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 —
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.
Here is the latest news on our embryo adoption —
As many of you know, Olga and I have been in this process for the past year.
We transferred two embryos this morning! It took very little time, and the doctor and embryologist were very helpful. We prayed for wisdom about whether to transfer one or two, since our doctor had suggested transferring only one.
When we arrived, though, another doctor was handling the transfer and after seeing the embryos suggested that we transfer two. We feel peace about that decision, knowing that it’s all in the Lord’s hands at every step.
We had four embryos, all were thawed and one did not survive the thawing. We are sad about that.
The doctor did not suggest transferring all three, since the chance of triplets is fairly high. The remaining embryo will be re-frozen. The two we transferred are pictured at left. This picture was taken just minutes before they were transferred.
We’ll return to the clinic on the 14th for a pregnancy test; we should know then if a pregnancy has resulted. It seems that we’ll stay in the US until the end of June.
We were listening to a teaching this morning, before we went to the clinic. The teacher quoted Jeremiah 1: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.’ Today we had a part of that experience — seeing our children before they were in their mother’s womb. And God already knows them and has set them apart for His purposes.
Everything is going well. The Lord has given us faith. And we are very thankful for all.
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.
Victor Minakhin, Olga’s third cousin once removed, has created a family tree of people who will attend our family reunion in Narva, Estonia this August. I’ve cropped the entire tree to show the part that directly relates to Olga’s line.
You can read about Olga’s grandfather, Orest Maximilianovich Grootten, here; and here is more info about the family.
As you can see, Olga’s family goes back to England in the early 1700s. Who would have thought?
Click here for the entire family tree, if you’re interested. Victor said there may be some corrections to be done, so I’ll update this when he sends a newer version.
Here is another personal testimony from our church, Street Cry, in St. Petersburg.
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:
I 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
We have been invited to attend a reunion of several family lines — Bolton-King-Beck-Klemm-Grootten — in August, in Narva-Jõesuu (formerly Ust’-Narva, formerly Hungerburg), Estonia.
Pictured here is our grandfather Orest Maximillianovich Groten (Grootten), with daughter Tanya (Olga’s mom) and wife Ludmilla. You can see Orest’s father as a boy in the picture below.
Here is some more information about the family, sent to us by Victor Minakhin, a cousin who has done much research on the family line:
Around 1780 two brothers from the city of Kingston upon Hull in England came to the Baltic provinces of Russia as merchants. Their names were Richard Thorley Bolton and Robert Bolton.
Richard became a well known merchant in Narva and Robert in Riga. Both married local ladies and had numerous offsprings.
Robert Bolton died in Riga in 1807 and his widow moved to Narva where some of her children were living. Richard Thorley Bolton died in Narva in 1818.
A very incomplete research has revealed that Richard Thorley Bolton had at least 38 great grandchildren and Robert Bolton had no less than 63 great grandchildren. Many of them were living at the beginning of the 20th century.
Now, a hundred years later their grandchildren and great grandchildren are living in Australia, England, France, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Russia, the United States and other places.
The Bolton name is a very ancient one in England. It goes back to the 11th century.
The idea of the Reunion was suggested by the following line of the descendants:
Robert Bolton’s daughter Mary Bolton in 1821 married Hans Peter Beck, a Narva merchant whose family originates in Denmark most probably as Huguenot refugees from France.
Their daughter Maria Beck in 1845 married Oscar von Klemm who was born in Mitau (now Jelgava, Latvia) and later became a full General in the Russian Army.
Their daughter Olga von Klemm in 1874 married Maximillian Grootten, an engineer from St. Petersburg whose grandfather came to Russia in 1760s from Hamburg and whose ancestors probably arrived in Germany from Holland.
The picture below if of their silver wedding anniversary in 1899.
Olga Cantrell’s grandfather Orest (pictured above) is the son of the boy at right in the picture.
Orest’s father – Maximillian Grootten (above at right) had thirteen siblings.
The youngest sister of Maximillian, i.e. one of Orest’s aunts was called Adelaide (“Adia”), seen above, front row at left.
She was married in 1912 to a well known expert on hydrobiology Professor Dimitry Beling who headed a research institution in Kiev. Germans made him to continue in this position after they occupied Kiev during WW2.
When the Soviet troops were close to liberating Kiev, Germans evacuated Beling to Germany. After the war he and Adia worked at the Goettingen University and lived in West Germany.
Their daughter Helena Beling remained in Leningrad amd married Vadim Regel of famous St. Petersburg German family. They had two children – a son and a daughter.
In 1960 Adia started to commute between Goettingen and Leningrad often staying with her grandchildren. Although a West German citizen – she died in Leningrad in 1989.
Her ashes were buried in Goettingen. A large part of Adia’s archive is preserved by the Regel family now in St. Petersburg.
Special thanks goes to Victor Minakhin for compiling this information and being the force behind the gathering of the family in Estonia in August.
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
We arrived in the US about a week ago, just in time for some beautiful spring weather. We are also very thankful to have beat the volcano eruption that has stranded so many people in Russia.
Just a week before we arrived in the States, we were in Finland, which was quite a different setting.
We have news about our embryo adoption: We’ve met with the fertility clinic, and the people there are all very nice; it’s a good clinic.
The adoption process continues to take longer than we would prefer, but we’re content to wait. We’re still waiting for the donor family to finish up some paperwork so the embryos can be transferred to our clinic in Atlanta. We don’t know how long that will take.
If the embryos arrive in Atlanta before May 15, then we can do the transfer in early June. If they arrive later, then we’ll have to wait until July.
The past week has been filled with fellowship with our many friends here. It’s so nice to have time with Mike’s parents, and our Sunday night home group has been a particular encouragement to us.
I (Mike) am talking with several people who are considering being missionaries with Stoneworks. I’ve been praying for the Lord to send workers to the field, and it’s great to see these prayers being answered. And work continues as we prepare to send mission teams to Russia and Montenegro this summer.
We’re very thankful for the abundant life that God has given us.
By Le Ann Dakake, director of New Horizons for Children, a hosting program for Russian orphans –
In 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
Mike and Olga Cantrell 