Five weeks from today, I will land in Belarus with my teammates for another round of ministry and teaching in Eastern Europe. I wrote to you a couple of weeks ago with an update, and I wanted to share the latest about our journey and plans. The plane tickets are booked, day-to-day itineraries are settled, and now we simply work on filling in the daily schedule.
Belarus has come together extremely well. We are quite excited about the seminars to be held there, and some fantastic teaching topics have been arranged. There will be 16 hours of intensive teaching over two days on topics such as “Sounds Methods of Biblical Theology,” “Constitutional Democracy,” Introduction to Economics,” and “Worldview Conceptions,” among others. During the other two days there, we will have extensive meetings on the formation of the training institute I’ve told you about and several meetings with local pastors in order to encourage them in the midst of their persecution and introduce them to a holistic Biblical worldview. This will be my third trip to Belarus, and my heart has grown so attached to the country and people. The zeal of the Christians there who live under the daily threat of real physical and spiritual persecution is amazing to see. I really can’t wait to go back!
We are making headway as well on the Romania portion of our trip. The primary focus of the time there is the teaching in the city of Timisoara of biblical principles of government and politics. Our seminars have been expanded to include national politicians from the Timisoara area and certain pastors and laypeople from a large church that we’ve worked with previously. These are in addition to the local political leaders from a small interior county (equivalent to a U.S. state) that we originally planned to teach. We will also be going to the far northwest of the country to meet with pastors and Christian academic leaders to discuss potential partnerships and find how we can best serve them with our ministry in the future. God is ever expanding our tent!
A few prayer requests:
- Because a majority of the expenses for our trip is in euros, the weak dollar has caused the total cost to rise. Please pray for favorable exchange rates while we’re traveling and for the ability to reduce expenses without sacrificing safety in our room and board.
- My personal fundraising stands at about 60% of my goal. Please pray that I would reach 100% soon. Thank you for all of your generous gifts!
- While travel to Belarus is not dangerous, per se, it’s not a walk in the park either. Please pray for our safety and protection and for the peace of mind of our spouses who anxiously await our return.
You all have been such wonderful supporters of me and this ministry, and I am deeply grateful. I’ll be updating regularly from now through the end of the trip. More to come…
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