Sasha

So, as promised here goes the story about Sasha.

It begins with our arrival here, now almost 1 1/2 years ago. Through a series of contacts- which are themselves an interesting story -we met Steve Webber, the director of the Christian Broadcasting Network for the whole Russian-speaking world.

In talking with Steve about what we were trying to do here, he offered to connect us with Andrey, the CBN guy in charge of their evangelistic outreach website. Andrey began to send us contact information from people who'd written into the website with questions or because they wanted to say that they'd just prayed a prayer of repentance or re-dedication to Christ.

We did a lot of work, writing to these people, but got little response. One thing we did try was to invite people to an Alpha evangelistic group, in English. In this way we hoped to do something we were good at- English -and combine it with the Gospel. (The attempt was technically successful, but actually the people who came were already believers, which sort of defeated the purpose...)

Anyway, it was at this time that I got a response from a man who was very excited to think that someone would take an interest in him and could show him to a church where they could help him find a job. I wrote back right away explaining that the church could help, but that didn't mean that they could get him a job.

He wrote back right away to say, "Well, what's the use then?"

So I wrote back right away again and said that there was more to life than just a job and not to be discouraged if I couldn't promise him that a local church could help him.

I was to find out later that this guy was Sasha. We'll tell you more of his story next time...