Well, it's raining, and you can't paint in the rain. So I get the day off and I get to go to morning Bible Study...good stuff...here's the "write up" on Kazakhstan and some pics, of course there's a lot more I could say...the more I reflect the more I learn from it...but the trip was good, that's 1 sentence summary...
We departed from Los Angeles at 7AM on Sunday, May 22nd. Our itinerary had us flying through New York, Vienna and arriving in Moscow for a stay of about 5 days. This was on account of a last minute itinerary alteration which left us with a 5 day gap between our departure from the United States and the start of our Visa in Kazakhstan. We had also acquired a Russian Visa for the dates in between. We saw many of the sites in Moscow, and were able to help Slavic Gospel Association bookkeepers by cataloguing some of the 14,000 unrecorded books; part of a seminary library. Soon we bid farewell to the many different workers in the General Baptist Union Headquarters (where we were staying), and our next stop was Kazakhstan.
Typical Karaganda Ghetto
We arrived at 3AM in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, our new home for 4 weeks. We were met in a sleepy daze by the guys from pioneers, and Esset, an Uzbek worker now living in Kazakhstan. We were soon briefed and orientated and introduced to our hosts. We were all being sent to live with a different host home. Each home, with one exception was Kazakh, Unbelieving, and equipped with at least one English speaker. Throughout the month, we took advantage of this unique situation by laboring to build a relationship with our host family in an endeavor to share the Gospel with them.
Us and the cops, getting registered
This opportunity with our host family made up about 50% of our purpose in Kazakhstan. The rest was in teaching an English club (at a cultural center which is assisted by the missionaries) in hopes of meeting and forming relationships with local university students interested in communicating in English. We also spent time working with national believers; we organized and taught to them a 3 week children’s program, (much like a Vacation Bible School program), helping the workers who were inexperienced and developing their skills for future programs. We tried to spend as much of our free time as we could with our host families and with the people we met in English club.
Trying to scare a little girl
Please continue to pray for Kazakhstan and the workers that are there, though technically and Democratic free republic, and claiming religious freedom, there is a great deal of red tape and corruption, and many laws govern the activities of those involved in the church. The workers who helped us were harassed on more than one occasion by the police and have recently learned that many of the activities and meetings they were holding are technically illegal. They have been threatened with being expelled from the country previously. Pray for shrewdness and justice so that the missionaries will be allowed to remain in Kazakhstan.
Playing Baseball against the Karaganda State Club team
The people of Kazakhstan are very hard hearted. The Kazakh people have a very proud heritage, but are followers of Islam in name only. They view religion and worship as expressions of culture, understanding evangelism to be an oppression of their culture and thus are very unwilling to listen to the Gospel. The key to the society is relationships, and we have built strong ties to our host families. Pray that we will be able to correspond and maintain ties with those we have befriended.
Exlporing Karkaralinsk...Nature!
In addition to the work we did, everyone on the team experienced blessings in personal growth and various lessons God taught us while we were there. Several members of the team hope one day to return to Kazakhstan and do similar work in hopes of building Gospel-oriented relationships. In all of our time, God was surpassingly faithful, and His Glory is beginning to spread throughout Kazakhstan.
English Club
