First of all we would like to thank all of you for being such a great blessing, help, and support for our ministry in Vladivostok, Russia. We always felt your love, care, and encouragement. Thank you very much.
    

 Soon, on February 13, we are planning to go to Plastun for an outreach and the only thing we can do now is to pray that God will open our way there.  It is almost one week since the snowstorm but they did nothing with the snow on the road yet.  They cleared the way to the big cities but Plastun is too small to draw the attention of the local government. We are planning to bring to Plastun about 400 kg of different food that we are buying now on the offerings of our church.  We plan to distribute this among the 50 poorest families in Plastun.  We will have a list of them from the local social committee run by the government. We did it once already.  The church there brought Christmas gifts to children in those families in January.   It was a really great testimony for those families and local government and a lot of touched hearts of parents who were not able to provide for their children.  Now we are planning to visit 50 families and bring to their homes food, New Testaments, and Christian videos for every family.  On these videos are testimonies of famous Christians.  They are Russian TV-stars, sportsmen and politicians that everyone in Russia knows.  We are taking about a 100 of these there for distribution. Also along with that we borrowed from a Baptist church in Vladivostok a video projector and are planning to show “the Climb”, a really great Christian movie that was produced by Billy Graham’s ministry and World Wide Pictures. We will have two nights in the cultural house, the biggest place in the town. We expect between 100-200 people. The nice thing is since the former Soviet Union times they did not have any cinema theater. Only cultural thing they have is a disco dance twice a week.  Also we will invite the visited families to the so called “cinema theater” for two nights.
 

The church in Plastun is doing great even though Andrey, the ex-pastor, abandoned it. Right now I am acting as a pastor of their church until we see a man among the locals. There is a lady Masha Zaharchenko who is one of the leaders there, she is taking care of the flock. It is sad but there is no man mature enough to take this position right now. So when it happened that Andrey left the church basically because of the problems in his family and financial need (he moved to another town to make some money) only thing we could do to keep the church from falling apart was sending Victor there for two months (he stayed there in June and August of 2003 to help and encourage them and find a possible person to be pastor). Eventually we came to the conclusion to take this church under my pastorship and appointed one of the leaders to be an administrator. The responsibility of the administrator (Masha Zaharchenko) is to solve arising questions and to contact us every week. Our (Vladivostok church) commitment is to visit them every month, serve communion to them, and encourage. We also try to resolve some problems they face. Due to our financial situation we were and still are unable to visit them once a month. We usually try to go there every second or third month

Despite that the church is growing in number and maturity. Last time we were there for special Christmas service we had about 7 adult converts and as usual a lot of children. It is wonderful that I hear these people are still around and some of them are serving in church. One school teacher from those 7 is preaching the gospel to students in her classes in spite of the law that we have in Russia. Her son is going to help us to do the film show in Feb.  We believe this church will go great.

There is a family in this church that seems to have God’s hand on them, Victor & Tanya.  Victor got saved only one year ago, we baptized him in August when we had an outreach in Plastun. He could be a good pastor for the church. God has greatly changed his life since he is saved and has put great Christian love to his brothers and sisters. When we come to Plastun he serves as with his property and lets us to stay in his house. If God’s will in future he could make a good pastor. His wife Tanya in treasurer in the church and one of active leaders.

In August 2003 we had a team of teenagers from Lake Elsinore Friends church. It was a really great time

We hired a big bus and went from Vladivostok to Plastun with 26 people, 10 of which were Americans.

Together with them we showed the Jesus film one day outside in the main square and had about 150 people, some people were watching the movie from their balconies. The movie has 4 parts, to change for next part takes about 5 minutes. At those periods different brothers from the American team were giving their testimonies.

Then due to a weather change we had to move the Jesus film to “Yaroslavna” cultural house, and even though we did not have any advertisement for that we had quite a bit of people gathered all 4 nights. As a result of this outreach we have some new people in Plastun and in Vladivostok church. It was time of holidays and some students from Plastun that are studying in Vladivostok universities were visiting their families and got to our outreach. After they came back to Vladivostok they joined the church

At day time Americans equipped with Russian interpreters were preaching on streets, playing football with locals and had a lot of fun.

It was amazing time for Plastun and Russians from Vladivostok. After the outreach we had a baptism and baptized 14 people. 8 from Plastun, 3 Americans, and 3 from Vladivostok church

The bus driver that we hired was among them. He got saved during one of the Jesus film shows and had a desire to be baptized. Praise be to God.

