Friday, December 11, 2009

A New Brother in Christ and Upcoming Opportunities

Our New Brother Andrei
This last Sunday marked a very special day here in Kharkov for us, but especially for a good friend of ours, Andrei. Andrei was baptized into Christ this last Sunday here in Kharkov! (Here is a picture of him with the guys on the team and of his baptism into Christ - yes, in the McDougle's tub!) Andrei was introduced to our team about a year ago by our friend Valery. Valery had worked with him in the summer camps here and was trying to share with him a little more about the Good News. Over this last year, our team has been in contact with Andrei, and recently Dougle began meeting with him to discuss the Bible. Andrei has been reading the Word on his own, studying and then discussing various things with all the men on our team. After reading through Acts this last week, he approached Dougle about baptizing him and this Sunday we welcomed a new brother into the body. It was so encouraging to be a part of his new beginning and we pray that you will give thanks to God with us and also keep him in your prayers as he begins his walk of faith.

Upcoming Seminar
As many of you know, my parents, Kirt and Nancy Martin, will be coming this weekend to spend the holidays with us. We are very excited about them coming, and decided to take extra advantage of having my dad around with his expertise. He will be doing a seminar for us on Creation and Evolution, one he has done many times around Lubbock. A good friend of ours from Mariupol, Alyona, has been hard at work translating all the slides for his presentation and will come here to be his translator. Kharkov is a university town and there are around 150,000 students studying at universities and other higher academic schools here. We hope to reach out to those students through this seminar, so we have been advertising it in a local paper here as well as online, and over this next week we will be posting up fliers and handing out information about it. Here is a copy of one of the flyers we will be posting as well as the small fliers of information we'll be handing out. The seminar will be this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and following the last lecture on Sunday, we will invite those who are there to stay and be a part of our worship service. Please be praying for those we invite to come and for their hearts to be open to hearing about how great our Creator is!