Orphanage

Today we're going just to visit the children at the orphanage. That's allowed, even though we can't have Bible lessons there any more. Also, either today or some time later this week, Pavel will be talking to the director about letting the children come to Bible lessons at a different location. Please pray that she will agree to that!

September 29
HUGE PRAISE REPORT: We have official permission to work with the kids again, and not only that, but we can have the Bible lessons IN THEIR CLASSROOMS! That's going to be so much easier than having to take them somewhere else. God gave us more than we even asked for. Now you can pray as this gets started. I'm guessing that Ira will do the teaching and Will the music, but everything needs to be sorted out now.

October 8
It looks like lessons will be starting in about two weeks. There are still a lot of details to work out. Pray for Ira and Yulia, because most of the responsibility falls on them.

October 15
Tomorrow will be the first lesson with the children this year. They decided to go ahead and try it at the place where our church meets, as a kind of Sunday school for the children from the orphanage. Tomorrow Ira will be teaching by herself, and she's somewhat worried about it. The other girl who was supposed to help her has to work, and Will is going to be in Moscow.

October 22
The lesson went well. Yulia was able to help after all. Fifteen children came! They had coordinated it amongst themselves so that they all met and came together.

Deaf schools

This morning Will and Pavel went to the schools for deaf and hard of hearing children to hand out Bibles. I wish I could have gone, and I know certain people (Shae!) would love to be praying with me for those children. Some day I hope to see us or others from the church here having more contact with these schools.

Youth

Will is now officially the youth leader here. His main responsibility will be the Saturday night Bible studies. He says to pray that he'll actually do something in this new position and that he'll be an encouragement.

September 26
We're having a planning meeting for youth ministry here on Thursday.

October 1
The meeting went well, and you can look at the new prayer requests to see what we worked on.

November 5
Tonight Will is starting a new Bible study on the Christian life with the church youth.

November 14
Now that the club is on Saturday nights, we need to have a different night for a more serious Bible study. Please pray that we will be able to agree on a time, and that the church youth will come.

November 26
Last Sunday we were able to have everyone over for supper and Bible study. That worked well, so hopefully we'll be able to continue it.

Zhatva

This Sunday will be Zhatva, the harvest holiday. You can pray we'll have a good church service, enjoy the fellowship, and that there will be guests.

September 26
We had a wonderful Zhatva in our church last week. There were guests, and more than usual, people just came in from the shopping center where we meet. Also, yesterday we went to Vaizniki to celebrate Zhatva with them, which was wonderful, too.