Over 100 years ago, Burton Holmes (1870-1958) traveled to Russia. Holmes was an American traveler, photographer and filmmaker, who coined the term “travelogue”. Travel stories, slide shows and motion pictures were all in existence before Holmes began making his travel films, but he was the first person to put these elements together into documentary travel lectures.
Here are some of the photographs from his book detailing his visit to Tsarist Russia in 1901.
I’m Yours, on the Ukulele.
The cuteness factor is very high —
This may not look like very much, but it is the fruit of much loving labor and the beginning of something great. This picture was taken recently at Elama, our camp in Russian Karelia. These are part of the foundations of a pavilion and summer kitchen we’ll build next year.
St. James UMC in Athens, GA has taken this on as a project and will send a team in May to put up the two buildings.
The foundation was built by our good friends Sergei Tovstapyet and John Bull. They had the help of some men (at left) from a nearby Christian re-hab center. When the American team comes to build the buildings, we’ll also have the guys from the rehab center working with them: ministry, labor, fellowship.
We also hope to improve the heating and water systems at Elama, and we’ll try to find a riding mower/small tractor so we can clear more land.
Next summer we will host over 100 children at Elama, in addition to various church retreats, workdays and cookouts. These two buildings are going to be a blessing to many people.
Other quick news: MIR is sending 11 orphans to the US for the hosting program (we have fewer this Christmas because the Russian government is concerned about swine flu and has limited overseas travel for orphans); we’re already planning next summer’s youth camp in Montenegro; the Minsk Family Home is very successful after it’s first few months.
The Lord continues to give us abundant life, and we thank Him for it.
This was recently posted by some friends, Matt and Hope Hunt, who are currently in Morocco —
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U2 was in Morocco last year to write some of their newest album and here is a music video that was shot here in the city where we’re studying Arabic. I couldn’t help but see the symbolism.
Oh, oh, magnificent
I was born, I was born
To be with you in this space and time
After that and ever after
I haven’t had a clue only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue, oh, oh
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
I was born, I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice from the womb
My first cry, it was a joyful noise, oh, oh
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
Justified, till we die you and I will magnify, oh, oh
Magnificent, magnificent, oh, oh
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts
Justified, till we die you and I will magnify, oh, oh
Magnificent, magnificent, magnificent
But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. -2 Corinthians 3:16-18.
We have mentioned this before, and it’s high time to introduce you to Zhenya, Anya, and Natasha. Just about a year ago, we were in the US when three young ladies from our church, on short notice, needed a place to stay for a few weeks. Well, that ‘few weeks’ has turned into a year of blessing.
We are now like family; even at church the girls are referred to as Канртеллы (Cantrells).
We just celebrated a fine Thanksgiving meal with them and other friends and family, where Olga’s grandfather, Orest Maximilianovich, played the piano (see the picture below).
— Zhenya Kopushy has degrees in Education (Russian language and literature) and Physics (thermodynamics). For six years she taught at a Christian school and is now working with a Dutch mission at Hospital #15 for street children. She leads intercessory prayer at our church.
— Anya Kazak is originally from Belarus. She is studying to be a teacher of deaf children and is also teaching at a Christian school. She is the leader of the children’s ministry at Street Cry.
— Natasha Pavlova is a counselor at Crimson Sails, a Christian children’s shelter in St. Petersburg. She has as degree in architecture and worked for several years at an architectural firm before joining the staff of Crimson Sails three years ago.
Zhenya, Anya and Natasha bring life and joy to our home. We continue to argue with them about who is the most blessed by this arrangement! This is clearly a God-given family, and we are so thankful.
Orest Maximilianovich Grotin, Thanksgiving 2009, at the very piano on which he learned to play over 80 years ago
This is from Liz Hulley, a friend and co-worker here in St. Pete. She has a great blog; I encourage you to visit it.
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Who likes to get up on a cold, dark morning? Not me…although in the summer I would probably find another excuse.
But as I was going about my morning routine, an excerpt popped into my head:
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance…” (The Gospel of John, 20:1)
What does morning mean to you? Perhaps it includes a lot of moaning and groaning before you begin your day. But how many wonderful discoveries have been made in the morning! The main one, of course, the discovery of our Risen Lord.
That is my encouragement for the day. 🙂
I’ve just returned from a trip to Budapest for a conference and a visit to Serbia where I spoke at a church. I traveled with John Bull, a Stoneworks missionary based in St. Petersburg. The picture above is of the Danube flowing through Budapest, taken from the Citadel overlooking the city, with the foothills of the Carpathian mountains in the background.
