The Eshelman Exploits August
2021
Dear Friends,
hello from Siberian Russia.
By the grace of God and your generous support we have managed to be in
Russia and go through some open doors of ministry. In August we hosted a youth event in our
place on the farm. Having teenagers in
our house has kept us busy.
The
big event recently was an evangelistic outreach in the local community. We hosted a team of twelve young people on
summer break from local churches who wanted to be involved in ministry. The pastor suggested doing an outreach, and
they were interested. The young ladies
slept in our living room and guest bedroom while the guys stayed downstairs in
the men’s center.
This
team does cleanup in town to create a good name for themselves during the
morning, and then do street evangelism in the afternoon and youth activities in
the evening (games, sports, and campfires).
Everything went well until we did a quest game named “Keys to the
Kingdom” which is an outdoor game where the kids find keys through games and
Bible discovery. Some of the parents
complained to the mayor, but she allowed us to continue provided we not be radical. In the long run some of the kids did end up
attending church events. Your generosity
impacted both the youth that attended the event as well as all the youth they
meet as they did outreach on the streets.
Another
highlight of the summer was a three-day church camp for families who have
children with disabilities. With your
support we helped to sponsor the event so it could be held in a nice retreat
center.
The farm rehab center where we live continues to go
well. The men in rehab are busy with farm
work, such as tending cows and working the garden. As they say, “on a ranch the work is never
done.” There is also a lot of
renovations on the building taking place (electric work, roofing, painting, and
some plumbing issues). I must say the
building is becoming a nicer place to live.
I was recently asked to make criteria of success for our
events, I said an activity can be called a success if:
1.
Nobody got hurt.
2.
Nothing got
broken.
3.
The gospel is
presented.
4.
Everyone wants to
come back again.
So far, we consider our
events to have been successful!
You can continue to send financial support to:
Assemblies of God World Missions
1445 North Boonville Ave.
Springfield, MO 65802-1894
And put 292481-9 on the memo line (to insure it is assigned
to our ministry account).
Thank you so much for your
support!
Sincerely,
Cecil
and Tonya Eshelman