IMPACTING 10 CITIES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

So many cities and so many languages!  Cities are teeming with people who need to hear the gospel.

As we travel to different cities and meet with church planters, pastors and leaders we are reminded of how difficult it is to reach people in cities with the gospel, yet God is building his church! He is using amazing men and women who have a passion for spreading the gospel despite the hardships. I have to admit, there are times when I get jealous of the people we meet because I want to be a church planter too! I think Bobby and I would have been good at
it, but we have always understood we can be more effective as facilitators and networkers. For the first 3 years in Moscow we were co-leaders on a church planting team with a Russian pastor, but after several years we began to get inquiries from other people to help start churches in other cities. We are excited that God continues to use us to expand his kingdom! We want to
highlight a few people we mentor, equip, and encourage in the cities where we are working.

 
Richard is a pastor who plans to plant two more churches in Stockholm.

Evgeny in Moscow also plans to plant 2 more churches.

Auli and I volunteer in a church plant in Berlin. We will have a picnic for refugees on June 5th.

Our friends, Martti and Soili have a vision for reaching the educated, professional business people in Helsinki. They attended our training in NYC last year and held their first service in downtown Helsinki last week. The old church building where they are meeting now was sold 30 years ago by their denomination, and during this time it was used for restaurants and night clubs, but none of the businesses ever made money so the owner leased the building back to the denomination for the next 50 years. We attended the dedication of the building on Saturday and the service on Sunday. The local media created a lot of hype and many people attended out of curiosity. Saturday night a famous Finnish singer gave her testimony, telling the audience how she used to go to the nightclub to drink before becoming a Christian, and how thrilled she was now to be singing about Christ in same building. On Sunday the service was jammed with 100s of people who heard Martti preach a wonderful gospel sermon! Please pray that after all of the early excitement God will draw many people to himself and the church will grow.

Prayer Request
Please pray for us to obtain our German registration in August. After going to the government office and handing in our paperwork we were told we would need additional information that wasn't required last year when we applied.

WEDDING BELLS
We are thrilled to announce that our youngest son, Jonathan, will marry Glenai Gilbert, a wonderful Christian woman from Nashville. Jonathan and Glenai decided to have a destination wedding on August 2 in Santorini, Greece so we are happy travel to the this beautiful country to take part in the ceremony. Please pray they will continue to put God first in their lives and their prayer will be, “Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together (Psalm 34:3)”.