Greetings again from Minsk, Belarus...

An update from Doug Brendel - to all who have supported or expressed an interest in our New Thing teaching ministry in the former Soviet Union...

 

Back to Schoolsky!

 

This week I visited university student meetings four nights out of five. Sunday: Inter-Varsity student leaders (I sent you those pix already). Monday: a bi-weekly "debate" with Christian and non-Christian students - that was pretty cool. We talked about fear - and I was able to talk through several of the practical biblical principles in our Fear Factor book.

 

Tuesday: an Inter-Varsity Bible study group headed by a young pediatrician named Natasha (at left). They are working their way through the book of Mark verse-by-verse, and just happened to be ready for one of my all-time favorite passages: the story of Jairus and the sick woman. I taught it in our "Naked Christian" series, and was able to share the concept - "how God decides" when you ask him for something - with this very fun bunch of young people.

 

Then on Thursday evening we went to Sasha's place. He's the kind of wild and crazy long-haired kid from Borisov who came to me in July and asked permission to pirate our DVDs so he could put them on his university network. "You've got to do more DVDs!" Sasha told me. It was that conversation that God used to inspire production of Untidy Christianity in Russian on DVD. He has been giving away our books and DVDs to so many students that he had completely run out by the time we arrived.

 

All the kids in the room had seen our Shock Talk DVD series - this is why Sasha insisted I visit. ("We call you 'The Head,'" he said. "Don't worry, it's respectful," my interpreter explained.) Sasha began inviting students into his flat every Thursday evening for food and conversation, which in Sasha's world naturally - and inevitably - turns to questions of spiritual life ... and sometimes to watch our videos. So this weekly meeting has turned into something of a very lively house church/Bible study/discipleship thing - not too unlike our own house church meetings on Wednesday nights in Scottsdale, Arizona!

 

Only two of the students in the room grew up in Christ-following homes. Some, like the brother-sister pair at left, came to God only within the past few months. One side-effect of a group like this: they gobble up stuff that long-time believers take for granted.

 

Sasha is a New Thing book-and-DVD distribution machine. We brought him an entire box of the new Untidy Christianity DVD series (100 sets), then I emptied out all the random leftovers I happened to have in my duffel: Shock Talk books and DVDs, Fear Factor, Hitchhiker's Guide to Life, Can You Hear Me Now?, and more. "Please!" Sasha said. "Give them all to me!" As usual in this country, the moment you hand someone a book, everything comes to a standstill - they have to inspect this new treasure!

 

At the end of each meeting, the group goes to prayer. They prayed for you! It was humbling to hear Belarusian students praying for the people who are bringing ministry materials into their country.

 

Then it was picture-taking time...

 

...which sort of became clowning around time.

 

Back at our flat, #8 Karl Marx Street, our New Thing staffer Luda was heading off for the train to Moscow, where she was scheduled to meet with her publisher (she's a professional novelist and screenwriter). This of course left her husband Oleg and me alone together in the flat - him with no English, me with no Russian. But ... that's a story for another day.

 

More to come! In the meantime, thanks for making the journey with me!

 

Much love,

Doug Brendel

 

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Thanks again!