Gifts came in from 39 individuals and families and 17 churches. Many churches gave love offerings, above and beyond their budgeted giving...The Lord is obviously moving North American churches to suffer with their brethren in the more oppressed parts of the world and we thank Him for His faithfulness and mercies through believers and churches like you and yours!
We need to find 100 people who will pray for the church in Moscow and for #RenewRussia2016. We have already raised $42,000 for #RenewRussia2016, but we still need another $58,000 to make it possible for the church in Dmitrov and other ministries to continue.
Will you be one out of one hundred?
With very mixed feelings I want to introduce you to Vlad and Ella Nevjidovsky and their family. Vlad has been a ruling elder and preacher in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of St. Petersburg since 2002.
The Board of SRS has designated May-June as #RenewRussia2016. Please check out our quick report detailing our needs and how you can get involved.
Until now, Romanovka, near Vladivostok, has had no functioning church nor any church building with a congregation meeting in it. SRS donors have contributed the entire $60,000.00 needed to complete the construction of this church building before winter this year! Praise God! The Holy Spirit is pushing the Gospel and the Church where they have never been before!
In July of 2016 the Russian government passed a law which outlawed public evangelism in Russia. Most churches expected their ministries to be greatly hindered. In fact, in 2017 SRS has experienced unprecedented growth in our seminary and churches. And we have critical support needs. Please enjoy an account of God's amazing work in Russia and beyond during the past few months, and learn how you can participate...
In January 2017, SRS sent Zach Purcell to St. Petersburg, where he spent 10 days and a donation of $10,000, filming and interviewing the parents, counselors and Babochka club members. The five minute film linked below highlights the fruit of that labor. Two thousand Russians watched it online the first day it was available.
My name is Brian O'Leary. I come from the little fishing village of Baltimore in West Cork, Ireland, I have been a U.S. citizen and lived in the USA most of my life, the past twenty-two years in the beautiful state of Kentucky. As the newest member of the board of SRS, I wanted to write to you about three of our four SRS supported church plants. I am excited about them all because, just as St. Patrick in Ireland, they are preaching Christ where He is not otherwise being preached.
Dear friends and supporters of SRS,
Greetings in Jesus Christ! Happy Reformation Year!
I’m Evgeni Kruzhkov, a dean of the Biblical Theological Seminary of St. Petersburg. Thanks to your generous support we were able to hold another intensive course. Fifteen ministers participated in it including four new students who came from cities that we have never reached before.
For Cathy and I, one of the challenges of living stateside is the feeling that few people are willing to be vulnerable about their needs. But when we come to Russia, the Lord fills our lives with wonderful people who are not ashamed to describe their real needs, opening the door for us to tell them about how God can meet them.
"I thought I knew how unreached Jurmala was, with a population of Russians of about 20,000, but I had no idea. We saw in Timur's community that there was 1 Catholic church, of about 15 women, 5 men, a Pentecostal church of the same size, and a Lutheran church of the same size. Pastor Timur told us none of them is attempting effective outreach to the community with the Gospel."
Pastors Timur, Yuri, Evgeni and Blake Purcell will attempt to invite 300 Russian-speaking men to attend the seminar (Friday and Saturday, March 3-4) What Is a Real Man: God's Perspective. Pray for the Holy Spirit to touch 20 men's hearts to attend, and from this group for a men's Bible study to begin, which pastor Timur will lead. Less than 1% of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia is evangelical Christian!
Jeremiah 33:3, KJV
Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
From passages like Jeremiah 33:3, we know that God loves to shew Himself to us, when we call to Him, in a big and mighty way.
Please do this very thing and call to Him for the Make Missions Great Again campaign, which field director Blake Purcell and his wife Cathy will be leaving for on Sunday, February 26, 2017.
In late November my brother, Lewis, one of the directors of Club Babochka, asked my wife and I to consider coming to Russia this January to film several promotional videos for Babochka. While we were super excited to take on the challenge, the obstacles were daunting. I was afraid we’d make it to Russia but not have the funding, the team, or the editing time to really give the stories what they deserved...
Club Babochka is in a tough situation. One of their biggest sponsors is on the verge of cancelling their support.
The sponsor is a local charity group and they feel Club Babochka just doesn’t have enough shareable media that the charity can use to continue raising support. Babochka doesn’t have the funds or the staff to create this media, so they've asked two filmmakers, Zachary Purcell and Ryan Sax, to volunteer their work to film and produce several promotional videos of Babochka.
"We were atheists. Therefore all these ordeals were a real shock for me. In the Soviet Union, life was hard anyway, and to have a severely handicapped child was considered a curse of fate. I did not want to live. I did not see any hope. I was sure my life was ruined completely. Even when we were together again – with my wife and disabled son – I wished I would have died as soon as possible because I thought my life failed."
"It was a great shock to us when a few weeks ago we got the sad news that Valery had passed away of a heart attack. I immediately felt the need to have the churches of Reformed Presbyterian Church of Eurasia offer their condolences and some financial support for his widow and children, which we did. I also felt that God would have me visit them in their time of need. "
