A Postcard from Finland — Finlandia!

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Olga and I are now in Finland. We’re here with Olga’s mother, Tanya, our ‘sister’ Violeta from Montenegro, and our good friend Natasha from Russia. Once again we’re staying at the little cabin by the lake, which comes complete with beautiful sunsets. (Just so you know — it takes us about 5 hours to drive here from our home in St. Petersburg; it’s not too far at all.)

This is Natasha’s first time out of Russia, and it’s been great fun to see her experience a new culture for the first time. She said she never imagined how people could care for the land so much. Her understandings of stewardship, order and beauty are being broadened. It is a beautiful country, and this is a great time of year to visit.

We’ve had quite a busy summer. I’ve been in Montenegro, Estonia and Russia, and I recently returned from a very quick trip to the US. Jet lag is my familiar friend.  The ministry has been rewarding and full of life. Olga has stayed closer to home and has had good time with family. We’re both very thankful to be together and able to rest a little.

New opportunities seem to arise all the time. We look forward to telling you more about them in the coming months. It seems that Estonia continues to present itself as a land of opportunity, and we are starting on a big project in Russia.

For now, though, we are content and happy to be here at Koppero.

Team Arrival!

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A team from St. James United Methodist Church in Athens, GA arrived today. We drove over to Dubrovnik, Croatia to pick them up. We’ll be in Podgorica, Montenegro for a couple of days and then head up to the mountains to run a youth camp all next week.

They are a great group and we’re looking forward to some good times together. I’ll post more news as we have it . . . .

The Ferry at the Bay of Kotor

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I flew into Dubrovnik, Croatia a few days ago on my way to Montenegro. On the drive to Podgorica we passed the bay of Kotor. It’s always a beautiful drive.

Here’s the view from the middle of the Bay of Kotor, looking toward Perast.

Here are Christina and Violeta, they met me in Dubrovnik and drove me to Podgorica —

And here’s a video from the crossing —

Milanka’s Baptism

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Yesterday we went to the Adriatic coast for a baptism. Milanka has been a member of the church for a while and wanted to be baptized. Several of us went for the occasion and had a great time. Her story is below the picture and video–

Posted a year and a half ago, by Vladimir Cizmanski, the pastor who baptized Milanka —

Milanka is the mother of our brother Dejan who has been coming to our church for four years.

Milanka was very mad at Dejan when he accepted Jesus. She forced him to move out of their apartment, but Dejan was firm in Jesus. Now, she has decided to follow Jesus as her Savior.

She said that she feels like flying, and she was wondering why she delayed giving her life to the Lord. The enemy was very active around her during the past year, whenever she wanted to come to the meeting and publicly confess her decision to follow Jesus, three times something happened that kept her away.

Even now, after she made her decision, enemy was very furious. Right after few days he started to attack her very strongly through a bad relationship with her close relative. She just told me yesterday that she made everything right now and that her wings to fly came back.

It is so encouraging to see people as they are fighting and getting victory in the name of Jesus.

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.

Bugs

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Our apologies to anyone who visited our site over the past few days. We got spammed.

Thomas Umstattd worked for many, many hours to fix the problems. Thank you, Thomas.

Over the next several days I’ll be working to re-build the site. A few posts have been lost, but overall pretty much everything was preserved.

Onward we go —

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.