The Hosanna Plan is a massive mobilization by the Russian national church to bring in the harvest. It consists of two parts: "Year for Jesus", and "Every Church Plants a Church." Russia has about 129,000 population points; cities, towns & villages. Our vision is to take the Word of God to every person in Russia, no matter where they live. Many of the small villages are disappearing as young people move to the cities, and yet the people there need to hear the gospel before the opportunity disappears. "Year for Jesus" is a plan to take a ministry team to every population point. This is no small plan, the shear numbers require incredible amounts of travel.
We plan to build 15 mobile ministry teams, reaching all regions of Russia (and Russia is BIG). The members of the team must commit to give one year of his/her life to Jesus in this ministry. Each team will be made up of 25 people. Each team will be trained to preach and share the Word of God, daily going to the next town and city. We estimate that every team should be able to go to 25 population points within a week, plus 4 weeks of training and 4 weeks of vacation within a year. Each team should be able to take the gospel to 1,100 points in one year. When taking this number and multiplying by 15 teams, the Word will be taken to approximately 16,500 cities, towns, and villages in one year. About eight years are needed to fulfill this plan.
Recently one of the members of the church that we attend here committed to spend a year of her life with a Hosanna Team. We also know her as our family physician here in Khabarovsk. Olga worked as a surgeon as well as attended the Bible Institute. Feeling the call of God, she resigned her job, sold her car, bought tickets and has joined the team in the Volgograd region. She did not do this lightly, but carefully weighed the cost of giving up her doctor's salary to live by faith. She's been on the team for a month now, and reports that the work is hard, but worthwhile. Since some of the villages are remote, the team rises early in the day. Sometimes they must walk several miles from the road to reach the villages, which has been a challenge in the Russian winter. Here a a couple of photos of her. Can you tell that we are proud of her?
Presently There are teams in Perm, Volgograd, Kaluga, Angarsk, Novosibirsk, and Chita. Please pray for these teams, as well as our personal friend Olga as she brings the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ to the people of the Volgograd region.
The other part of the plan, "Every Church plants a Church" is just as great a challenge as bringing an evangelistic team to every hamlet of Russia. New pastors and church planting teams will need to be raised up all across the country. Churches will be planted in cities that you have heard of, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as smaller and less famous places.
AGWM workers across Russia are preparing to support these plans in various ways. Huge amounts of resources will be required to accomplish the task (vehicles, literature, diesel fuel, winter clothing, food, tents, etc.), not to mention huge amounts of prayer. If you feel the Lord leading you to become involved or to give to this endeavor, please let us know and we'll send you more information. And everyone can expect occasional reports and photos to be given in the future.
After reporting in our November email update about the need for more Chinese Fire Bibles ( http://eshelman.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html ), some people mentioned their concern to us about making sure that would happen. I am delighted to announce that we have made another delivery of 30 Bibles this last month, and have another box in our back room waiting for when the time is right. Please understand that we can not provide any photos of this part of our ministry.
Hope Center's ministry continues to expand in various ways. There is a city-wide interdenominational pastor's meeting every month. In January it was held at Hope Center. Some pastors have been there many times, but for others it was their first time. They were excited to find such a nice place was available for meetings.
We had asked for prayer about our kitchen drain, since we were unable to get it open with chemicals, snakes, plungers, plumbers, etc. It seems your prayers were the right thing, one night while Tonya was up late praying it suddenly began to work. Thank you for your petitions on our behalf. God really does answer prayer, even for the strange stuff.
The time has come for us to write up another hard copy newsletter to mail out. Please pray for us to be creative and clear as we compose the next report.
