Good News Church of Naberezhnye Chelny (Republic of Tatarstan) joined the One Year for Jesus Project in 2010. This year the team rented its own base outside the city, where missionaries (full-time and part-time) live and go out to their outreaches.
For full-time members of the One Year for Jesus team in Tatarstan a missionary base in Pine Forest has become a home. They live as one big family. And as a big family they have a lot to take care of.
As they work out of the missionary base, they live in tents. Sometimes brothers and sisters from their church come to assist in the work on organizing things. Just recently brothers finished building an oven and a shower. On this base they organized 24-hour prayer, and people from the church can come and be a part of it.
During the recent five-days outreach, June21-25, the team visited seven towns: Pokrovsky, Yakovlevo, Sekines, Ragozino, Lekarevo, Pyatiletka, Chishma. God is blessing the outreaches, and the Word of God continues to spread over the Republic of Tatarstan.
In one of the towns the team met a boy of six years old. They saw him outside of his house, stopped, asked his name and then said: "Do you know that God loves you? Do you know that all around you has been created by God? He can help you, even when a person cannot". The boy looked very surprised and said, "No, I don't know that". The missionaries offered to pray for him. He agreed and they prayed. If at first he was quiet and gave short answers , then after the prayer, he called his new friends to his yard, sat on a small handmade chair and began to tell them his story. It turned out that at his young age he suffered from violence in his home. His father and older brother beat him. Some of the boys in his neighborhood also offend him. The missionaries prayed together for the boy, his home and family.
And they realized that God arranged, that they met this boy, who needed support and assistance. On the way back they met a group of girls and began to sing along with them the Christian children's songs. Seeing and hearing how sincere children were singing about God who loved them, brought joy to the heart of one of the girls' grandmother. She accepted the Gospel as a gift, and invited the missionaries to visit her home. While before, when they had just come to this village, she closed the gate of her house.
The missionaries believe that the Lord has lead them to those children who suffer from pain, alienation and loneliness. But they learn that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them. He is able to help and always there for them.