It was great time of encouragement for Plastuns, Vladivostokers, and I believe for American team.

When we came back to Vlad we had some more outreaches and little youth camp at a Russian “dacha”.

Last October we had a visitor from Juneau, Pastor Mick Ewing. Praise be to God for this wonderful time of fellowship and encouragement. We were able to spend time together in Vladivostok where he taught about leadership and brought greetings and blessings from the church in Alaska and spend some more time in Plastun. Using the opportunity I would like to thank the church in Juneau for providing the trip to him. It was a very important and great time. We were able to go to Plastun together and stay with the church there and encourage the flock there.

This year we had two Christmas services, one in Vladivostok on American Christmas and in Plastun on Russian. For a long time we could not find a building for the celebration, you know the situation in Russia it is not easy for a church like us to find something. When they find out we are not Orthodox they refuse. Praise be to God with help of our American brother (Luke Mardock) we rented a great cafeteria for 120 places in A Huge University. God is amazing. So we had a nice time together.

We continue to broadcast Christian TV programs every week. It is amazing how God was able to provide us with opportunity to finance it for all this time. The sad thing soon we will have to move from bible society to another place because they are planning to remodel the hall and make several offices in the hall where we meet. And anyway since our church is bigger about 40 people at Sunday service it is difficult to sit them all in this room. So we move to a new place where we will have to pay 70$ for each Sunday service, plus we need, to meet on Wednesday and for prayer. So we will have to stop financing the programs and will use released funds for the rent.

Concerning our new building purchase, everything looks clear but the problem is the owner still cannot prolong lease for a part of the land we want to buy. The thing is, according to the Russian agricultural law you may not have more then 300 sq/m of land in the city limits. So people usually buy a house register 300 sq/m as property and for the rest of the land they resister 50 years lease. In our case the whole plot is 900 sq/m. Everything is fine with the house and 300 sq/m, we can buy it any day. But the problem is to prolong the lease for the rest 600 sq/m for a long period of time. So what we do now is we try to make endless lease for 150 sq/m plus 15 years lease for 450 sq/m and buy 300 sq/m. All together it is 900 sq/m. I am sorry if it is not clear to you. It is because we live in a strange country where laws are made not to help but to make life harder. Basically when we are ready with the lease we will buy the house. The owner told us that in February or March she will be ready to sell it. If not we will look for something else.

I am sorry I was not writing to you all about what was happening in Vladivostok church for a while. We have many great blessings from God. I will tell you about one of them.

Somewhere in last March an American couple that came to work in Vladivostok in American Consulate joined our church. This a wonderful couple, Luke and Missy Mardock.

For several years we were praying for an opportunity to teach ESL using Bible. This spring will be one year that we have English lessons every Saturday. We have 10-18 people coming for lessons. Luke committed himself to lead ESL outreach every Saturday. Besides that he is helping us with teaching and in leadership.  He is one of the leaders in our church. This time we will go to Plastun by his car. Now we have about 8 people who can speak English. The team of teenagers that we had in August for outreach in Plastun were from Luke’s church in LA.

At every Sunday service in Vladivostok church we try to give gospel since we always have some new people. When we keep it simple it helps people to join the church. Sunday service is a gospel message and fellowship. We have tea together every Sunday. On Wednesdays beginning from this year we started to study the Bible from the beginning and do more solid teaching. Now we are studying Genesis. Every Friday we have prayer meeting at Rachael’s Homeless children Rehabilitation society. Every Tuesday leaders fellowship and have prayer and planning.

I am sorry for my English, I tried my best to describe our ministry and what is happening in Vladivostok & Plastun churches. Please pray with us for our needs. Please pray with us for our plans and trip to Plastun, we go there on 13th of February ‘til 16th. Also for a successful move for Vladivostok church to a new place. It is really painful since we are so used to meeting in the Bible society where we have a lot of freedom. -         for spiritual growth of the flock; -         for the leaders (Victor, Luke, Olga, Sveta, Nina,) and  pastor (Roman & Tanya) for the church in Plastun finances to so we can visit them every month; -         for finances for the TV programs, -         Building. For a vehicle  (my car is falling apart it is only available car in our church) This October I and my wife will try to go to the USA for one month. Please pray for God’s will.

Thank you again for praying and supporting our ministry. 

May God bless you, 

Roman & Tanya, Victor, Luke, and VCCC