Saturday, April 12, 2008

Ministry in Rostov - Wed, Apr 9

On Wednesday morning of the day I was to leave Rostov to fly back to St. Petersburg, I had arranged to meet with a friend of Brad Horne. Brad’s parents are members of Hunters’ Glen Baptist Church and currently Brad is serving with the IMB in Perm, Russia. Brad used to live and work in Rostov and he had a Russian friend in Rostov who was actively involved in ministry.
Jon Borisvich has lived a long time in Rostov and became active in church several years ago. He currently serves as a deacon in the Central Baptist Church in Rostov and their church currently works with orphanages, shelters, and a children’s hospital. Jon came to Sergey’s apartment for the meeting so we could all learn from one another and discover if there was a possibility of doing ministry together with SAC as an outreach of his church to the community.

There are 11 Baptist churches in Rostov with 6 being officially registered. Jon’s church has 21 members and they visit an orphanage or shelter once a month. I wanted to have the meeting to see how we could work together in the future and what things needed to be worked out if a SAC team were to travel to Rostov. Jon only speaks Russian, but I told him that Sergey would be my contact and translator to help coordinate logistics if we were ever able to bring a team to Rostov. Currently, they have no foreign help from any American teams traveling to Rostov.

We had a good meeting and he even suggested visiting an orphanage in Chechnya or a trip to Beslan, where the Beslan school hostage crisis occurred in September of 2004 when Chechen terrorist took the school children and teacher hostage killing 334 including 186 children. That would be a 9-15 hour drive, depending on check points and traffic from Rostov. That may be a little out of reach right now for a SAC team.

There are many more questions to answer, but we ended the meeting in prayer and in hopes that one day SAC might be able to arrange for a mission trip to Rostov. Please pray with us as SAC considers extending our mission to another city.

2 comments:

SuzB said...

Hey John!
It's so interesting that you referenced Belsan in your blog. I just watched a documentary (this afternoon) about the siege, and cried because of the children telling about their experiences. My heart broke for them! One young boy stated that he didn't believe in God...only Russia. I was convicted that they need SAC. Now we have some praying to do!!
Be safe!
Susan

SuzB said...

Hey John!
It's so interesting that you referenced Belsan in your blog. I just watched a documentary (this afternoon) about the siege, and cried because of the children telling about their experiences. My heart broke for them! One young boy stated that he didn't believe in God...only Russia. I was convicted that they need SAC. Now we have some praying to do!!
Be safe!
Susan