Camp Elama is slowly thawing out; Spring is here, yet the snows remain and our work preparing for the summer has begun. We have a good leadership team in place and exciting plans for the summer.

Back in December, Sergei and John laid foundations for two new buildings, and in May and June we’ll have teams from Georgia and Mississippi building on those foundations and doing other prep work.

We’ve purchased a riding mower/lawn tractor which will allow us to clear much more land and create hiking trails. Unfortunately, some items were stolen this winter so we’re having to replace parts of the water system and a few tools.

Sergei Tovstapyat, our camp administrator and general handyman, has begun building wood stoves in the cabins so we can heat them and use the camp for more of the year.

This summer, in addition to hosting several churches at Elama, we’ll run our own camp for the first time. We plan to have 20 children, and we’re also hoping that some young ladies from the Minsk Family Home will come up from Belarus to help. Anya Kazak and Natasha Pavlova will be leading that camp.

It’s going to be a good summer, and we look forward Elama being filled with life once again.