Dear friends!
So glad to share with you some of our news for the last few months.
As we wrote in our previous newsletter, we resumed our meetings in July 2020. Around September we had more and more people coming back to church.
Despite the different regulations due to the COVID19 pandemic the attendance of the church was growing more stable. We kept our livestream for those who were staying home, so that they’ll be able to join the service online.
In October there were rumors of a second wave which will increase the number of COVID cases. The numbers were going higher everyday. Many people were being infected. Our church was not spared by this second wave, as it was becoming worse every day. Me and some members of my family got sick also.
In November, as a response to this second wave of COVID 19, the government imposed new restrictions, whereby the number of people attending any meeting shouldn’t exceed more then 50 persons. We have been gathering all this time keeping the number of people up to 50 present in the meeting hall and the rest joined our livestream. Recently the restriction was lightened, now we can go up to a hundred, only that we need to keep the social distancing and other measures like mask and sanitizers.
New international students
Because of the closed borders, this year we didn’t have a lot of new international students coming to Russia. Most of our new international students transferred from other cities of Russia. We have new people from South Sudan, Indonesia, Tanzania, Angola, Botswana, Rwanda and other countries.
Not long ago we held a welcome evening for our new students. From September we have seen about 25 – 30 new who visited the church about 15 of them are attending church regularly.
Though during the Christmas season we didn’t have a lot of activities, our youth ministry had an outreach handing over handmade season greetings cards with scriptures.
Also a group of Papua Indonesian students came to visit our church. They blessed us with worship in their local language.
Food pantry
We continue helping the needy with groceries from our food pantry. Thank you all who have been contributing for the refilling of the supplies.
Mission work
From last year, we started to get involved financially with a church in Zambia where a couple from our Church are serving as youth pastors. The church is located in a poor area of the city. As we talked with Mushane and Alaska they see the needs and have a desire to help different families. We decided to partner with them and started a food pantry in their church. The pastor’s family has been one of the recipients of it.
On the latest development, Mushane and Alaska have a desire to start ministry center in the area where church is. They have spotted a piece of land for this purpose. They asked us to help them to purchase. We started collecting funds to contribute to it. We hope to give our part by the end of this month.
In addition, few weeks ago we reconnected with two of our former members who have gone back to their countries. They are both involved in full time ministry. Isaac Baffour is from Ghana, he is leading a church of about 40 members. Martin Tanyi Tambe is pastoring a church and missionary training center in the southwest region of Cameroon. The missionaries are being prepared to reach the Akwaya subdivision, which has about 125 unreached communities. Besides preaching the gospel, they raising social workers to help meet the needs of the communities they send missionaries to.
Beside our Sunday services, have different activities as
- French services (every month)
- Praise and worship nights (every Thursday
- Youth services
- Home groups
From the beginning of this year we also had
- 3-day retreat
- A week of prayer and fasting (that brought many testimonies about answering prayers
- Men’s outing
Prayer Requests
- For the lifting of all restrictions due to Covid-19
- Our sound equipment are getting more and more old. We are praying for an opportunity to buy new sound equipment for the Church
- For the different ministry and mission works all over the world where our brothers and sisters from All Nations Church are involved.
- For the Church in Zambia and our work there with Mushane and Alaska
- For the Church in Ghana with Isaac
- For the mission work in the Akwaya region of Cameroon with brother Martin Tanyi Tambe
- For the spreading of the gospel in this city and all over Russia and beyond
We are very glad and so grateful to be part of the Stonework family! Thank you for your prayers and support.