New Year - New Teams

This year we have a long-term team of 11 and two teams of interns working with students in Moscow!

For a long time we have been praying for more laborers to be involved in bringing the gospel Moscow students.  Our prayers have been answered.  This summer our team expanded from 5 staff to 11.

Created for Impact

In October, we learned that we would not be having our traditional Winter Bible Conference in February.  Our leaders felt that it would be better for each team to pursue local opportunities for sharing the Gospel with students.  Soon after, our team, along with our intern team, decided to hold a winter retreat for our Moscow students.

We were so excited about the vision that God had given us!  We wanted to host a retreat that would allow our students to experience what it is like to live in great Christian community, would give us as staff, multiple opportunities to share about Christ with those in attendance, and would also be lots of fun!  Rachel and Anne got to work on a theme, I was in charge of administration, Dan would be our speaker, many of our stinters began prep to lead small group discussions, and Angela would be the emcee of our meetings.  This was something our team had never tried before, and we were trusting God to show up!

About a week before the retreat, we had about 12 students signed up to come.  But then we started getting text and Facebook messages from students, saying they could no longer come.  Our team was struggling with what to do.  Do we hold the retreat if only 8 students come?  What if only 3 students come?  After much prayer, we decided to move forward in faith.  We knew that we would never find a perfect time when all of our students would be able to come to an event, and we felt it was worth it to try something new and see how God used it in our ministry.  Even if only one student ended up coming, they were going to be challenged with the truth of the Gospel, be loved and cared for, and experience great community.  Even one student was worth it!

The final days leading up to the retreat were busy.  Full of planning and praying, Dan putting finishing touches on his talks, staff and stinters polishing up the workshops and discussions they would be leading, buying food and game supplies, and packing up.  Almost daily our registration list changed.  Some students ended up not coming, but we had a lot of last minute additions too!  I was most excited when one of our student believers, Dasha, signed up to come, and also signed up two of her friends to come along with her!  In the end, we had 13 students attend the retreat!

The theme for our time together was, “Created for Impact.”  The first day and a half of the retreat we focused on how we are each created uniquely.  We used several instruments to discover more about our personalities and the unique ways that we had been created by God.  The second day and a half of the retreat, we focused on how we can uniquely impact the world around us.  Through various workshops and tools, we helped the students to discover their unique contribution to this world.  They even had the opportunity to write a personal mission statement.  One of my favorite workshops during the retreat was when we each drew a life map.  This helped us to see how our past had shaped who we have become today.  I enjoyed hearing from my small group members, and had the opportunity to share about my decision to surrender my life to Christ, and how I felt that had changed the whole trajectory of my life.

Interspersed throughout the retreat, Dan taught us about different ethical systems.  The final morning of the retreat, he shared about Christianity, and why it’s the only ethical system that really works.  Students really listened attentively, and many of them took notes.  Each person in the room that morning got to hear that they must make a choice to believe and follow Christ.  We are very excited to continue to follow up with these students!

I am so grateful to have gotten to serve alongside my team and our stinters, to do something that we had never tried before.  It was clear that God blessed our step of faith to hold the retreat, even when we didn’t know what the end result would be.  I truly felt God’s spirit working among us as we ate meals together, discovered more about how we were created, talked and shared together, played hockey, and ate yummy snacks too!  Our teams are now considering holding a second retreat in April.  We hope that the attendees from this first retreat will come and invite all of their friends too, and that it will help us to build momentum toward our summer projects.  We praise God for the results and give all glory to Him!  

Kim

Meet Our Stinters

We are so thrilled to be joined this year by such a wonderful group of stinters/interns!  We'd love to introduce you today to the women on the stint team.  I hope you enjoy getting to know them as much as we have!

The  STINT team mission statement is to see six students at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, specifically 2 men and four women, being transformed by the power of Christ and passionately running after other students for the glory of God.

from left to right...

Anne

Bonjour ! My name is Anne, I am coming from FRANCE - and I am actually the first French person to join an American team of STINTERS abroad ! 

