Did you ever have a chance to see one of your friends commit to Christ and be baptized at your church? I’ve never had such a privilege, though I always dreamed of it. But Lisa, a young lady in our church, recently got to experience exactly that. She started sharing Christ with Sophia a while back and invited her to church on a number of occasions. Lisa and Sophia played basketball on the same semi-professional team as they were growing up. Sophia came to church several times but did not attend regularly. Then she joined us this past summer at our youth camp. It seemed like this would be the time when she would pray to receive Christ. But alas, she was not quite ready to do it.
However, after camp she began to attend church on a regular basis. She was there every Sunday and had lots of questions that she regularly asked after the church service. When she heard about our class “The Starting Point,” she immediately signed up and attended it. It helped her to sort out the main tenets of the Christian faith. This spring, she finally dedicated her life to God, praying with Lisa to receive Christ, and requesting baptism.
But her folks were not exactly ecstatic about the idea. So she calmly explained to them why it was important to her and patiently waited for them to accept her decision. They even allowed Sophia to start bringing her younger sister with her to church and this little girl loves it. It was great to see Sophia’s parents at her baptism, sharing this important day with her a couple of weeks ago. And of course, Lisa was there, too, to see how God answered her countless prayers for Sophia and rewarded her faithfulness in sharing the Gospel with Sophia.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
PS Sophia is not the only one who came to our church recently and put her faith in Christ as a result of it. I will share more about similar stories in my next newsleter about our recent baptisms at the end of June.
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 our kids camp that is going on right now as I send out this newsletter Sasha and our oldest son Misha are currently at the camp along with our friends' daugher Sophia. I shared about them in one of my previous letters.
- To raise necessery funds for us to purchase our own building. I shared in one of 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.
