Planting Seeds

On Sunday Tom and I were among the privileged few invited to the beginning of a recovery church here in Krasnodar... a planting of seeds.

Alexei had been thinking and planning for a long time. He decided it was time for him to start this meeting… a Christian recovery meeting. He didn’t call it that. He called it a meeting for believers looking for healing. Healing from addiction, bad habits and sin.

Tom was the one who was actually invited by Alexei. I was asked by Tom to come and translate for him. Tom, Alexei, me and 10 men from a local recovery program were in attendance.

The meeting will be held weekly.
Alexei will be the main teacher and he asked Tom to help him out as well.
Beginning next week members of AA will be invited to participate.
Alexei chose the format… he gave a 30 minute lesson that he wrote himself which included Biblical truths from Step 1 of the 12 Steps.
We took a break for tea and dessert.
Following the short break each person shared a prayer need and then the men took turns praying around the circle.

We think this was the first meeting of it’s kind here in Krasnodar… if not all of Russia

Natasha

Saturday July 14, 2007

Last September Tom was given the opportunity to teach at the Addictive Behavioural Counseling school in Kiev, Ukraine. This school is open to students who have finished the Introduction to Biblical Counseling School. The director of the program is Natasha (pictured above).

She recently started a blog and her first post is about the opening of an IBC school in Kamchatka, Russia. We are so excited about the potential for the school to reach those who will be able to help many others in return!

Natasha's first language is Russian of course but you can click on any of the highlighted words and the links all lead to websites in English... including Natasha's blog post!

meetings, meetings!

Yesterday we drove down to Edmond, Oklahoma to meet with a missions pastor. We braved all the rain we had to drive through and it was well worth it!

We got a chance to meet with a man who is doing Recovery Ministry there and were able to sit and plan for a short term mission trip by some members of the Recovery Ministry. Thanks Pastor Mike for asking us to come to Edmond!

We will be going back to Edmund on Sunday. We'll have dinner with a group from the church and then we will be sharing our testimonies at the Celebrate Recovery Service on Monday night!