- 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.
- 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.
- Monday night at Peter and Veronica
- 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 26th-July 10th
- 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.
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