NEWS FROM STREETCRY MINISTRIES
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
FEBRUARY 2006

Dear Friends,

We hope you had a blessed Christmas and New Year season. We appreciate your prayers and support for us during this time. Thank you for being an integral part of our ministry.

EVANGELISM

We shared previously that we were witnessing to a popular lesbian singer at one of her concerts. At the concert Olga received a tract especially designed for lesbians. She later gave the tract to one of her friends, Igor. Igor came to our services two times before he repented. Olga joined him at the following meeting and she also gave her life to Jesus. They both have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, attend our services and home groups, and are very hungry for the Lord. Olga witnesses to many of her old friends. Previously she frequented chat rooms on the internet. In one chat room, (where plenty of lesbians communicate) she sent out about 300 letters along with the tract she had received.) We have received phone calls to our 24-hour hotline because the testimony touched the hearts of many. Olga noticed that some girls have removed information about themselves from the lesbian chat room after she sent out the tract. Praise God!

Vera, a 76 year old woman from the Ukraine came to visit her grandson, Sasha, during the Christmas holidays. She was a committed Communist for many years, proclaiming there is no God. However, the Lord had started to knock at her heart before her visit and she was witnessed to by Sasha and gave her heart to the Lord while here.

Two Bible school students met Dima while they were out witnessing. He had just been released from prison and was trying to find purpose in his life. When he heard that he needed to repent, he prayed with the students to receive the Lord. He was deeply touched by the Lord and received prayer for healing for his leg.

Please pray that these new Christian brothers and sisters will keep following the Lord with all their hearts and be protected and kept from the enemy's ways, and that we can minister to them with love and care.

CHRISTMAS FEED-IN

A special thank you to all of you who donated funds and prayed for our annual feast! We spent a lot of time in prayer and preparation for it and the Lord answered in an awesome way! The feed-in was fantastic!

Throughout the week leading up to it, we were out on the streets handing out flyers to the homeless and inviting them to come. They came sober, as we had asked them to do, in spite of it being 30 below zero outside! As they entered the hall, the contrast was like day and night: from cold, dark, hungry, and hopeless to warmth, smiles, music, food, and loving fellowship and an offer of a new life and forgiveness of sin from the Son of God!.

The evangelism band, Bethesda consisting of former drug addicts played and shared testimonies. Everyone's attention was focused on Slava, who repented at the feed-in last year and now is ministering at a rehab center. He shared his testimony saying how just one year ago he was a homeless wreck dragging himself from the street to the feast. He continued to say that Jesus put his life back together from broken pieces and that he is even planning to marry a Christian woman. His story really gave hope that things change even for a homeless person and the changes can happen quickly!

We had great fellowship with the homeless and the Holy Spirit filled the hall. People were touched and were very, very grateful. Every person was leaving with information about rehab centers and the phone number to our hotline. Four men from the feed-in came early to the next church service for counseling and they want to go to a rehab. Eight other homeless were at the service and three of them also want to go to rehab. They are now in the process of getting the medical check-ups needed to go to a center.

BIBLE SCHOOL NEWS

The Bible School had a two week class break during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Many of the students took time to apply some of what they had learned in class.

Students went to places to work on field assignments. One team went to find a poor family (not too difficult here in Russia) in their neighborhood, buy food for them for Christmas, and witness to them. The family they found consisted of a woman in her 50s whose son died of a drug overdose, and the son's widow, (an alcoholic) and her two children. The woman works cleaning staircases in the apartment blocks. Her salary is very low, and she is supposed to support the whole family. She was totally blown away by the fact that someone came to love and help her. The students testimonies of deliverance from drug addiction, and of frequent prison time, gave hope for the daughter-in-law. The students helped with cleaning the apartment, bought food and made a big cake. The family had a nice Christmas instead of one in drunken hopelessness. We believe they are also a step closer to knowing Jesus personally.
Teams preached the gospel on local trains, went to different hospitals to witness and pray for people, and went to student dorms during New Years to have acoustic concerts. They fellowshipped and witnessed to the students afterwards. One evening some students who were initially planning to fellowship with the team for a short time and then go to a nightclub to party; ended up forgetting about the nightclub and stayed to listen to our songs and testimonies for the whole night.

The last team went to a suburb which is one of the drug dens around St. Petersburg. They went to all the pharmacies (where addicts buy syringes) with rehab center flyers and witnessed to the young people they met on the streets. We have been getting many phone calls to our hotline after this. Altogether the teams passed out over 2000 Christmas tracts with the message of repentence and salvation, 1000 drug rehab flyers and posted 100 drug rehab posters.

The evangelism group Bethesda, led by Yura, one of our Bible school students, went to Sortavala in a region north of St. Petersburg. A local pastor hosted an evangelism event for the whole city. They participated in the evangelism concert with some other bands and a Christmas drama and about 200 people repented.

HOT LINE FOR DRUG ADDICTS

We already mentioned that we have seen an increase in the number of phone calls to our 24-hour hotline. Around 10 to 15 people call daily, sometimes in the middle of the night. After Jana received the special lesbian tract via e-mail, she called in the middle of the night, in deep despair. Her heroin addiction and lifestyle left her hopeless and depressed. Later on we got in touch with her, witnessed to her and told her that she should to break up with her girlfriend and stop using heroin. When Sergei and Zhenya went to visit her, she told them that she did as they said. She had asked the Lord for strength to do it! The Lord touched her in other ways as well. Please pray that she will fully give her life to the Lord and be set free.

OTHER NEWS

We celebrated New Years in our home groups, sharing what we were thankful for from last year and what our vision is for the New Year. Most individual's goals for the next year revolve around winning the lost. We want to move more in the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the words of knowledge and healing, in prophetic evangelism, writing songs, new gospel tracts, and articles for our evangelism newspaper, and in general, continue to reach out to the lost.

Our missionaries Anna, her husband, Victor and Olga had a fruitful time ministering in Anna's native Sweden; both in the churches and to unbelievers. Many were impacted through prophetic words and words of knowledge that they shared and by hearing about what the Lord is doing in Russia . Occasionally they met Russians in Sweden whom they were able to witness to.

We want to thank everyone for praying for Sara Russell and her liver problem. She is much better, and her blood is completely normal in one category and only 5 points above normal in the category where it was 50 points above normal previously. Please continue to pray for complete healing. God answers prayer!

Still our greatest and most desperate needs are for finances for the work and good facilities in the city to base out of. We would like to ask you to please continue to pray, and give as the Lord leads, so that we can be as effective as possible here. We are in need of funds to cover the expenses for each month including February, and large donations so that we can purchase property for our Bible school and training facility.

If you, or a group of your friends, your church, youth group, or someone you know would be interested in joining us for evangelism on the streets of St. Petersburg this coming summer, or interning with us, please email us at for more information. We are always looking for people who the Lord is calling to work with us to bring in His harvest!

We love and appreciate you a lot!

Be blessed,

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

Compiled by Anna

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

StreetCry
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USA

StreetCry Ministries

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Ulitsa Tushina 9
St. Petersburg, Russia
tel/fax: 7 (812) 440-6794
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