Wed. June 8

Wed, June 8
I am writing this on Wed. evening and catching you up on past events.
Going back to Sunday am – Left for church at 9:30 with the family I am staying with, a 10 minute drive to the church. N. Chilny (the locals call it Chilny for short) is a pretty clean city with flowers everywhere – red salvia and lots of pyanese.

The church meets in an old gym, and everyone is required to put plastice elastic slipons over their shoes to keep from marking the floor. The congregation is quite large. They sit on plastic stack chairs, which everyone helped to stack after service. The women all were scarfs for head coverings. The service began with a choir of mostly women singing. The majority of the congregation is made up of women. My translator’s name is Natasha. (If some of this is repetition, it is because I wrote in my notebook a log of the first few days and am just typing what I wrote) Natasha is 25, quite friendly and speaks pretty good English. Service went as follows: choir sang, worship for 30 min., choir sang again, recognition of birthdays with flower given to them (they gave me a bouqet also – pyanese), offering, and then the pastor introduced me, and I spoke for 1 hr and 15 min. (remember that is with translation). The church has a wonderful spirit of worship and receptivity to the leadership and ministry of the Word, and seem to have a unifying spirit. After the message, the pastor called for people with special need to come forward – quite a few came down – again mostly women. Then we sang another worship chorus and then dismissed. Several people came to me afterward to express thanks or for counsel. I will speak in the your meeting tonight and next Sunday also. The pastor also informed me that classes will start on Tuesday, so tomorrow he will pick me up in the morning and will go to his Dacha (summer vacation house – more like little shacks – a big Russian cultural thing) and go fishing. The pastor also asked me to do a seminar Thursday evening to pastors and leaders and anyone else who wants to come.

In the service I met a very devoted young lady, a Tartar, who has a very strong passion to reach the Tartar people with the gospel. The Tartar people are predominately muslim. She said she had no respect or authority to speak until she is married. So she if trusting God to send her the right Tartar man to marry. Is Dave Knapp a Tartar?:) She has a very humble and teachable spirit.

Back at the home I am staying at – for lunch we had cucumber salad gretchka (buckwheat cooked like rice), sausages (like small hotdogs), bread, and tea. It is hard to be picky when you are a guest and the hostess has gone to a lot of trouble for you, and she continues to labor hard for me. I am even eating tomatoes – now there’s a sign that the apocalypse is upon us. Now if I start eating sour cream, you better be prayed up!

At the youth meeting in the evening – I had a good time with the youth. They were very receptive. I took several pictures.

After youth service, came home, ate gretchka and some kind of pastry roll and tea. Afterward went jogging with Olga and Luda down by the river – beautiful night – cool.

Before bed, Nadya played the piano and cello for everyone. She is quite good.

More later.
Love,
Dad