Heading Home

Wow we have been in America for five months, and tomorrow we are finally heading back to Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, our home.

We have had a great time in America. We came back to the U.S. just as our home in Lowell was sold. We will be helping our son and family purchase a 2 family home in Nashua NH and we plan on actually living there some day in the distant future.

We started our stay by attending the Northern New England Foursquare District Conference in November, and then we began visiting the 3 Northern New England States and speaking in our district Foursquare churches during November through mid-February.

In the middle of that, in January we made an eight day visit to Los Angeles and spent time at the office of Foursquare Mission International - that was a great time. Personally I love Los Angeles!

We then went to Colorado from mid February through mid March to visit our daughter Jessica and her family. While there we spoke in 7 churches including one in North Platte, Nebraska. It was wonderful to spend time with our daughter Jessica and her family. We hadn't seen them in 2 years. It was difficult to say good-bye, but such is missionary life, a continual saying good-bye to someone.

After returning to New England in the middle of March, we took a quick trip to Bethlehem PA where we spoke at the Tri-state foursquare district missions conference and then spoke at the Bethlehem PA Hispanic Foursquare church.

This last week has been purchasing & packing, and getting in as much family time as possible.

We are sad in some ways to be leaving, but we are excited to get back to the work in Russia. We love Russia and the Russian people. It is so amazing to see the lives of young drug addicts change as they are set free from their addictions by the power of the Gospel. We could not ask for a better job!

Our next post will be an update from Nizhny Novgorod Russia!

News from the Russian Front

Cornerstone Church continues to grow!

Cornerstone Church continues to grow with attendance on Sunday now over 200 people! The church celebrated its third anniversary in February with a large conference.

Pastor Dmitry (front right) with national Russian Leaders

More Exciting News – A New Church!

One of our young friends, Sergei Zheldak, is a former drug addict whom we helped disciple. He left for Bible school in Siberia last fall and graduated in January. Upon graduation he came back to our area and recently moved to Dzerzhinsk, a city of 200,000 about 45 minutes from Nizhny Novgorod. He is there now with a small team. Together they have begun reaching out to local drug addicts and have begun a new church plant.

Pastor Sergei - recent Bible school graduate

now churchplanting in Dzerzhinsk Russia

Pastor Sergei Zheldak (top left) with his team

We are particularly excited about this, both because Sergei is such a good brother, and Dzerzhinsk is the city we lived in and church planted in from 1994 to 1996. We will be working alongside this new church plant when we return to Russia in April.