The Light House

 

Hello, my dear friends!

I want to thank those of you who prayed and helped my family to get our three children in Christian school! This school (http://www.tienshanschool.org/) was started by missionaries and is intended to spread God’s kingdom in Kazakhstan and help those who do that. Children there pray, study, and memorize the Bible and it’s the best school for our children. Our experience is very good, even if it’s a little hard sometimes. Instead of driving for an hour there and back it takes 40 – 45 minutes for Zhenya. They leave home at 7 am and come back at 6 pm. And they all like it and I have quiet time at home to concentrate on my work.

I have gone to Tomsk for the 25-year Church anniversary. I was baptized in Tomsk Church (https://church-tomsk.ru/) on April 2ed of 1995 by Jeff Flasschoen and Randy Green trained me there with several others for about two years. Officially we are missionaries in Kazakhstan sent by Tomsk Church. The event went great and I even got to participate in preparation for it. There were about 190 people attending from all over Russia and even US and Europe. The theme was 2Timothy 2:2 – to pass on the baton of faith. And we could see I in people present – there were American missionaries who started the church, there were us who were the first believers and there was a new generation of leaders that were small children when it started or that joined on the way. Photos from the celebration are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Hm9Ldc5g5Gour3gC6

After Tomsk, I visited some believers in Novosibirsk. Please pray for the Church there: for strong leadership and for growth!

I have finished studying another course at TCM (https://www.tcmi.edu/?lang=en) Institute: Advanced Homiletics course – “Preaching doctrines”. My biggest takeaways are that doctrines give foundation to all our teaching, and when we forget about them – our teaching does not stand long; another one – is that in the era of postmodernism, people experience and understand differently and so we need to preach differently from what we have used before. For example, symbols and experience are more important than logic and knowledge. In the last several years for the first time, I took Bible on stage, realizing that it’s not just a book to read from, but a symbol of God’s Word.  

I have written to you the list of people I am studying the Bible with. Please pray as satan resists us some of them got busy with life and others got ill. So, I did not have any evangelistic studies last week…

Small groups, I believe are going well. Our small group took a challenge to read Bible and pray every day with reporting to each other and we have been doing it for over a month. And I see the change in thinking and attitudes. In the villages (I go to two villages now: Tuimebaevo and Chapaevo) new people are adding, that were going to other churches before, but then quit going anywhere. To be honest I do not know how to deal with that. I want to talk to pastors that they went to before and I do need to teach them. I am praying and relying on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but afraid to neglect more planning and strategy building. 

In our church leadership, we started trying to do ministry planning. Usually, we just did what needed to be done. Now we try to understand what is most important and concentrate on that. We want to pursue two things: evangelism and discipleship. So last time we were brainstorming what could be done soon (like the next two months) to do that. We need more unity in our planning and actions. Sergey offered the idea of using our winter retreat for evangelism – bringing new people to the Light House for three days and studying Bible with them intensively. Please pray for that to work out and be blessed by God.

Winter is coming close here and there are a lot of things that need to be done to prepare for it. Like cleaning up the territory to prepare for snow (otherwise it would be buried till spring) and turning off the water outside and drying the pipes (otherwise, they may freeze and pop).

Thank you for being there for us!

We love you and thank God for you!

Sasha.

 

• Hello, my dear friends!
• For vacation, we went to see our parents in Russia. As usual, we have helped them to fix some things (replacing wooden floors in the sauna, level leaned floors in the veranda and several small things). We also went to find mushrooms in the forest, swam in a small river, and had a lot of fun with many relatives that we have there (25 counting us and another brother that wasn’t there this time).
• Girls (Anastasia and Anna) went to the “Prints on the Sand” camp for five days and had a blast! It was hard to pull them out of there. A crowd went to see us off to the bus stop. Here we are singing an old song on the way: https://youtu.be/zaA1C8P1d5E
• I have also met with the church there and many old friends from Biysk and Barnaul and even Tomsk and Moscow and Irkutsk churches! It is very encouraging to see how Church in Russia continues to grow and is very active!
• I continue Bible studies in the village. We have one last lesson with three ladies and they already want to be baptized. And then I have another family for a potential Bible study course.
• Also, God blessed me with a new family of three (husband Alexei, his wife Anzhella, and Anzhela’s mother Nelly). Our brother (Dr. Dima Kireev) invited them to the IMC (International Medical Center where Zhenya works and all workers are Christians from different churches). Anzhella is now a student doctor at IMC. The family is very open to God and faith and has a long Christian history, but there is a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of Bible knowledge. We have already met three times and it seems to be going well.
• I also hope to continue Bible studies with young man Danil.
• Our home bible study group has a break for vacation, but Peter’s group is actively meeting and works very well. Members of the group are very open, you can see how they spend more time with God’s word and reflect a lot about God, we see life changes, etc. God is using it well to heal and mature them.
• Our Light House daughter – Aselya had her third baby boy – Aidos. They live in a 130 square feet apartment with three children. And all lighthouse family helps them as to their relatives.
• Zhenya and Elna continue leading family ministry – I feel like I have successfully delegated it and they have several new couples involved already.
• My plans for this fall are to
• Continue Bible studies
• Preaching about every third week
• Leading two home bible study groups and, if God allows, starting another one
• Continue disciplining three brothers
• Developing pastoral care through following up with all the church members (visiting, calling, consulting, helping)
• Attend the 25^th anniversary of Tomsk Church in September
• Studying through Homiletics with TCMI (face to face part will happen on October 7-11 in Chimkent)
• Develop some new materials and edit old ones, also as a team, we plan to do retreats for different groups of the church on different topics.
• My family is doing well. Please pray for Anastasia as she needs to pass some more tests to finish her first year in Moscow. Please pray for Anna as she is flying tomorrow with 16 other people to Armenia and Georgia for a mission trip. They will be evangelizing in the streets and working with children. Please pray for Zhenya as she quits working at IMC and starts being a teacher for 3ed grade in TienShan school. And please pray for Julie and Elijah to understand and speak enough English to start their studies on August 20th in a new school. Also, Zhenya will be driving to school for about an hour and an hour back!
• Thank you very much for your prayers and support and your love for us!
• Blessings from Kazakhstan,
• Sasha and Co.

