TRIP TO MOSCOW

On Tuesday, November 5th, I was in Moscow at the invitation of Alexander Semchenko, senior bishop of the Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians in Russia, the head of the All-Russian community of evangelical Christians (ARCEC), which has more than 700 churches formed in the last 20 years.

Bishop Alexander is 65 years old, he was born in a large Christian family that has repeatedly suffered persecution for their faith. Alexander Trofimovich has been serving God since an early age, he has built many houses of worship, has helped to raise many ministers, pastors of churches.

TRIP TO WESTERN UKRAINE

On the weekends I visited the Western Ukraine.

In the Transcarpathian region , in the village named Zarechie I visited the church of our association, where I spent a wonderful time with Pastor Vladimir, his wife Maria and the believers of the church.

The church is situated in the Roma settlement, so, basically, Roma live here and come to the meeting. Before the church was based, people in the village had not been working. They had been engaged in petty theft and led a nomadic life. But with the coming of the gospel life of the people had changed dramatically!

TRIP TO THE FAR EAST

I was sitting at the airport of Vladivostok waiting for boarding. It was 13.00 in local time. I was flying back home with a sense of satisfaction and sadness. Satisfaction because God was all over! Sadness because I love the brethren, the church, these days I “rooted” to them with all my heart, so I did not want to leave …

A wonderful church in Ussuriisk, Vladivostok! A wonderful pastor, the ministers! We spent a couple of days that will be remembered for a long time, it was really “flowing anointing oil” on Psalm 133: “How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! Thank you Pastor Alexander and Irina Volkova for the warm welcome, thank you brethren for your care, thanks church for open hearts! May God bless you abundantly!

Honestly, I had a little different view of the Far East. Previously, for some reason I thought that it’s cold there and people are “colder” than in Ukraine, but I have completely changed my mind!

TRIP TO GERMANY

On Friday, 22nd of March, my wife and I arrived to Germany late at night to visit our friends Yakov and Lene Frizin. I know them almost for 30 years already, and very grateful to God for this possibility to meet again!

On our way to Kiev we got into a snow storm, and our flight was delayed for more than 2 hours and it was a real miracle that we managed to get on our next flight. We arrived to our destination at night. Yakov and Lene gave us a very warm and friendly welcome.

It was quite unexpected that we went to Switzerland in the morning! Yakov brought us to a very picturesque place in Switzerland not far away from German-Swiss boarder. We enjoyed walking about an amazing waterfall.

Then we went to Constance – a very old and beautiful city, with every house in it of a unique character, not one house looks like another one. This city appears to be a monument of history.

Jan Hus lived in Constance, and he was sentenced and then burned at the stake there. I was thinking about him while we were strolling around those places, where this great man of God lived and passed away.