Trip to to two Middle Eastern Countries

From 29 May to June 9th, Svetlana and I made a trip to two Middle Eastern Countries.
I was invited to an evangelical pastoral gathering in the capital city of one of the countries where Christians are persecuted. Pastors with their wives came from all around the country for a 5 day retreat. We arrived in the morning and immediately began teaching. In spite of jet leg, the 8 hour daily of teaching sessions flew by. It was very easy facilitating the inductive Bible study process for such an engaging audience. The topic was on “Ordering your private Life”. Between sessions we participated in experiential learning activities, followed by time for reflection.

Because of the persecution, not many missionaries are visiting this country. That is why we observed a deep sense of appreciation and a special atmosphere of reverence towards the Word of God. I was humbled to teach people who are suffering and persecuted for being Christ followers. We met people who have more than four generations of disciples and who are on fire for the Lord. They were asking questions wanting to learn from us when I was looking to learn from them.

We ended our training by coupling each attendant with an accountability partner. In this way they would report weekly to each other on the accomplishment of their homework assignments. The homework assignments were directed toward obedience based actions as well as towards sharing the word with outsiders.

For example the first week after they went home, they had to work on introducing the following four activities into their daily schedules:
1. Personal growth
2. Investing in their family
3. Training believers
4. Sharing with nonbelievers

Coming back home I began receiving testimonies from those who attended the training. Here is a testimony:

Dear Ion
Thank you for teaching us such simple but in the same time deep truths that so amazingly touched our hearts. I went home, trying to bring those four activities in my daily life. In the beginning it was very hard to keep all four but now I see already the first fruits. I can say that it became much easier to live a balanced life for our Lord, keeping the spiritual growth, investing in my granted by the Lord family, training the church and witnessing to others.
The situation in second country that we visited was just the opposite. I was told that there are only about 3,000 evangelical believers in that country with more than 500 missionaries. Something is completely wrong in that country that has hindered church growth for hundreds of years. I tried to understand the reason why people in that county are to resistant to the Gospel. My conclusion was that every mission organization has been coming to this country with their own program that creates a dependency from the outside. Today, practically every church in this country is dependent in some way on foreign mission organizations, and pastors are on their payrolls. Because of this, the Christian movement in this country is dispersed and divided. While well intentioned, these mission organizations have created dependency from outside.

The church in this country is viewed as a foreign element and has largely rejected it as living organisms often do. I believe that the solution is to initiate an indigenous self-sustaining discipleship movement, totally independent from outside.

On my first meeting only five people showed up, and it took some effort to convince even these 5 people to come. Their attitude was like here was one more missionary coming to sell their program. When we began studying from the Word what might spark a revival in this country, they all got excited and at the next meeting there were about 25-30 people. For country where Christians are persecuted that is a large crowd. Our hope is that God in his Mercy is going to do something different in this country in these days, and we would like to be in His service.
The radicalism in this country is growing. The day of the terrorist attack which killed 11 and injured 36, we were taking the breakfast when we heard the blast.
The car with bomb was parked in the parking lot exactly in the spot where one of our disciples from Moldova was parking his car.
Happily for him, the blast happened before he got to work.

Please pray for the next training in Uzbekistan and Turkey in September.
We planned a three day training for 150 people in Izmir,Turkey. Every delegate will cost us around $220. Let me know if you want to support one or more delegates.