NEWS FROM
StreetCry Ministries
St. Petersburg, Russia
January/February, 2003

Love and grace to you dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ! We are happy to share with you what God is doing here in St. Petersburg. We are grateful for your continued prayers, words of encouragement, visits, and financial support! So much has happened in the last few weeks, and we praise Him for his grace, mercy, power and love.

New Brothers and Sisters

Andrei, a 25 year old heroin addict came to St. Petersburg from the Ukraine. He came one Saturday to our coffee-house and on the next Sunday, he prayed and received the Lord and was delivered from his addiction without withdrawals. He is now faithfully attending the Bible Boot Camp classes for new believers, not missing a single day. The joy of his salvation can be seen through his constant smile.

Roma, 22 years old, was in a psychiatric hospital because of schizophrenia. While in the hospital, someone gave him one of our salvation tracts written by our students. He called out to God, received salvation and shortly thereafter was released from the hospital. With tract in hand he came to see us and has begun coming to Sunday fellowship regularly, and he is now part of our Bible Boot Camp classes for new believers and is growing in his walk with the Lord and showing clear evidence of a transformed life without schizophrenia. God is wonderful!

Olga, 18 years old is also in our Bible Boot Camp. She lived with her husband in Moscow, while she was a student at Moscow State University, Russia’s best. They lived together there for half a year and her husband was mysteriously murdered which is not uncommon in Moscow. She came to St. Petersburg totally devastated and with a young baby born shortly before her husband’s death. Olga with her ten month old son tried to start a new life here. She met one of our students, who invited her to one of our Sunday meetings. She repented and is really hungry for the Lord.

Nadya and her mother Elmira, are refugees from Tajikistan. Elmira was a doctor there. Her husband recently died, and with all of the turmoil in the country she and Nadya decided to come to Russia. They have no “rights” to live in Russia and were living on the streets looking for work and getting taken advantage of by a number of people. They came to St. Petersburg to earn money for Nadya’s university education. Elmira came to our building, looking for a job. Andrei met her, witnessed to her and invited her to Sunday fellowship. When she and her daughter came, Nadya repented and has really fallen in love with Jesus. Even though Elmira is a medical doctor from Tajikistan, she has only been able to find a job selling vegetables in a market and have been living with us rather than on the street.

Yulia came to our office after receiving our youth evangelistic newspaper in her mailbox and it touched her heart. She was a 17 year old heroin addict and came for help. One of our Bible school students, Nina, herself a delivered heroin addict, was able to minister to her and led her to the Lord. She is now free from drug addiction, praise God.

News from Our Rehab Center

We have three new men in our rehab center. Sergei came to us in early January. He has repented and received the Lord and is delivered from his heroin addiction. Sergei is 21, is from Voronezh south of Moscow, and started taking drugs at 14 and continued for six years. At 19 he was sent to prison for the first of 2 sentences.

Ivan also recently came to the rehab center. He is 19 years old and is from Murmansk in the north of Russia. Ivan also was delivered from heroin addiction, received Jesus, was filled with the Holy Spirit and received the gift of tongues, all this past week. Mark has also just come to our rehab center. He had been a heroin addict for 2 years and was a student. He is from Boranovichi in the Novgorod region. We would appreciate your prayers for all of these wonderful young people that God has recently added to His church.

Sasha, Igor, and Sergei, all living at our rehab center, were recently water baptized. Three of our leaders (John, Sara and Laosha) recently traveled to Germany and visited two rehab centers and the Free Christian Youth Fellowship. Since their return, we have implemented worship and corporate devotions every morning and evening at the rehab center. The Lord is moving through this and the leaders of the rehab center are noticing changes in the prayer lives of the guys at the center and the quality of their personal quiet times.

During one of the corporate devotions, the men were reading Psalm 133: 1-2 “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes.” Laosha Bigarov shared that this verse indicates that unity among the brethren is like Aaron’s priestly anointing. There is such an authority and tremendous presence of God when people are in true unity.

