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.

Embryo Transfer

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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.

embryos_first_twoWe 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.

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.

Olga’s Family Tree

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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?

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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.

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 →