Greetings in the name of Jesus!

     Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Six months passed since last news letter from Vladivostok. It was really blessed time for the church here. 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. We love you!
     We wrote about vision for our church that we’ve got from the Lord (Psalm 84:4-7), and we want to testify that God is faithful and is capable to provide everything for His great works. All He wants from stewards to be found faithful and we try to be faithful.
     We continue to meet in the Russian Bible society office. God has really blessed this building and is using it for the glory of Jesus, there is another church that came to have meetings in the same building with us in a different time. We see how God brings new people almost every meeting and believe soon we will have to look for a bigger place. At the present time the attendance of the church is about 30 – 35 people. Last meeting 34. There are 14 people more that we see only at the home bible groups.
We were writing in the last news letter about our plans to start new bible groups and asked you to pray with us for that. Praise be to God with your help we started 5 new groups. It is great blessing for us and also a place were a lot of work needs to be done. Please continue to pray for that. We need new leaders and lay people with heart of servant for spreading God's kingdom and helping to new converted people to grow in Christ.
     During this winter time we found that many people are coming only for Sunday morning service and sometimes do not come at all. We felt strong that we have to do something about that. At the leader's meetings we decided to pray for the problem, because many people stopped coming at all. Mainly older people, because of the transport problems, lack of the money, plus they have to come back home after the services on Wednesdays, at the time when it is dark etc. While we were praying God gave us a verse from the Bible (Psalm 84:4-7)  Ps 84:6 As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.

     We understood we have come to their place and let them to have a bible group somewhere near. So now we started bible groups for the middle week meetings, to let these people be involved, have spiritual food and fellowship. For now, we have 5 “springs” (bible groups) in different places of the city. Victor leads 3 and I lead another 2. Results are amazing; we did not expect such great results as we have now. Many people became stable and are wiling to serve the Lord. About 14 people that are usually not attending Sunday services, come to the bible groups. We are so glad we have a way to serve and take care of them. At the bible groups we use good manuals for bible studies which we got from Calvary Church planting mission and some other materials. Please continue to pray for this work with us. We need anointing to make not just believers but followers of Christ. People open to serve God, open homes for Christ, bible group leaders.
     Mathew 9; 37 Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 "Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest."
     Meetings that we have now are: Monday, rehearsal for worship team and a bible study group at “Second river”, Tuesday bible study group at “Tihaya” (a far away region of the city), Wednesday meeting in the church, and bible study group at “Bam”, Thursday leaders prayer meeting, Friday church prayer meeting, Sunday church service, and fellowship, Sunday school for children.

     At the 19th of May our sister Nina started church service for kids. She got desire from the Lord to start this ministry two years ago. She has graduated seminars Sunday school teachers and now our kids have great time together, fellowship and the word from the Lord through our sister.

     Our worship team is getting stronger and we feel God is blessing the fellowship through that. Praise be to God, with your help, we were able to buy “Overhead Projector” a really good one, very compact, 4 kg weight, power is 2100. We can carry it wherever we would like, it is really convenient. Now it will be much easier with worship and teaching in case we want to show something, charts etc. Praise be to God. It helps a lot. We do not have to print songs on papers any more, people’s hands are free now, it makes the time of the worship more convenient and effective. In case we have a gospel meeting, we will be able to use it also. God is so great. Please pray for Tanya, Nina, Sveta and Andrey, for the growth, unity, anointing and ability to be subjected to the Holy Spirit. We continue to pray for musician equipment. As the church becomes bigger, soon we will need it. It will help to have a better sound and will open door for street evangelism at summer time.
     God is teaching us much about evangelism. He shows us the best way for evangelism through Jesus Christ. This is the heart to heart evangelism (John 1:40-45). Some of our brothers and sisters were able to go to hospitals and preach the gospel and pray for sick people there. We saw 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.

     God started to use Andrey (a leader) in a new way, he is teaching Gods word in the church also. So now we have a line of people who would like to preach. God gave Andrey the gift to teach in a very simple way very important and practical things.

>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…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.…

      A few weeks ago we made a step of faith and came to the local TV channel “Vostok-TV”. to talk about possibility of showing Christian programs on TV. One of the directors of the TV channel is a evangelical Christian, he was attending Baptist church before he had got this job, after he had got this job pastor excommunicated him for working in secular TV. His name is Sergey Krosheninnikov. He is the director of the TV programs in that company. We had a good conversation., he was long time thinking of a Christian program on TV but did not have time and strength for that.  We have a plan to start Christian programs on “Vostok-TV” in autumn time. We got some Christian video programs from our brothers from Nizniy-Novgorod (Christian TV station 3 angels).
     There is great darkness in Vladivostok. Many people are involved in the occult. That is why we published an article “The nets of satan” in the newspaper “Evening Star” 120,000 editions we gave tell number in the article and had a good response from people. We wrote several more articles and are working now on giving them to other newspapers.
     God gives us desire to serve Him through Internet. We have web-site and we are doing our best to make it affective power of God. We’ve got a new computer for the church. It gives us an opportunity to have contacts with many people and churches all round the world and to spread the Word of the Lord. Not so long time ago we started to record sermons and our worship on audio types and we are going to put it in Internet. Now we use a regular audio player for that purpose, it is not convenient, but we believe soon we will be able to buy a Digital Voice Recorder, it will make it simple. Soon we will have it online. Next time when somebody comes to visit us in Vladivostok we will make it available on the internet.

 

In spring a missionary woman from Finland Mailis Yanatuinen came to our church. We had very good seminars. There were two themes of seminar:” Woman in the Bible” and “Glad Tidings Bible studies”. (almost the same as Inductive Bible study) We invited people from other churches. The people who came to seminars got many blessings as they say. Praise be to God.

God is blessing the church last services we always had new people coming to Christ.  People come, repent and accept Jesus as a savior.

     Six people were baptized on Easter. Praise be to God... In a few weeks we are planning to baptize some more people.

     Concerning the building for the church, we do not have big progress. It is still the same, as we wrote in previous letters. We try to find acceptable price. As we wrote we have two choices two different buildings that could work for the church, but at that time we can afford neither one nor another. God has His time for everything. Please continue to pray for it.

     We want to say thanks to all our brothers and sisters from Calvary Chapel Churches for love and care about us. We are happy to be in unity with you and be one family, Thank you again for putting your efforts, prayers, time, finances, encouragement and love to the ministry in Vladivostok.

    Greetings from the VCC Church.

    Roman & Tanya Gorlov, Victor Korotkov and the Calvary Chapel in Vladivostok. 05 June 2002