Missionaries – Russia

 

Pastor Yushenko Newsletter  Jan. 2012

Yushenko, Grigory – Krasnoyarsk region

Peace be to you, beloved friends, greetings to you!
Praise be to the Lord for your help in the ministry. The time in Siberia is flying by; only recently it was fall and now it is winter! With God’s mercy, we are able to do the work of witnessing.  The major fruit is brought today by personal evangelism. Praise the Lord that believers from the church invite their non-Christian friends to church services.  Recently, Sergei came out of prison and he started to attend church services and started to fellowship with brother Alexey.

A week ago, we had a sad event. For many years, together with sister Anna, we prayed for her husband and his repentance. And her husband had repented in deed only when he was diagnosed with a deadly decease, stomach cancer.

He had a surgery and his stomach was completely removed. Previously he was an officer in the Russian army. He was a proud man and his brain was filled with communism and every time we talked about God, he would reject all we were saying.  But when he was taken ill, he repented, and probably the Lord allowed such a deadly illness in order to save his soul.

In our church, we started to pray for those who left the church in order that the Lord would revive them and would bring them back to the right path.

Recently, brother Sasha came back to church. It happened after he was involved in a fight with his step-father and his step-father injured Sasha severely with a knife and he had to spend some time in a hospital. Only there he realized that he needs to go back to the right path.  In such severe ways, the Lord brings sinners to salvation.

Near by our town there is another town, Kansk, and not so long ago, brother Mikhail, an experienced missionary from Yakutia, moved to that town, and upon his arrival together with church from that town, we started to organize fellowship and joint evangelistic projects. Such cooperation has a very positive effect and inspires church for the ministry. In November, we had a large fellowship for our two churches on the subject of harvest. We invited unbelievers to that fellowship and a dynamic music band, and after the service we organized a festive dinner and very good fellowship time.

Since the death of my wife, I regularly receive invitations for counseling sessions with those who have deadly or severe sicknesses. As well as that, quite regularly, 1-2 times a quarter, I am invited to conduct funeral services and after those, I need to comfort relatives who lost their loved ones.  The life of a minister is so variable that it is difficult to describe everything.
With all of my strengths, I aim to meet all the biblical requirements for a pastor, which are recorded in epistles to Timothy and Titus, and I try to spend at least an hour a day in God’s Word, which is my responsibility, to read the Bible and to pray in order that I would know things which I need to tell the people.

In church services, I inspire people for the work of evangelism and for development of personal relationship with their relatives and friends, and that they would make new contacts with unbelievers around them, that they would go to the world, but would keep themselves pure from the worldly things. The timetable of church services is still without changes.

Please, pray for us, we really need your prayers.

Prayer requests

1. Thanks be to the Lord for repentance of brother Victor!

2. Thank be to the Lord that Sergey came back to the church and started to attend church services!
3. Pray for revival in the town of Uyar.

4. For those brothers and sisters who left the church, that they would come back.
5. For spiritual growth of church members.

6. For my family and my children.
7. For blessing over Christmas outreaches.

Grigory