Today I offer you the story of pastor Vladimir – a key member of our team, who serves as a course facilitator and a voice of wisdom to our team. He is pictured above with his family, which includes the three orphan girls that he and Natasha adopted. Beyond his own congregation, he heads an…
Sveta – From Cowed Puppy to Tigress
When Sveta first joined our team, she was a self-described “hedgehog”—curled up in a protective ball, a vulnerable,”cowed puppy,” as I called her. Today, Sveta is a “tigress,” a confident leader and an incredible mentor who is equipping a new generation of leaders. How does a change like that happen? Sveta’s journey of transformation is…
Lena – the Therapist who found healing in Christ
Lena – a physician turned psychiatrist, organizer of citywide ministry outreaches, and now a business consultant to entrepreneurs and the head of our business chaplaincy program.But what I love about Lena is her simple love for Jesus, her teachable spirit, and her almost boundless energy to serve others to know true freedom in Christ.I trust…
Anya – Face of the New Youth Movement
Every so often, God allows us to see the deeper fruit of patient discipleship — not just in numbers, but in lives awakened, healed, and released into leadership. Anya’s story is one of those moments. What you’re about to read is not simply a testimony. It’s a window into the kind of formation that…
Seeds of a real movement
If you don’t understand our vision well, it can sometimes seem overwhelming, because it really is big. But how else does a country change but when God’s people pray about big things? One more important piece of the larger puzzle came together this weekend for me, for our team, and for the advancement of the…
Towards a functional pro-life ministry
Our leader who is called to step into pro-life ministry here in St. Petersburg is Anastasia (aka Nastya) Tikhonova. This post describes how this project got started. Nastya came over to the US during part of my time and met with a number of ministry leaders in post-abortion work and from multiple Pregnancy Resource Centers. The director of the PRC…
The Russia Left Behind
This article from the NY Times is worth posting here. It’s a very sad portrait of what is happening along the busiest stretch of road in the country – the highway that connects St. Petersburg to Moscow. I can’t help but be sad for the rural part of Russia, which is the overwhelming majority of…
Inna – our secret weapon
Inna and met when she decided to expand her horizons by taking coaching training with me in 2009. Not only did she take well to the training, but she showed a hunger for everything I offered that was discipleship-oriented, especially as it related to counseling. She later told me that before she started taking our…
First impressions are fantastic
I’ll just share with you what I wrote to one of the members of the team from the International House of Prayer who came to lead several days’ worth of training for our core group in June while we were in the US. Amanda, Let me give you a testimony. We got back on the 22nd.…
In the publishing business
I’d like to share some more details about all the translation work that we have been doing so that you can get an idea of yet another dimension of our work in Russia. It’s not like there is a shortage of translation work going on, but as it pertains to the Christian world of publishing,…
orphan dreams 