Thank You for Praying for our Partners Conference!

According to the analysis conducted by the mission (Bill and Byron) there are a few special areas, where counting the statistics does not tell the whole story.

1. Above all Christian character of all our staff and partners. Indeed, praise God! People and their dedication to God is the greatest value in this world! Thank all of you for your continued abiding in the Lord.
2. The focus on regions and the development of ministry on location (the background on Central Asia in Almaty). Two years ago I was personally a little concerned about committing to the plan that we have now realized. The Lord has been good to us and we thank Him for the abundance of super brothers and sisters.
3. The focus on the development of training, indispensible for the development of small groups in churches. For this also we have been striving for about two years.
4. The focus on ministry in contrast to administrative work. As Kanat remarked, “It is difficult to bring people to the Lord while we’re sitting in offices.”
5. The evangelism department has shown great initiative in the number of people evangelized, the number of people who accepted Christ and the number of people in churches.

What else can we work on?

• Develop skills based on experience, to go with the theological training. Especially experience in planting churches in new regions.
• Keep our eyes open, be always on the lookout, searching for new "fish" to be caught. Praying as we walk, meeting our neighbors, actually asking them questions about their life. And having real, deep compassion for the lost. We need to become people overflowing with the love of Christ, who are always on mission with God to reach people He is drawing to himself.

I want to thank everyone who participated, and thank everyone who prayed for us during this conference.

-- Sergey

Central Asia: Statistics for 2008 (fiscal year)

220 new groups started
6,000 converted
100,000 heard the gospel

1 new UPG (Afghani)

Central Asia: Coordinators' conference

Our regional coordinators gathered together for reporting, prayer and encouragement. It was amazing to see how men from different countries and different cultures shared the same passion to enable a church planting movement throughout Central Asia. Each of these men have seen God working in their personal lives and are committed to following Him. Seeing how God was working in each region left everyone encouraged, enabled, empowered and feeling loved.

Kazakhstan: Multi-fellowship worship - more cool pictures

Kazakhstan: Multi-fellowship worship - cool pictures

Closed country: Growing church

We are praising God for the opportunity to work in this closed country. We have a new group that we have started, meeting 2 to 3 times a week. But we must be careful so that the government doesn't find out. Our members are more afraid of losing their jobs than of going to prison.
A few of us met with the local Imam and local police. We were examining ways of proceeding with our work without aggrevating the police. They insisted that we pursue registration, even though they know that registration will not be granted. But they told us as long as we are pursuing registration then they can offer some grace. The Imam did not want to bother with the legal issues, but we suggested they had a better case for registration and they should try. After a short time the Imam confided that since they are pursuing things legally things have been better for them. This was the first time that we have been able to speak with the Imam without getting into an argument. We have been pursuing registration for some time, and it has not helped us, nonetheless we are committed to approaching the government with an attitude of submission.

Nauriz at Nur Church in Aktobe, Kazakhstan

Some pictures from the Nauriz celebration. Sitting on the floor, eating Nauriz kozhei and plov, drinking lots of tea, and swapping stories about Nauriz, new beginnings, history and Jesus.