This year our mission trip to Russia was shorter than it ever has been in the past. If you exclude the seven days Richard Box spent in Russia ahead of the rest of the group, the trip lasted only nine days. Despite the short timeframe, I can’t remember that we ever accomplished as many different tasks as we did this year. Here is a very brief report.

1. For the first time, we worshiped with the brethren in Volgograd, Russia, a city with a population of over 1,000,000. By chance we were in the area at the same time as the American missionaries who support the

Lord’s work there. We were able to have lunch with them and discuss strategies for evangelizing Russia.

2. On that same Sunday we worshiped with the church in Antipovka, Russia. This is the congregation we established five years ago with Andre Sozansky as her preacher. I preached a lesson entitled “The Church as the Body of Christ.”

3. We visited an orphanage in a town nearby called Kamyshin. There we encouraged the children with the stuffed bears our ladies made. These really brightened their day. We sang Bible songs with them and had a good time.

4. We held nightly classes at the church building in Antipovka designed to train the members in the use of World Bible School correspondence courses. These can be shipped to church free of charge, and we are interested in using them as evangelistic tools. Several non-Christians were present in these meetings who showed a keen interest in the gospel. We hope some of them will soon be baptized.

5. We baptized two souls into Christ in the Volga River that runs through Antipovka. These had been studying with Andre for some time, and it was wonderful to see them respond to the gospel.

6. Richard and Jim worked very hard through the week to repair the church building, something that really needed to be done. Their work included painting, calking, plumbing, brick-laying, and stone work.

7. The city administrator (we would call her a “mayor”) of Antipovka invited us to visit her office and share with her some of our plans. We received very good feedback from this and were relieved that we were making the right impression.

8. Tommy, Andre, Nadia (one of the members at Antipovka), and I delivered care packages full of needed food items to a dozen different homes in Antipovka. These homes were found through the social worker in the administration office, who was very helpful to us. The names that were given to us represented some of the most destitute people in the village. As we distributed the aid we saw that this was true. Our benevolent work attracted a lot of attention in the neighborhoods we visited, and we were pleased to see that, once again, our efforts were met with extremely positive feedback. A WBS correspondence course was placed in each of the packages with the church’s name, phone number, and address on it. We are hoping our efforts will generate new prospects for the gospel.

9. We were able to contract the design and production of a sign that will soon be displayed prominently on the front of the church building in Antipovka. This, along with the other work we have done, will hopefully attract more visitors to the worship services.

It is the nature of spiritual work that you never really get done. We hope this is the case with our work in Russia. We pray that the achievements of this year lead to more opportunities in the future. That is the only way the Lord’s work will continue to grow in foreign fields.