The Gospel News

Requests for Bibles and Bible Basics continue to flood in each day from throughout Russia. And this is without any advertising. It?s from people searching for spiritual things and coming across us on the internet. The true Gospel is really going all over the place. This week we visited a group in the Urals and

were delighted to baptize NADYEZHDA. She had never held a Bible in her hand until just over a year ago. She owns a business and one of her employees, our Sister Vera, gave her one of the NEV Russian Bibles. She was ready for it - she has read every day according to the Bible Companion along with our commentary and Bible Basics. There were many tears and great joy on earth and in Heaven. These two women really have become best friends and now sisters in Christ.

We were happy to have the company of brother Kolya, a great preacher of the Gospel and distributor of Russian NEV Bibles. A huge thank you to all those who enabled and continue to enable the production and distribution of these Bibles - they really are bringing forth fruit to the glory of our Lord.

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Many thanks for the prayers and expressions of support during our travelling. Finally, FYODYOR from Ust Ilimsk in far northern Siberia was baptized - that town is 1000 km. north of Irkutsk (Lake Baikal). The small towns and villages in that area are full of people from various parts of the former USSR. The reason is because this is the very area to which people were ?sent to Siberia?, some to camps (Solzhenitsyn readers may recall his mentions of Ust Izhma and other camps beginning with ?Ust?), others simply exiled to live in those small villages in the middle of nowhere. The people sent there were the likes of Jehovah?s Witnesses, Adventists, Jews, intellectuals, political dissidents and other free thinkers. An interesting group of people, living in an awful climate (brief hot summers, long cold winters) with poor transport links and few

Jan-April 2014

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airstrips, many of them still subsistence farmers. This background explains why the JWs are a major religion there to this day; any leaving of the religion is felt to be a betrayal of the previous generation, who were exiled there because of their faith. Fyodyor joined the JWs at 15 years of age and was a zealous member. But once he was

online, he started to work out errors in the teaching and practice of the organization, and that is how he came into contact with us.

He wanted more than anything to be baptized into Christ (JWs effectively baptize into their organization) and have a personal relationship with Him. And he didn?t find this in the JWs. Fyodyor read most of our books which are translated into Russian (and they are many). He has an excellent knowledge of the Truth as well as a desire to really walk with the Lord Jesus. It was a pleasure to baptize him.

Please pray for your brother in his great isolation, remembering that his wife is still an active JW. Our postage bill is pretty big and we rely on your donations to keep

Here?s our brother being baptized, and then immediately making his video appeal to JWs to come to Christ.