• Hello my dear friends!
• Church retreat
  • 86 participants
  • The theme was “Heart of worship”
  • We taught about: worship as a heart of Christian life, Jesus being worthy of worship, Owe of God, worship in everyday life and music in worship.
  • It was very well organized but because we have so many children in the church – half of people were not present at the lessons 🙂
  • For me the best thing was being able to concentrate on God through our time in the mountains.
  • https://web.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2449934535040855&type=3
• Bible studies
  • Danil was brought by Sveta (from youth group). We have met twice, and I like this smart, with hard life story, but hard-working young men. We plan to continue our studies.  
  • Nadya, Irina Vatutina, Lubov, Irina Bushukova and Leana – women that come for Bible study in the village. We have finished lesson 6 (Disciple of Christ) with them. Some of them are looking forward to baptism.
• Growth groups
  • Monday night at Peter and Veronica
    • We have set goal to study through discipleship course (12 lessons)
    • Divide in two groups and repeat. It may take more then a year as we are in lesson number three and we meet already for about three months.
  • Thursday morning in cafeteria we meet with three men plus me talking about our spiritual lives and seeing where we need to replace false of this world and lies of satan with truth from the Word of God.
  • Sunday night we continue meeting with another group of successful professional couples (four couples plus Zhenya and me)
    • Hopefully one of the man - Valera can take the lead for this group in the future as he just came back from studying in Haggai University (https://www.haggai-international.org/).
    • In all our groups we try to grow in openness and growing closer to each other.
• Individual support
  • I have seen that Peter has a gift in preaching but doesn’t know the Word well enough. I encourage him to grow in that. I gave him a book on preaching and hopefully he will continue speaking for Lord’s supper as of now.
  • Shinara is a daughter of a brother from our church that became a Christian long time ago in different church. She is a movie producer by education. She is grieving through the loss of her grandmother that substituted a mother to her. I introduced her to an American Christian producer that ministers in Kirgizstan and trying to introduce her to a Kazak Christian producer in Almaty. In Kyrgyzstan they have made a movie that will be shown in the whole country this fall. Here you can see the trailer https://youtu.be/iQbroqiQlm0 . Shinara is also interested in making movies that will inspire faith in people in Kazakhstan.
  • Zhenya and Elna (couple from our house group) agreed to take the lead of the couples’ meetings that I have been doing for a year. That is a big joy to me when people take charge of new ministries and I can delegate (continue to guide them) and start new ministries. June 22ed will be first meeting run by them.
  • Tatyana is a lady recently baptized in our church. She asked me to help understand if her business philosophy contradicts Bible. I have read the book about it and there is a lot of good stuff and truth and God and Christianity often mentioned as the right thing, but the main goal is spiritual and intellectual development of human being and saving the ecology on our planet earth.
• Personal growth
  • “Wild at heart” – an old book that was new to me. One thing I learned – I do not have be what other people want me to be, but only strive to become what God wants me to become.
  • I am preparing for “Homiletics” in the fall – reading Haddon Robinson and liking it. Basics but useful, well structured and covering most of it for preaching.
  • Praying for guidance in ministry
    • How to do the home groups: how to delegate, how to plan studies, how to help people open and grow spiritually, how to multiply.
    • Praying to start a new group (or a house church) on Thursday nights.
• Other ministries in the Church:
  • Misha is leading a discipleship group for men on Tuesday nights
  • Sergey Alekseev oversees the youth ministry and is planning to devote this summer to team building.
  • Preaching team: Misha, Mike, Sergey A, Sergey K and me
  • Sunday school: Zhenya, Oxana, Elna, Olga, Zhanna, Irina, Peter, Veronica. We have up to 30 children on Sundays and 4 age groups. One of them we call “Pre-Pulse” and Oxana and Anastasia are in charge. It’s for those kids that already have grown out of Sunday school, but haven’t reached the age of 14 to be in the youth ministry.
  • Eastern European Mission have visited us and we had nice fellowship with the Church leaders’ team. Bartosh, Oleg and Brock have been with us for a few days.
    • They have presented Bibles and literature that they print and distribute
    • We have talked about potential coworking to spread God’s Word in Kazakhstan.
• Family
  • We are going to visit Zhenya’s parents in Russia June 26^th-July 10^th
  • Anastasia, our oldest, is finishing her first year in university in Moscow (pray a blessing on her exams).
  • Anna (16) is preparing for a mission trip with King’s Kids to Armenia (I am attaching their information and fundraising letter).
  • Praying for entering our kids (Anya, Ilya (10) and Julie (7) to Christian school “TienShan”:
    • We got our kids tested and accepted
    • We have asked for tuition help and will receive an answer in August
    • Need help to pay the registration fee in August (250$ per a child = 750$).
• Thank you for readying and praying for this and supporting us financially. There is now way you can describe everything that God does here in Kazakhstan through the Light of Jesus church. For that you need to come and visit with us ;-).
• Blessings,
• Sasha.