The beauty of snow!

I wanted to briefly share with you some photos of our surroundings, as it is obvious this will not be considered a light snow year in Novosibirsk!  Despite the extra time and effort it takes to get snow off my shoes, off the car we use, and off of everything else that goes outside, snow is very beautiful and continually keeps me inspired. Seeing perfectly formed snow crystals on my coat is an ever present reminder of the beauty of God's creation down to the most minuscule detail. If you are in a place where November and December are fairly warm, you might enjoy looking at these photos to cool yourself off a little bit!

Be blessed and inspired by the beauty of snow, and remember about the snow that covers our hearts when we trust Christ --  it is a snow that transforms us into something completely different!


Photo 1 -- Kirby next to a pile of snow!

Photo 2 -- Outside our building, this car won't be going anywhere for a while!

Photo 3 -- Another view of the side of our building.

November travels!!!

Greetings Blog Readers!

We have just returned from an excellent trip to Germany and the Czech Republic. We spent a few days sightseeing in Berlin, Dresden, and Prague, and then went back to Germany for a conference near Frankfurt. This afforded us an opportunity to get a lot of new training, share experiences from our ministry in Novosibirsk, and just in general to fellowship. This was a great chance to push the pause button and evaluate where we are almost 10 months in to life in Novosibirsk. Thank you for your faithful prayers, and I think God has really given us renewed focus and vision to reach the people He is bringing into our path!

Here are photos for your enjoyment!

Dresden, Germany

Prague, Czech Republic

Berlin, Germany

Holhauzen, Germany

First snow!

Greetings Intercessors,
We got our first snow of the fall/winter today! Unfortunately it lasted only a few minutes and I did not even get a picture. We have had an exciting few weeks. We presented the gospel at ESL Bible Study and have a young lady with many spiritual questions. Please pray for Anna, as she is currently reading through the book of John and we hope to be able to address her questions within the next week.

Chara's parents recently made the trip here and we took them to the Altai Mountains for a few days of site seeing. It was great to be able to practice our Russian, and we were able to share God's love with a roadside souvenir vendor and give her a Russian gospel tract.

Here are some pictures from the trip!

Living in the light of the Son!

Greetings supporters,
Thank you so much for your continued prayers. We are seeing God draw many more people to our ESL Bible Study in Akadem. At this point, we are averaging about 20 people per week, although sometimes they are not all the same people. We are excited by the opportunity to teach them English but on an even deeper level to pour the gospel into their lives. Please be in prayer, as next week we plan to do a full fledged gospel presentation. We would like to do several through the course of the semester. Pray that people will hear the message and that they would see the Holy Spirit desiring to work in their hearts and lives.

On another note, Chara and I recently visited a very interesting museum in Akadem with a huge collection of artwork from pre-Christian Russia and other places from around the world. She actually worships the sun. It was quite an interesting afternoon. At the end of our tour through the museum, we got to give her a gospel tract and invited her to our Bible Study.  She evidently read the Bible many years ago, but has no interest now. Our desire is that one day she will walk by the light of the risen Son instead of simply the light of the sun!

It is people like this that drive us to make further progress in language, so we can have the opportunity to share the gospel completely in Russian. Please continue to pray as we press on!

Humble beginnings . . .

Prayer partners,
It is evident with noticeably cooler weather (with the exception of an occasional 79 degree day) that we are moving into fall!

But there are other indications that we are on the precipice of seasonal change -- our English Language Bible study has started in Akadem! We greatly like the format of the Bible study, which includes an intro, a joke, 2 songs, and a Bible story where we ask questions and prompt the group toward discussion in English.

Our first evening, this past Tuesday, saw 10 people from last spring's ESL school come to give the Bible study a try. Although the makeup of our first day's group was mostly older women, we are hoping that passing out flyers near the school as well as word of mouth will cause even more people to begin coming.

We are currently looking at the life of King David, and we feel that his trials and failures afford an outstanding opportunity to highlight the necessity of God's grace in everyday life. The idea is, with each lesson, to show how God was working, and to show how ultimately our own failures lead us to the foot of the cross!

Continue praying and we will keep scattering seed to see on whom it falls!

An island in Siberia?

I knew this post would get your attention. We actually had the opportunity this past weekend to visit an island in the Ob River a couple of hours south of Novosibirsk. Our friends Alex and Sveta invited us to Sveta's parents' house in the village. It was a great day of sightseeing and fun. We actually took a ferry to get to the island, although in winter the river freezes and so you can just drive across. I have included a video from our ferry ride.

We got to tour Sveta's parents garden as well as visit an old Orthodox church with a quite opinionated groundskeeper who seemed shocked that women wear jeans!

I have also included (for your enjoyment) a neat looking optical illusion taken from downtown Novosibirsk. This whole picture was painted onto the ground, but when seen through a camera (as you can see), it comes to life!

Enjoy the video and picture, and also keep us in prayer as we aspire to serve as ambassadors for Christ in everything we do and for everyone we meet!

Where have we been?

Funny you ask, but we have been in several places the past few weeks. All in all, we spent one week in Istanbul with Chara's parents. We had multiple opportunities to share about our faith in Christ there due to the prevalence of English speakers and the fact that it is a very religious (mostly Islamic) population. For example, I (David) asked a young man who took us on a tour of the Blue Mosque, is there ever a time in Islam when you know you are good with God and will go to heaven. Naturally he couldn't answer that question. I briefly got to share my testimony, and pray that seeds were planted in his life that will cause him to one day turn to Christ.  In Athens, we attended a meeting with around 1200 of our new best friends who work all through Europe. It was a busy time, and after 4 days of meetings, worship, and listening to great sermons, we realized that you could feel both refreshed and worn out at the same time. Pray that, as get back into the groove here in Novosibirsk, that we will continue to press into language study, making as much progress as possible while getting as many people as possible a  chance to respond to the gospel (even with our limited language)  . . .

First, we were in Instanbul . . .












Inside the Ana Sophia . . .

Underground cistern near the Ana Sofia . . .

Seaside in Greece close to the conference for all European personnel (no need to be jealous though, as we were in meetings the majority of the day!)















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