In university, I studied Economics and International Relations, and got a Master degree in International Trade (in the univeristies of Sciences Po and La Sorbonne).

Daily life in Moscow is filled with funny and crazy moments, so it's hard to pick one... and that's the beauty of living in another culture ! Every day is an adventure ! 

I'll always remember the day when the Internet guy came to install WIFI in our flat. It was my first week in Russia, I was alone at home, not speaking more than 5 russian words, he was a HUGE Russian guy and didn't speak any English... and well, installing the Internet is a little bit more complicated than pointing to fruits and vegetables on the market ! We had to communicate thanks to google translate, miming, drawings, calling friends... it felt like we were playing a game !! 

I also love taking the Marchoutka (city mini-van) : people are so squeezed into the mini-van, yet the driver still stops every 2minutes to let more people get inside ! Drivers drive like they were in a "mario cart" video game, while sending text messages and receiving money from all the passengers and checking that everyone did pay their ticket fees ! And here's an advice : do not sit by the driver if you don't want to spend the whole ride passing people's money back and forth :)

Mattie

I am from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where I studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma! Boomer Sooner! My craziest, most embarrassing moment in Moscow so far would be the time during rush hour in the Metro that I decided to cleverly avoid the crowd that was waiting to ride up the escalator out of the underground by walking up a stationary escalator not in use. However, because I did not take into account that this was one of the longest, tallest escalators in the Metro system (even riding it takes a solid 1 minute and 30 seconds!), I was completely out of breath and needing to sit down when I was only 3/4 of the way up. Needless to say, it took all my strength to crawl up that last bit at a snail's pace, huffing and puffing, with the people who've been riding up the escalator casually passing me. I've never felt so many stares; that silly American!

Angela

I am from Yukon, Oklahoma and studied Early Childhood Education at the University of Central Oklahoma. This is my third year on staff with Cru/New Life. I was previously on staff at the University of Oklahoma. 

One particularly Russian moment I've had so far was when our heat was not working, so our landlord sent a man to fix it. He spent around 3 hours in our apartment, most of it waiting for a part or tool he needed. He didn't speak English and we didn't speak Russian. After he had been there a while, I wanted to offer him some water, so I whipped out the little Russian I knew to ask him. He looked at me blankly and responded, "I do not speak English. I am Russian." Wah, wah. Even my Russian sounded like English!

Lauren

I am from Dallas, Texas. I studied at OU, the University of Oklahoma #Boomer!, where I studied Elementary Education. The most impressionable moment I have had so far have actually been a collection of moments. Almost every student I have asked, "What is the main point of the Bible?" they cannot tell me and usually say, "I don't know." How much that must make God's heart break for His creation, that Russians would truly know Him.

Vova's Story

We are starting a new phase of ministry in Moscow, as we welcome our first Russian staff couple to our team. We are so excited to have Vova and Lilya join us, and I wanted you to have the chance to meet them and know them a bit better. Having Russian staff on our team is truly a game-changer. They are cultural insiders who are going to play a transformative role on our team as we seek to effectively reach the 1 million college students in Moscow with the Gospel. Vova shared his story with our Stint team recently after they arrived. As I sat there crying tears of joy at how God had changed his life, and brought him to Moscow, I thought, my partners have to hear this! This is Vova’s story:

I participated in a summer project with New Life when I was a student at the Trade and Economy University in Voronezh, Russia. The project really changed my life. Before that summer, the people and environment that surrounded me, really influenced me negatively, and led me away from God. But after that summer, I arrived back at the university and began to actively share my faith with my friends, fellow students at the university, and people at my work. I began to participate in the Christian student movement of New Life in Voronezh and became a student leader in the movement until I graduated.

When I was at the university, my goal was to obtain the skills that would help me to reach all of my personal goals in life. But the more that time passed, the more I saw the importance of investing in eternal things, and not to just waste my life on things that didn’t matter. God changed my views and values. And when I graduated, I decided to become a missionary with New Life, in order to continue to carry the Gospel to students. Our organization asked me and 2 girls, Lilya and Lena, who had also decided to join as missionaries with New Life, to move to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia to help lead the ministry there. Six months after moving to Krasnoyarsk, Lilya and I got married.

