Dear prayer partners and family,

OUR TRAVELS AND ARRIVING BACK HOME

Well, we have been back in Russia for a week now and life is going fast and hectic. I, Kris, flew directly to Kiev and represented the board at the first World Congress of Deaf Baptists. There were 75 participants from 10 different countries. It had not been arranged ahead of time, but I got to interpret between Russian Sign Language and American Sign Language for the week. It was actually good practice to get me prepared to go back to Russia. I think out of 75, there were only around 6 hearing people including myself. It was great to see this first Congress and the leadership present, and, to find out some work going on in other countries I didn’t realize there was work happening.

I took the overnight train on Friday back to Moscow. You never know who you will be sharing your compartment with and this is the first time I have travelled alone on an overnight train. I was envisioning sharing my coupe with a heavy drinker and not really looking forward to trip, but it turned out the guy was a former policeman (not always a good thing in this part of the world) who now owns his own security company. Thankfully, he didn’t drink and we had a good long conversation. He was baptized into the Orthodox Church 3 years ago, but only sees religion as a “good thing to do”. I was able to share with him some, but my Russian verbal vocabulary in religious matters is pretty bad but I was able to get the point across – I kept wanting sign, but that wasn’t going to help in this situation. Please pray for someone to water where the seeds have been planted – his name is Andrei.

I got back early Saturday morning and arrived at our new apartment. A colleague and good friend, Marc picked me up at the train station. He and another colleague had already warned me that our place was “a mess”, “in shambles”, “pretty bad”. When I arrived at the apartment, I thought it actually looked better than we when left it. I don’t think they realized that we had less than a week to move all of our stuff there and then leave Russia. One room had also been completely stuffed with another family’s belongings since they were still in the states. Thankfully, about a third of the other family’s things had been moved out the day before so at least we had a little area to unload some of our things. It has been a week and most of our stuff is still in boxes – there just isn’t room to unpack and set up our stuff.

Frances and the kids all arrived the next day safely along with all 15 footlockers. It took them about 1 and a half hours to get through passport control and get the bags. I was sure that the guards were going to question all this luggage – 15 footlockers, 5 backpacks, and 5 pull behind suitcases – but they cleared customs with not even a glance.

Monday, the kids started back to school and I think most are almost caught up. Thankfully, most of the teachers sent schoolwork they were able to work on during the past month.

CHURCH AND MINISTRY

Today was truly a blessing. This morning, we attended our hearing church were we are able to worship as a family and it was as if nothing had changed except for a few new faces. It is nice to have an “on the field home church” that is used to expats coming and going. It was a great time of worship.

This afternoon we went to the Deaf church. Wow! God is amazing. The pastor has been gone for a couple of weeks so the men of the church are filling in his place. Arthur, an 18 year old, led the main part of the service in teaching/preaching for at least and hour. I am truly amazed how God has used this young guy over the past year. He teaches frequently and all 50 in attendance paid attention to everything he had to say. There were also a lot of new faces I had never seen before – a lot of young people in their 20’s – mostly guys which is very unusual for church in Russia.

At Deaf church, I got to meet one of the new people. His name is Booneg – he is from Uzbekistan. We got to talk for about 30 minutes after church. He has been in Moscow for only a few weeks and someone invited him to come to church. I asked if he was a believer but he responded that he was a Muslim. I asked him if he knew about Jesus but he said until a couple of weeks ago, he had never heard about Jesus and he believed that Christianity was a bunch of rules. I got to share with him starting with creation and about sin, God’s plan and free gift of salvation. He listened intently and is very interested and very open. Please pray for Booneg as he wrestles with this “new” message of salvation. Pray for me and others to be able to plainly share the Gospel with him.

PERSONAL/UPCOMING EVENTS

We are pretty much confined to Moscow during the next several weeks as the new visa process is taking 3 to 5 weeks to get the paper work back. We can’t travel until we receive our registration back. Kris will be going out to the oblast this weekend on a campout as he is one of the Cub Scout leaders. The forecast is a high of 38 degrees and rain all day on Saturday. Oh boy – is this going to be fun.

Please be in prayer as we settle into our new home.

Our board is making some major structural changes that will be officially announced in November. There are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered and colleagues are unsure of what is going to happen. The board has emphatically stated that we ARE NOT DOWNSIZING – we just want to be the best stewards of our resources and we must always be finding ways we can reach lostness to the max. Basically, we’ve been told that business administrative duties will be removed from each field and placed in one of 4 global administrative offices worldwide. The major change is focusing on 8 Affinity Groups (Europeans, South East Asians, Sub Sahara Africans, etc.) Instead of being confined to geographic locations/regions as in the past, the focus will be on people groups regardless of where they live. For example – instead of m’s working with Russians being confined to Russia, if there is a need to focus on a large population of Russians living in Israel for example, the Affinity Group which includes Russians can send m’s to Israel to focus on Russians. In the past, it was up to each region to determine whether or not they wanted/needed to reach certain people groups that lived in their geographic area, now, each affinity group can make sure their people groups are being reached worldwide. I don’t have much more information than that, but look forward to this being announced sometime in November. Please be in prayer for our board as they finalize plans.

That's all for now. Remain faithful to Jesus!

Kris, Frances and the kids

Dale,

Thanks for posting this. I wish we got updates from more of our missionaries.

Jim Walterhouse