Thanksgivings greetings from the Eshelman Family.
This week we happened to be involved with two conferences: one we hosted and one we attended. The first one was with good, old friends, Ilya and Janet Bantseev (Ilya pastors Tonya's home church in Novokuznetsk, and officiated our wedding so many years ago). They presented at the conference on Global Teen Challenge for the pastors and rehabilitation leaders in Khabarovsk and surrounding areas, teaching on rehabilitation ministry, family and evangelism. We had about 35 people in attendance, and it was a great time.
Tim and Turkey.
Some of our kids' friends joined us for the feast. That's Vera with the pumpkin pie she made herself (in our kitchen).
The day after Thanksgiving, Cecil and Tonya left for a Shamanistic People Group Conference held near Vladivastok (about 12 hours on the train). The conference was a gathering of ministries that reach out to minority groups of indigenous people in Eastern Russia. Eastern Russia has a number of indigenous groups that continue to practice idol worship and worship nature gods (much like old native American Indian religions). A lot of interesting subjects were raised: contextualization of the Gospel, translation of the Bible into native languages, church planing methods, and more.
There were some powerful testimonies by people from minority groups. Though we don't personally work closely with these ministries, we help support the work of others who focus on this.
One of the local churches has a ministry school (practical ministry training) where Cecil taught about Christian Family and Heritage.
The lessons were held at Hope Center. After other teachers complete their classes, the students are will be sent out to do ministry for a term, and then will gather for more study.
Cecil was invited by a government official to speak at a conference for parents of foster children in a village. He presented "Five Languages of Love" that explains methods of showing love to children so that they know that they are loved and valuable. At the end of the conference the hosts asked the official where she had found such a high level psychologist to come and speak. Well, this "high level psychologist" mostly took the ideas from a book (by the title "Five Languages of Love"), and presented it in a way understandable to Russians. By the way, we recommend this book to any parent or children's worker.
We've had opportunity to go to an orphanage in Khabarovsk and play games with the children. It is an informal time, but teaches healthy interaction. It also allows the kids and workers to get to know us. Hopefully this will open doors for more ministry in the future.
On another day we were allowed to do a cooking lesson with the kids. Here we are making cookies.
We have some travel coming up, so we ask for prayer for the trip.
Also, please pray for our ministry team to continue the work while we are on the road.
In Christ,
Cecil, Tonya, Timothy, Vera & Diana