My wife and I served in Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, for 4 years, and God took great care of us. We saw what HE was able to do through our labors for Him. But this year, we understood that God was preparing us to move on from Krasnoyarsk. In February, our ministry leaders challenged us to become a part of the student ministry team in Moscow. We prayed and considered this challenge. We wanted to understand if God was really leading us there.  There are a number of difficulties associated with moving, living, and serving in Moscow, and one of the biggest, is the cost of rent and living expenses. So, considering this, we did not want to make our decision as a result of difficulty or fear. We really wanted to go where God was leading us. And the more we prayed about it, the more clearly we saw that God was calling us to respond to a need and the challenge there by moving to Moscow.  We understood this from His Word, and this gave us great confidence.

Moscow is a very strategic city for our country. It is the capital. In Moscow are the largest and best universities in the country, where the future leaders of our country are currently studying. If a Christian student movement starts in Moscow, it will influence the rest of Russia.

I love history. There are 2 examples of evangelical movements in Russia in the past 100 years. The first was a movement of evangelical churches that was started in the 20th century in St. Petersburg by Ivan Prokhanov. The second was a Russian student Christian movement led by V. Martsinkovski at about the same time, starting in Moscow, and spreading all the way to Vladivostok. At this time in Moscow, there were more than 500 Christian students who were a part of this movement! Unfortunately, due to the religious politics of our country, the movement came to an end after many arrests, as well as students put into prison and driven into exile. I believe, that God has the power to do

something like this again! He has the power to do much more!

Praise God with me for Vova and Lilya joining our team and for the fresh wave of faith they bring with them!

-Kim

Saying Goodbye to Jess and Dave

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

The workers are coming!  With the blessings of new teammates, Vova and Lilia, as well as the coming crew of 5 American interns for the coming academic year, we feel overwhelmed with the Lord's provision for our ministry here in Moscow.  Although we acknowledge these tremendous blessings with joy, we still await these new laborers with heavy hearts as we say goodbye to our dear friends and teammates, Dave and Jess Coats.

Dave and Jess have lived and labored alongside us here for just under 5 years and their footprint is one that will last not only for years to come, but well into eternity.  Dave's unique passion for social justice radically changed the direction of our ministry last year in particular.  The Lord used him to set our team on a path to serve and love in uncomfortable ways, inviting others to do the same.  As a result, we longed more deeply for the full transformation of not only the communities around us, but our own selves as well.  Dave, we will miss your ability to think outside the box, your Spirit-filled desire for transformation, and your giftings as both a vision caster and story-teller.

Jessica's presence will be most acutely missed not only on our team, but in the relationships of so many who surrounded her here in Moscow.  I've never seen anybody more gifted in true relational evangelism and discipleship.  Jessica's neighbors, her Russian teacher, her church, her teammates, her friends, and the students in her circles will miss most poignantly the thoughtful and loving friend who has walked alongside them the past 5 years.  Her deep, empathetic nature lifted burdens off so many - around Jess, one really does feel as if she is in life with you and for you.  Her joy and love of adventure made Moscow fun and unpredictable - you never knew where you'd end up and what you'd be doing, but you knew the memories you were making would last a lifetime.

Dave and Jess, life is better with you in it.  Thank you for your years of service here.  We will miss you very much.  And as we could not say it better ourselves, we'll say it in your own words, do svidaniya. 

Love,

Your team in Moscow

The New Moscow Focus

Welcome to the new home of Moscow Focus.  We would love to keep you connected to what God is doing in Moscow.  To do a better job of that we have moved from Moscowfocus.com to moscowfocus.blogspot.com.  Check back here with us to what's going on and how you can join us in praying for the students of Moscow.

Welcome Vova and Lilya!

We are so excited that Vova and Lilya Ledovskie are joining our team this summer.  They are moving from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow.  Please pray for them as they adjust to a new city and a new team.