Week 7 Recap

Greetings, all! Another great week of spiritual conversations here. As far as training, we had some very good generalized church planting training on Monday and Tuesday, followed by more training on conflicts with colleagues and supervisors on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, we went to a store called Russian World near downtown to look at Matroshka dolls and visit a lady we met at one of the craft fairs we have attended. She lived in Novosibirsk a long time ago. We continue to throw out spiritual "seeds" here and there and see how she responds, but nothing yet. David also went with a team down to Hastings Street, which is where the homeless and drug addicted hang out. He and the team engaged several people with the gospel. Here is a list of a couple of other good conversations we had:

M -- from Africa, met on sky train, was reading a religious book and is a Christian. Invited her to plug into the small group we attend.
I -- Russian World owner (see above).
A -- college student from India, we talked to her a little about Christmas, and she has just started celebrating Christmas. Is interested in possibly learning more about Christ once she is on 2 week Christmas break.

Thanks for all the prayers!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Greetings friends! We send you very rainy Thanksgiving greetings from Vancouver! Aside from some inspiring messages on church planting earlier in the week, we have been getting into the holiday spirit, venturing out yesterday and finding a small Christmas tree (pictures to come soon!)

Here are some of our encounters this week. You might want to pray that God will give us further encounters with these people and that He will work to prepare their hearts for the gospel:

C -- met on sky train, Muslim
V -- Russian, met on bus, is looking for work, gave our contact info
C -- met at food court in mall, Muslim exchange student, gave our contact info

We are so thankful for all your prayers! Hope you get plenty of turkey and time to be thankful for all God's blessings, for without Him we would have nothing ;)

Week #4 Recap

Well, it's hard to believe we have finished week # 4 and are making our way into week #5. We are continuing to try to followup with each of the people below and we have a few new people:

V -- manages Russian store, orthodox

J  -- lady from Europe, met at ESL class at library, seeking spiritual things

Our training this past week focused on how to begin and sustain a church planting movement, which seems to be very good training especially for when we arrive in Russia. Despite the relatively cold weather and driving rain, we decided to go to an ESL conversation circle on Saturday at our local library. It was a great place to make some new friends and we even got to interact with the group in some spiritual dialogue. Stay tuned for more next week!

Week #3 Recap

We had a great time of ministry this week. God has started to lead us to some people who are interested in hearing more about spiritual things. Here is a list of first initials that you can pray for:

K –  met on bus, Hindu, has read the Bible and is interested in hearing more.

S – dealing with suicide of her daughter and raising her grandson. Was not interested in talking spiritual things at the time but seems like she may be interested in further conversation.

J – young lady who works in mall, interested in further conversation.

H – comes from Catholic background, interested in further conversation.

B – met in gym, Catholic and good conversation about salvation by works versus grace, seems interested in further conversation.

We had a chance to meet with one of our new Russian friends who has been here in Vancouver a couple of years. It was great to work on the few phrases we know and hopefully we were able to help him with his English a bit.

In other news, we went to Grouse Mountain yesterday on our free day. In our attempt to save $60 ($80 total to take the gondola but we only wanted to pay $20 for the ride down) we hiked up a little less than 3,000 feet in an hour and a half.

I think we got the rest of our exercise for the year. Was it worth it? You make the call!

Week 2 Update

We have made it to the end of our 2nd week here in Canada. We have found it quite interesting getting into a schedule the past 10 days, but basically our typical day involves several hours of class time and the remainder of the day out engaging people in conversations (and always looking for opportunities to turn the conversations to spiritual topics).

Our main prayer request at this point is that God will lead us to those He has prepared to be receptive to the gospel. Right now, we are talking to quite a number of people per day, but very few have expressed an interest in hearing more about spiritual things. You can help us immensely by agreeing with us for the Holy Spirit to continue to direct us to those who are thirsting for the living water only Christ can give! 

And finally . . . our living room!

Another view of metro area from our apartment . . .