Youth camp was a blast. We spent seven days on Rabbit Island, it is a Russian island located in the river that is the border between Russia and China. We stayed in tents. Tonya and Cecil helped to lead a group of boys. One of the boys had never been to church before. It was the first time he had every really heard about God. The third day of camp a big storm was rolling in and threatened to cancel swim time and he suddenly decided we should pray about it, so we told him to go ahead. He prayed his first prayer and asked God to make the storm go away. The storm went away. After that he prayed quite often.
Here is Tim with his best friend Vania making bows and arrows at camp.
Here is Tonya in the craft tent.
You can see the back of Vera (on the right) during an evening worship session. That's Jason in the back playing the tambourine.
There is a campfire of a different type that we sat around on Tuesday night. Sergei (who drives for us) and Eager, started a homeless shelter one month ago. It was a natural follow-up to an outreach their church had started in Spring by feeding homeless at two locations every Saturday. They had no funding and a few canvas tents. They set up tents near the church and prayed that the Lord would send them ten homeless people who wanted to change their lives and follow Jesus. In three weeks they had ten.
On Saturday they had several people at the first location (the train station) who wanted to live in a tent at the shelter. They put them in the cars and went to the second feeding location (the trash dump). Several people there also wanted to come, but the cars were full. Sergei told them he would come back after church the next day and get them. That night one of those people walked a considerable distance to the shelter to the tents. The people he was with had gotten some vodka and started drinking. He told them if they drink it they won't be ready to go the shelter the next day. They didn't listen so he walked all the way on his own.
One of the ladies who came to the shelter a couple of weeks ago had infections in her legs, so bad you could see worms in them. They were very swollen. They bandaged them very tightly and prayed for her. On Sunday morning while she was in Church singing a worship song her bandages fell down to her ankles, the swelling had suddenly gone down. Her legs were healed except for some scars.
Every evening they sit around a campfire, sing praise songs, study God's word and pray. Tuesday we joined them. There was such a wonderful spirit there. Three hours passed by and felt like only a few minutes. We are barely involved with this work, so we can just praise God for the changed lives we are seeing there.
Please pray for this new ministry. They will need a more permanent place to stay for the winter than tents.
Tonya is very involved with organizing a pastor's conference we hope to host in October. A huge amount of planning is being done right now. Communication here is not as simple as in the States. Please pray that all the aspects of the conference will come together.
May the Lord shine his face upon you.
In Christ,
Cecil, Tonya, Timothy & Vera
