NEWS FROM STREETCRY MINISTRIES
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
OCTOBER 2005

Dear Friends,

We are continually thinking of you and thanking the Lord for your love, faith, and help in spreading the Gospel here in St Petersburg.

"Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare" (Psalm 40:6).

EVANGELISM

After a fruitful summer, we are now fully into a new season of Bible school, and indoor witnessing and evangelism. We have teams who go out weekly to different youth hangouts as well as making evangelism part of their daily life and lifestyle.

Recently Korn, a famous American rock group, had a concert here in St Petersburg. A few months prior, their lead guitarist and founding member, Brian Welch, repented, changed his life, left the group and began openly preaching the gospel and helping the poor. He even opened an orphanage in India within six months of his conversion to Christ. When we heard about his repentance, we contacted him, and decided to feature his testimony/life story in our next youth magazine which we use as an evangelism tool on the street. Korn is very popular here in Russia among the subculture kids.

Before the Korn concert we printed 1,000 copies and passed out every single one and not one was thrown on the ground.. It was a six page magazine chock full of testimonies of transformed lives, challenging people to repent and give their lives to Jesus. As usual, we had a great time witnessing to many teens and young adults and there was a genuine interest in the Gospel.

A young subculture girl, Masha, got a newspaper and read Brian’s story. She came to our service right away afterward to find out more about what had happened to Brian and about the Jesus who transformed his life so radically. She was witnessed to and had a lot of questions. Masha came to the next meeting and gave her heart to the Lord! The day after she was out witnessing with one of our teams and she keeps coming to our fellowship.

A girl named Natasha came to several concerts and was attending services. She had severe problems with her leg that made her limp. Several people prayed for her at different occasions and she got healed! The Lord showed Himself real to her and at another service she gave her life to Jesus. She also got baptized in the Holy Spirit and is coming to our fellowship.

Another girl also gave her heart to the Lord during an altar call at one of our services. A sister from another church brought a friend of hers named Andrei to a service here. He came up for prayer afterward and gave his life to the Lord. Two young men, Vadim and Anton, also came to one of our services. Vadim is a believer and had witnessed to Anton awhile ago. When Anton moved to St. Petersburg, his brother told him about our church. Anton recently repented at our fellowship. We are so thankful to be able to witness and participate in what the Holy Spirit is doing in revealing Jesus and transforming lives here in Russia. The harvest TRULY is plenteous and the laborers are few. So we continue to pray to the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into the harvest and He is doing it! Even brand new baby Christians who give their lives to Jesus one day and join us in evangelism the next.

Please pray that these new brethren will keep following the Lord with all their hearts and be protected and kept from the enemy’s ways. And that we will be faithful to help them, love them, protect them and challenge them to love Jesus with all their beings and make their relationship with Him the number one priority in their lives.

During the summer we were in contact with a woman of authority in the city government. She was responsible for giving permission for us to hold evangelism concerts in the city center. She attended the concert and was quite touched by the Holy Spirit. She later invited us to participate in an anti-drug event the city arranged for youth.. Sergei, a former addict who now helps to run our 24-hour hot line for addicts, and Sasha, our drummer who was deeply involved in witchcraft before he got saved, went to share their testimonies. There were worldly groups playing but our brothers were allowed to share their testimonies and preach the Gospel freely on stage. Afterward they were able to witness and minister to quite a few interested young people.

BIBLE SCHOOL

Our Bible school year started at the beginning of October, with 22 students, our most ever. Three students are former drug addicts. One is a leader at a rehab center that we work with. Another was an alcoholic and has been ministering at a rehab center for alcoholics in Dagestan, a muslim republic in the south of Russia. Another student is from Siberia, a 96 hour train trip from St Petersburg. The rest of the students are from our fellowship or other churches in our city.

Kristina repented at a concert in our building several years ago. She joined another local church in St Petersburg and has for some years been ministering at a rehab center with her husband. Now she is one of our Bible school students. One day she was reading Proverbs and got stuck on a specific verse, Proverbs 16:19. She felt that the Lord told her to think about how she could explain that verse to someone. After first ignoring it she paused and wrote down some notes on how she would explain the verse. Later that day she was witnessing to a woman. The woman was interested and asked Kristina to show her the Bible. The lady opened it randomly to the Book of Proverbs and started reading out loud the very verse Kristina had been meditating on in the morning! The lady wanted the verse explained to her!

The teachers are praying for the students that the Lord Himself will teach and speak to them and of course it is happening as He is always so faithful to His promises. It is awesome how He answers prayers and opens hearts for us to speak about His love, mercy and salvation. The students get a lot of other ministry opportunities for preaching, sharing revelations from the Word, and ministering to people prophetically and through prayer.

HEALING

A woman who attended a service had multiple ulcers in her stomach and down into her digestive system. There was a word of knowledge about her sickness and she received prayer. Soon afterward at her new job, she needed to get a test because of her diagnosis. It showed she was healed! When she told her testimony in a later service she waved both papers in her hands as she shared.

Another girl, Anya had Hepatitis C and asked for prayer after a service. Afterward she had a blood analysis and it showed that she was healed!

OTHER NEWS

During the Christmas season we are planning a feed-in for the homeless and an evangelism outreach/feed-in for addicts and other youth. These annual events always bear good fruit and are tremendously exciting and fruitful. Please pray for the finances for these events. We will need $4,000 for them.

As we shared with you previously, we had a contract for our ministry building until August at which time the landlords proposed to triple the rent. Now we have moved out of the entire basement of the building where we had our offices, coffee house, Bible school, bookstore, childrens church, etc. We still have our Sunday fellowship, Bible school, mid week service and worship practice in the upstairs of the building, but our office functions are now temporarily in an apartment. We are looking for a new place to have a coffeehouse where we can do evangelism, but what we really need is the funding to purchase property to build a large facility for our church, ministry offices, Bible school training center, drug rehab center, bookstore, intern house and staff quarters. Please join us in prayer for the $300,000 needed to purchase the property and build the facility.

Sergei was invited back to the neighboring muslim republic of Kazakhstan as a follow up trip to the students ministry trip this summer. He went to the main clinic in the city where drug addicts are sent to go through withdrawals. This time he was invited back to speak and he met three addicts who were at the clinic as a result of the teams of students who witnessed and passed out tracts and newspapers on the streets during the summer. Sergei had a great time teaching the youth, preaching in the church, and sharing in the home groups on the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus and witnessing.

Sergei also went with Gleb to his home town to get a new passport. It turned out to be another mission trip. They witnessed and passed out information about rehab centers at many places. They visited the psychologists who had tried unsuccessfully to help Gleb in the past with his heroin addiction. He was very impressed by how Jesus had set Gleb free and wanted to recommend this path to freedom to others! The Lord did a miracle and gave Gleb his passport in one a day instead of the usual two months!

We could go on and on and on with the wonderful acts, works and miracles of our powerful, risen Saviour who ever lives to make intercession for us! We simply can't get enough of Jesus!

We love and appreciate you so much! May the Lord meet all your needs according to His glorious riches in Jesus Christ. Thanks again so much for your friendship and partnership!

Sincerely,

John, Sara, Roma, Anya, Vera, and the StreetCry Ministry team

Compiled by Anna

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