Belarus and Romania Update #5

Good news! As of Wednesday evening, we still had not received our Belarusian visas back approved and processed from the Embassy. The five business day timeframe we were promised has passed, so I’ve been a little worried. Well, we contacted the Embassy this morning and were told that our visas were approved and issued yesterday (Wednesday) and should arrive back to us today or Friday. This is a tremendous answer to prayer, and I am slightly relieved. We absolutely must have the visas and passports back tomorrow so that one of our team members will have his passport to travel internationally on Sunday before meeting us next week in Belarus, so I will feel better when I hear that the visa package has been received by the church and we’re all set to go. Pray with me, won’t you?

There has been a flurry of activity in the last week. All seminar outlines have been sent to Belarus for translation ahead of our arrival. The Romania seminars have stretched from three to four days, and we’ll be dividing our time evenly between two cities. A Christian university (how’s your Romanian?) in Oradea has invited to address both faculty and administration and students. We are thrilled at the opportunity and are confident that this will lead to more divine appointments. As you may remember, the emerging focus of this ministry and desire of our hearts is to establish institutes in strategic spots in Eastern Europe that will train pastors and lay leaders in all disciplines in the principles and practices of biblical worldview. These meetings in Oradea could go far to planting that seed in Romania.

I thought I’d try to make things a little more interesting this time for the armchair globetrotters. Here’s the route we’ll take:

We’ll hit at least five countries—the U.S., Germany, Belarus, Austria, and Romania—and do our primary work in three cities: Minsk, Timisoara, and Oradea. When we get to Romania, we’ll be only a couple of hours from both the Serbian and Hungarian borders. If have any free time after seminars, we may try to get another stamp in our passports from one of the neighbors!

Six days to go, and I’m starting to turn my thoughts to packing and logistics. I’d appreciate your prayers for the following this week:

• Pray for safe and timely delivery of our passports and visas. The primary hurdle has been crossed; we just need to get everything back.
• My funding is up to 89%! Thank you for your selfless generosity. Please pray for full support.
• Pray for good time management for all the team members in this next week. We need to make sure we pack everything we need and nothing we don’t—weight limits!—and we still have normal lives to lead before we go.
• Pray for open hearts where we’re going and servant hearts for us as we teach.
• Pray for safety in our travels, protection for our families while we’re gone, and peace in our households with us away.

I am so very blessed by your support, gifts, and words of encouragement. More to come…