We attended the Free Methodist European missions conference. The European director and good friend, Jerry Coleman, invited us to attend. We met missionaries and local leaders from 14 countries — from Bulgaria to the Canary Islands.
It was a great conference, and I’m hopeful that these new relationships will lead to future partnerships in ministry. I was especially blessed by meeting missionaries from Ukraine and Romania. I was also asked to play my guitar for two services, and it was good to be able to minister in that way.
We were all very encouraged in our work, and it was great to see and experience spiritual unity with brothers and sisters from so many countries.
After the conference, we drove to Batcki Petrovac, Serbia to visit a church. Last summer I met one of the elders, Jan Dudas, in Montenegro, and he invited me to visit when I had a chance. I was very happy to be able to speak at their church on my birthday.
Their hometown is a small farming village (about 6000 people) in north Serbia. The town is 90% Slovak, so they all speak Slovak as well as Serbian, and quite a few people speak English as well.
This part of Serbia is a sort of Bible belt — many churches there were established over 100 years ago and survived through the communist regimes. It reminded me of visiting believers in small farming towns in the US and Finland — people are the same all over the world it seems.
My relationship with Jan (pronounced Yahn) is very good; his family is great. I’d love to help send a missionary there to serve that church. Jan was the best man for Vladimir Cizmanski, a dear friend who is the pastor of the Brethren Assembly in Montenegro (where we’ve recently sent a missionary). I believe that God is setting us all together as living stones.
Olga and I hope to visit there again early next year. Above at left I’m with John, Jan and his wife Nada, and their three children.
John and I drove quite a distance — about 1300 miles each way. We drove from the Balkans through the heart of central Europe and the Baltics: Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
I have a sense that the Lord is calling us to do more work in that area. It was very good to have more experience there, deepen relationships and meet new people.
It was a very blessed trip, and I look forward to seeing how God opens doors for future ministry.
As many of you know we’ve always wanted a family, and we found out a few years ago that Mike is unable father children. We’ve wanted to receive the family that God gives us, rather than ‘making’ it happen by our own will. The Lord promised Abraham a family, but Abraham and Sara were unwilling to wait for God’s timing and took it into their own hands; that didn’t turn out very well.
So, we’ve waited until we saw the Lord clearly providing for us; and we now feel that this is happening. And we’re very excited about it.
We are going to adopt!
A lot of our friends have adopted, so now we get to share in those experiences. 🙂
Our adoption is a bit different from most others, because we are going to adopt an embryo.
Here’s how that works: couples like ourselves create embryos by in-vitro fertilization; most of these embryos are implanted into the mother; some are not implanted and are frozen; families then choose to donate those frozen embryos to couples like us.
This means that Olga will give birth to our adopted child. Continue reading
Here is a true American communist. This interview is presented on Russian state television — Russia Today.
Here is an update from Street Cry, our church in St. Petersburg. Please visit the Street Cry site to learn more about the great work that God is doing through the ministry.
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Our School of Ministry graduate and missionary to the Far North of Russia, Arkady Ledkov (photo on the left; we wrote about his evangelistic work among the nomadic people of the north in the March 2009 issue of our newsletter) spent the summer of evangelism with us in St. Petersburg actively participating in all of the street evangelism events. Then after the summer season ended here, he joined a team of Canadian missionaries for his next trip with the Gospel to the nomads of the tundra. Here is his report:
This time we started from Salekhard city – the capital of Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Region. The goal of this trip was to visit new believers who accepted Christ during our previous trips, encourage them in the Lord and bring humanitarian aid to them. At the same time, we purposed to visit new villages where no one preached the Gospel yet.
Therefore, we rented a boat and went down the Ob River from one small village to another, from one camp of reindeer shepherds to another. There are actually no roads or way to reach them besides the Ob River.
It was a wonderful time! We fellowshipped with the reindeer shepherds; they hospitably received us in their tents (called “chooms” in the local language) and introduced us to their families. We showed the Jesus film and distributed evangelistic literature. God’s presence went with us. And the nomads opened not only their homes but also their hearts to us!
In one place, we were guests of a family of seven and as a result of our visit, all of them repented and accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. I cannot adequately describe the joy that we all experienced! Continue reading
Mike and Olga Cantrell 