Golden Triangle Baptist Association

Greeting from Vologda, Russia…August 22nd

It’s Sunday evening now and a day well spent. The team worshipped at Emanuel Baptist Church in Vologda this morning. There was good music, a strong sermon by pastor Pavel on true worship, and powerful testimonies by several of the members. That was followed by lunch and fellowship at the pastor’s home and with his wonderful family.

We toured the new church building which the members have been constructing themselves. It is dried in but has a ways to go. They hope to be using the top floor by sometime this fall. You can see the state they have reached in these pics (outside and top floor).

You also see Denise (or “Dennis” as she is called here) exploring up the ladder.

The 5:00 pizza party for young adults went well with seven attending. Good conversations about the gospel were carried on and a lot of seed planted.

Pray for Peter and his girlfriend, Katya (Kate) who are deeply in love and are about to be separated as he takes a two year job in the States. Both heard the gospel and are close. Other new friends were: Olga, Nadya, and Aleck and his sister, Anna,

Tomorrow we travel out to a much smaller community but an incredible rehab center. We will be out of wifi country until Tuesday afternoon so there will be a day skipped in the reports.

Pray for safety on the road as we travel and for effective training in the evening with the believers at Istuzchne and the rehab center there.

Thanks for your prayers - please continue…

Greeting from Vologda, Russia…August 21st

Greetings from the “other side of the world”. Your mission team is now in Vologda, Russia, following a lot of hours in the air and on the rails connected by the challenge of getting from one to the other. We now know how Russia so consistently builds great athletes - they drag two pieces of luggage each through about three miles of the Moscow subway system. We did leave Moscow on a 9 hour overnight trip to arrive at 6 in the morning in Vologda. There were seven of us and Illya the Russia in two sleeper compartments. You see pictured Larry & Carla Minton having a cup of tea in their compartment. Also in their little box were Denise Lillie and Carol Ramsey on the upper bunks. Rand y and Bonnie Whitman and myself entertained Illya for over half of the night in lieu of sleep but I did discover that Randy apparently studied the great writers and composers of Russia which he shared with Illya (Dostoevsky & Homer Simpson, etc). Pray for Illya. He was very nice but not responsive to spiritual probing (he also had five tall beers while we were together which seemed to slow down his mental processing). He is characteristic of so many Russians (all of whom Jesus came to save, we reminded ourselves).

Upon arrival at six in the morning in Vologda we were greeted by our translator, Tanya Kurochkina, who had served us so well last year. That is her on the left in the pic with Denise Lillie of our team as we did some initial sightseeing to acquaint the team with Vologda.

The highlight of the day was going with members of Emanuel Baptist Church out in the country to be part of a baptism service You see Pastor Pavel Kopmar with new believer, Illya (different from the train Illya). Tomorrow we will attend services at Emanuel, then have lunch and fellowship at Pavel’s home, then tour their new church building which is adjacent. At 5:00 on Sunday evening, we will again meet with some young Russians, high school and college age, to converse over their lives and prayerfully the God who has a wonderful purpose and plans for each of them.

Thank all of you for praying us here safely - please continue for health and strength and God’s love and power.

By the way - we did deliver the softball equipment to Sam Galanov at the airport in Moscow. He expressed his gratitude for those of you who contributed softball gloves and other stuff for the sports outreach ministry he leads in Moscow.