How well do you know your neighbors? Perhaps it is a part of life in a big city or maybe it is something that is peculiar to Moscow, but Muscovites do not know their neighbors. It became apparent to me when I was kid visiting my grandparents who lived in a city of Khmelnitsky in Ukraine and seemed to know everyone that lived in their apartment building. I hardly knew all the four families living on the same floor at our apartment building in Moscow. And our building was half the size of the building my grandparents lived in at the time.
Knowing this trend Sasha and I sought to break this tendency whenever we moved to a new place. We strive to introduce ourselves right away to our neighbors, let them know who we are, that we are Christians and go to church every Sunday. That is still something that is not quite as common here, so people start asking questions and it gives us a chance to share the Gospel.
That is how we met Ilya, Katya and their little girl Sophia about 7 years ago. Ilya is the one on the far left with his hands raised during worship at our recent retreat. I shared briefly about them in my previous newsletter. We just moved to our new place back then in the southwest side of Moscow. Sophia is a year older than our Misha, so it was very easy to build a connection and to invite them over for dinner one day. Soon after Ilya and Katya have moved but we remained friends through the years. Katya was very open to anything and everything that was church related while Ilya seemed to be reserved and at times it even appeared that he was very apprehensive of anything that had to do with God or faith. They came to church a couple of times and volunteered at our Christmas Market couple of years ago but still stayed somewhat distant. Thus, when Sasha invited them to join us at our church retreat, we did not think they would come. But instead, they gladly accepted the invitation. They sat in the front row and enthusiastically participated in the worship service, small group discussion and fun team-building exercises. At the end of the day, it was Ilya not Katya who could not stop talking about how much he enjoyed the day. He was really impressed with our youth and with the fact that they took faith so seriously. That was something that really puzzled him and caused him to think about what he believed in more deeply than perhaps every before. Who knows, maybe this retreat will be their first major step not just towards the church but towards God.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
THREE PRAYER REQUESTS:
We just got back from the annual "Athletes in Action" conference where I was have the keynote speaker. I will share more about it soon. In the next couple of days Sasha and I will fly out to Tel-Aviv, Israel for a couple of days. I will be co-teaching in the "Preaching Lab" put together by "City to City Europe." Please join us in praying for God:
- To bring Ilya and Katya to saving knowledge of Christ, to awaken their hearts and to bring them to repentance while giving us a chance to see the day of their baptism.
- To speak throuh me as I co-teach in a "Preaching Lab" in Israel.
- To bring peace to Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, ask God to use this conflict by bringing reconciliation and revival to both countries.