Rehab Center for Women Now Open

The first floor of the Bible school dorm is now being used for a rehab center for women, Praise the Lord! We need a separate facility but we cannot turn these girls down who are coming for deliverance from their drug addiction and prostitution.Oksana and Laosha Manov, along with their infant son, David, have moved in so that Oksana and our second year Bible school students, Vica and Natasha can help with these new girls. Since Oksana, Vica and Natasha were all former heroin addicts, they have big hearts for these girls.

Our first girl is Olga, 26 years old, from Kolpino, a suburb of St. Petersburg. We met her 2 years ago at an evangelism concert, where we were able to pray with her, but she stayed addicted to drugs. Oksana, continued to stay in touch, witness to Olga and pray for her. Olga has repented and is now moving forward in her walk with the Lord. She has been diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis C, please pray for God to continue to move in her life and for God’s healing for Olga.The second girl is Katya, 23 years old, from St. Petersburg. She was a heroin addict for 6 years. Her mother is an alcoholic. Please pray for her salvation and deliverance from all past sinful habits.

Other News

Several changes have been implemented in our ministry that were inspired by the trip to Germany. These changes have been helping us to focus on two very important parts of our work: prayer and our relationships with one another.

We recently rededicated our prayer room. It is open daily from 9 am until 10 pm for anyone who wants to come and pray, have communion, and simply spend time alone with God. We are also continuing to meet daily to pray together for our ministry and for prayer requests from all over the world.

It has been on the hearts of many here to reach out to foreign students that are studying here in St. Petersburg. Many are from India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, as well as from other republics in Russia. A medical student from Mauritius was beaten to death by a group of skinheads three weeks ago. The night previously skinheads were at our coffe-house and beat up a new believer and worker at our building. There is a growing number of skinheads and fascists amongst the young people in St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia. Please pray that God will continue to open doors for the gospel amongst the foreign students and that God will get through to more radical Russian youth such as skinheads.

Pastor Kent Reynolds, wife Sandy, Cindy Gaultney and Candace Parker from St. James UMC in Athens, Georgia came and visited our ministry. They taught in the Bible school and on Sunday. We were all blessed and encouraged as God knit our hearts together.

The construction of the new bathroom facilities is continuing. We hope to be using these rooms before March.

Sasha Kanivets, a leader from our men’s rehab center, and Vica, a second year Bible school student, recently announced their engagement.

We have been having evangelism concerts in our coffee-house. Many people have been attending the concerts and God is continuing to move during the concert and after, as we are able to talk with those who come. After one of the concerts, four girls prayed the prayer of repentance. One of them, Olya, is coming every week and reading her Bible daily.

We have been continuing with witnessing throughout the city. Several of our female students have been witnessing to young prostitutes and drug addicts. They have had several divine encounters with the young women on the streets and have taken some back to our homes to witness the love of God to them in a safer setting. Please pray for continued open doors and changed lives. Some of our students have recently started to visit different hospitals in the city. They are going in and ministering to the sick, praying for them and sharing the good news.

Thank you for joining with us in prayer and for your interest in what God is doing here. We appreciate you and thank and praise God often for you!

In the Lord and His Love,

The StreetCry Ministry Team
Compiled by Natasha Mitrohovich &
James Sanford

All tax deductible support checks should be made payable to: StreetCry

StreetCry
PO Box 7971
Athens, GA 30604
USA

StreetCry Ministries

DK Bolshevichka
Ulitsa Tushina 9
St. Petersburg, Russia
tel/fax: 7 (812) 440-6794
tel: 7 (901) 305-0249
toll-free voice mail: 1 (888) 696-5577

Safe mailing address:
StreetCry Ministries
P.O. Box 109
WP 619
53101 Lappeenranta
SU-Finland

E-mail:
sons@thunder.sp.ru
streetcry@onebox.com
info@streetcry.org

Web: www.streetcry.org