Did you grow up in a Christian home? Were your grandparents believers, too? Neither I nor Alexandra grew up in a Christian home. Our parents and grandparents were unbelievers when we were growing up. We are first generation Christians who came to know the Lord back in the 90’s through the faithful ministry of various missionaries who came to our high schools. It was at about this same time that Andrey and Alice Lapiga came to church for the very first time, too. They came to Moscow Bible separately and got to know one another and married only later. But they put their trust in Jesus and began raising their kids in the faith. Moscow Bible Church moved to St. Peter and Paul’s cathedral and changed the time of its services to 3.00 pm, which made it challenging for the Lapigas, who had a newborn at the time. So they started attending a different church that met in the mornings. Later on, they moved out of Moscow into the suburbs and found a church closer to home.
However, several years ago their eldest son, Jake, came first to our kids’ camp and then to our youth camp. He began attending our youth ministry and has put his faith in Christ. It was a special moment to see how this past summer, he served in our kids’ camp. It was then during the camp that our discipleship model kind of dawned on him when he saw how we involved teenagers as helpers to camp counselors. Since he attended the camp as a child and now served in it as a counselor, the ministry came full circle for him and he saw it from a different vantage point than most who were involved in the camp. This past September we baptized Jake, and he joined the church in October. It was a great privilege to witness how God used Moscow Bible Church to reach his parents back in the 90s and now how God used the same church to transform Jake’s life.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
P.S. In the next newsletter I will continue sharing our vision for the building we are hoping to purchase. But after that I would like to touch a little bit on our discipleship classes and a fun series of sermons that we have been doing for the past two years now.
THREE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please take a moment right now, after you fnished reading this e-mail, to join us in praying for God:
- To bless "Incubator for Church Planters." You may remember that I recently was certified as a trainer for "City to City's" ministry in Russia. We are in the early stages of launching this ministry which could be broken into three parts: education, faith and work initiatives and social projects. We are starting with education and will begin a two-year course for over 20 church planters from all of Russia at the end of February. The course is called "Incubator for Church Planters." Please join us in praying for the success and the impact of this program. As a matter of fact we are launching this course tomorrow! So your prayers would be greatly appreciated!
- To raise necessery funds for us to purchase our own building. I shared in my previous newsletter about our capital campaign that we just launched. Check it out if you have not yet and if you can please share about it with as many people as possible especially with the missions board of your church.
- To bring peace to Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, ask God to use this conflict by bringing reconciliation and revival to these countries.
