Greetings dear friends in Christ!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Grace to you and peace from God our father and the lord Jesus Christ. We would like to thank you for your prayers, love, support and assistance. May the LORD Jesus bless, encourage, strengthen and uphold you, one and all. We praise God for your fellowship in the glorious gospel of HIS grace and peace. Glory to the LORD Jesus Christ, now and forever. We love you!

This is our newsletter for the period of time from the autumn (September) to January of 2002.
Praise be to God He was with us all time helping in our work in such a powerful way. 
At the present time we are meeting for the service 4 times a week. Sunday morning and Wednesday evening we study the bible and have worship, prayer and fellowship together. On Wednesdays we actually have two groups. One in the Bible society were we usually meet and another at a privet house of a poor family that not much time ago gave their lives to Christ in our church. 
The second group is led by Victor Korotkov (pastor's assistant). We see God's blessing on this family. Anna Fedorovna (grandma 80 years old) and Svetlana (her daughter) both were seriously sick before accepting Jesus Christ, but God has done tremendous work for this time in this family. Anna Fedorovana (grandma) had a problem with her eyes and two months ago God totally healed her eyes. Her daughter Svetlana has cancer, when she accepted Jesus she was very seriously ill (was not even able to walk more than a few minutes). Now after getting saved she started to feel much better. At the moment she is even looking for a job. Doctors are very surprised because of this change. Praise be to Jesus! We would like to thank you again for financial help to us. This year we were able to help them to buy medicine several times and pay a part of the amount of money for coil for winter time.

We are also planning to start some more bible study home groups in the next months. We see it as a way to reach many people for Jesus. Please pray with us for that.
We understand that we can reach much more if we work in unity as one team with one heart, on Tuesdays we have leaders meetings where we usually pray together, have short bible study and discuss our ministry and work. The same is for the church, on Friday we have open prayer meeting where we have short 10-15 minutes bible study about prayer and then pray for the church, ministry, our plans, Vladivostok etc. We believe that everything we are doing in Christ will have great success. 
At the church services in average we have about 25-30 people. 
The flock is growing very slow. It makes us a little bit upset sometimes, but we have clear understanding that God has period of preparation and His timing for everything.
Our worship team is getting stronger and we feel it is time to buy some musician equipment, it will help to have a better sound and will open door for street evangelism at summer time. We saved some money and are planning to use it for purchase of one or two speakers in Moscow during the time when somebody from our church will go to the pastor's conference. We have got already invitation for annual pastors conference in Moscow and decided that due to the situation in Victor's (assistant) family and other reasons he should go again to the conference this year. 
During the last year we were able to develop good relationship with the local churches. It helps us to do the God's work together. Once a month we attend local pastors monthly meeting were we usually get information and discuss future plans, conferences and different Christian activity with other churches. That lets us to be involved in the Christian life of Vladivostok and be in unity with other fellowships. 
During the summer time we have made an attempt to work with alcoholics. Some of them repented and accepted Jesus as their personal Savior. It is difficult ministry but we are not going to give up and continue to help these people to get saved and freed in Jesus Christ. 
Some of our brothers and sisters were able to go to hospitals and preach the gospel and pray for sick people there. We saw very many people open to the good news there that were asking to pray for them. God is putting in our hearts to continue this work.
In October we had a group of people from America. Pastors Mick & Brian Ewing and teacher Melvin Folkertsma. It was a great time for our church and I believe for Vladivostok city. During this time they held seminar IBS (inductive bible study) in Vladivostok where people from different churches came to learn how to effectively study bible and apply God's word in their lives. Before seminar we had advertisement on TV and posters spread in the city, it helped us to have at the seminars not only believers but unbelievers as well. Some of the people got saved at that time and are still attending our services.
During this time Mick, Brian, Melvin and the group of people from our church were able to visit big women's prison and tuberculosis prison for men, where we had evangelistic meetings and praise and worship. As I think we had great success, many saved people in both prisons. (Pictures available at www.ica.ru/calvary/eng ). As we prayed and were looking for the ways to evangelize God has opened the door to the Customs Academy in Vladivostok and brothers were able to go to English faculties in the Academy where were able to communicate with students and answer their questions.

As we are growing in His word God is putting in our heart vision for concrete work that we can do in Vladivostok now.
Not so much time ago God has put in our heart to go to radio stations, TV companies and newspapers in Vladivostok city to find a way to use them for the glory of Jesus. It is sad that we were not able organize that earlier since local churches do not have any access to television, radio or newspapers to give people hope and Good news about our Lord Jesus Christ and information about local churches. People (nonbelievers) in our area because of influence of Orthodox Church and lack of information about local Christian Churches mainly have opinion that any other church than orthodox is a "sect". That is why our primarily goal is, we are aiming to make live (real time) TV program about 30 minutes per week, where pastors from different churches can come, to give live teaching from the bible and answer telephone calls, at the end Christian video-clip during the clip will be given addresses of Christian churches in Vladivostok. Something the same we are planning for a newspaper, an article, and invitation to churches. We did not get far for now but it does not stop us from trying, lately we were able to approach local TV company that has a good attitude towards non orthodox Christians (orthodox church has great influence on the TV channels in Russia, in fact 90% of information about Christianity comes from orthodox priests and churches. Big problem.) We actually were using that channel to advertise Christian invents in our city. In future months we are going to visit all TV companies with idea of starting the programs and see what God is going to do. Please pray with us for it.

At the present time we are looking for a piece of land for future building of church's own House of Prayer, which we are going to use for different purposes. First of all for the church's meetings, bible studies, prayer meetings, pastors prayer meeting, work with children, youth, computer class, bible school etc. Office for the church and for ICA-interdenominational Christian association "Christianity beyond borders" (Web-Server and team of people from our church) committed to help to the local churches to develop websites, get access to internet, email, web-hosting, information about Christian activity here, intense training, instructing webmasters etc. www.ica.ru We already have some amount of money to buy a plot of land for future building, please pray for God's leading in this matter. Now, due to the new agricultural law, there is great chaos in local government, beforehand the land has never being given for ownership or sold to people but the people were usually taking it as long-terms land-rent (usually 50 years contract) now as we see here in Vladivostok prices for land go up and down, the ownership documents that worked yesterday do not work today and we do not know what will be tomorrow. People who have long-terms land-rent contract with government, or have privet houses can buy land from government for a lower price. For people who just want to buy land, like we are, the price is much bigger. We actually have many ways to go, to buy a privet house with a piece of land or land that belong to somebody according to the long terms land-rent contract and afterwards try to buy it from government for a lower price. Or simply to save up more money and buy it according to the new law, that is more expensive but the risk is less. We do not see what is the best for now and how much time is needed for government to put everything in order. Please join us in prayer in this matter, so that we see exactly know what is in God's heart concerning that. Thank you.

Thank you again for putting your efforts, prayers, time, finances, encouragement and love to our ministry in Vladivostok.

Greetings from the VCC Church.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2002

Roman & Tanya Gorlov, Victor Korotkov and the Calvary Chapel in Vladivostok.