When were you baptized? Do you remember that day? I remember mine very vividly. It was in July of 1994, and it happened during a mission trip to the largest youth camp in Russia, which was situated on the Black Sea. So naturally I was baptized in the Black Sea, and it was truly a special day for me. Attached you will find some pics from that day as well as some additional photos from our recent baptism. But back in those days, our church usually baptized by renting out a pool from one of Moscow's universities. 30 years later, the situation is not much different for protestant churches in Moscow. Finding a place to baptize is still rather challenging.
Thus, when we moved to St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral 13 years ago, we wanted to create a baptistry. It meant renting an additional room and purchasing a large tank to turn into a baptistry. But it was worth it to us because it is a visual representation of our faith. We expected that God would be adding people to His church and that we would be baptizing them. That vision was well justified over the years. Not only were we able to baptize people on a regular basis, but we were also able to provide a facility for other churches to do the same.
But recently when our congregation had to move, our baptistry presented a challenge. We would no longer have access to a place that we could rent throughout the week, and dragging a large tank to a rented space on Sundays simply was not possible. We were blessed to find an additional location to rent on weekends for several purposes and where we set up our baptistry. (As a side note,all in all, our church has to use 5 different locations for ministry that are literally spread all over this vast city.)
Back in September we held our first baptism at this new place. It was really a very special day. We baptized five people, three of whom came to know the Lord in our youth ministry and represented the natural flow of ministry from teens to young adults. But two were older ladies (51 & 71) who came to faith through our deaf ministry. However, together this group was a great visual representation of the grace of God at work in all age groups. Not to mention this beautiful symetry of baptizing someone 17 and 71 at the same time. We also worried how many people from church would come to this special service given that it was a 40 minute ride to this location from the one where we had our Sunday service. But the place was jam packed. We pretty much maxed out its capacity with those who came to share this special event with the ones being baptized. What a blessing it is to continue to baptize people even after our move. What a great privilege to serve other churches in Moscow with our new place as well.
Yours in praying and hastening the day of revival in Moscow and Russia,
Constantin and Alexandra
PS We also use this space for our course on Foundations of the Christian Faith that we were finally able to launch. It is limited to 20 people per course to ensure quality discussion, and it was exciting to see that we quickly maxed out the first installment of this course. But that is a story for our next newsletter.
THREE PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please join us in praying for God:
- To bless our Advent season. We are going through a lot of changes due to the fact that we are in a new location. Please pray that these transitions would be very smooth during the holiday season and that we would be able to reach a lot of people this coming Advent.
- To bring to repentance unbelievers that began attending out foundations of faith class. Our class is a very intersting mix of those who came to know the Lord recently, those who have been walking with Christ for a while and several people that are completely new to the church. It would be great to see them put their trust in Christ and be baptized.
- To bring peace to Russia and Ukraine. Moreover, ask God to use this conflict by bringing reconciliation and revival to these countries.
