Mission Possible's president meets the first church planters on the field in July 2004

Gospel reaches unevangelized areas - new groups already exist three months of ministry!

In April 2004 Mission Possible launched a church planting program in Udmurtia together with the association of churches "Work of Faith". These are over 100 churches established in the past 11 years.

Each church planter stays in his or her home town and church and starts ministry in five unevangelized towns in the range of 40 miles.

In this way one church planter can start up to 5 new groups or churches in one year.

In July I went to see how the work had started. In three months, 20 new groups of believers have been established!

Meeting place like sauna

We visited first Aleksey Anisimov and the new believers from one of the towns where he ministers. It was terribly warm in the meeting place, the windows of the 100-year-old house could not be opened. But God touched many people. It was great to see the missionary couple with their spiritual children, the most of whom were 20-50 years older than them!

Tent in the middle of the village

In the next town there was a meeting tent set up right on the football field. The music was heard from far. This was the fourth day of an evangelism rally. A youth band was playing, the most of the listeners were young.

The next stop was on the other side of Udmurtia. We drove one hour on muddy roads from the town of Vodkinsk that has a base church doing outreach in the surrounding territories. On the shore of a beautiful lake, 40 people from the newly established village church had gathered together with curious spectators. 18 new believers were going to be baptized.

Prayer in the middle of the forests

Missionary Olga Lopatkina met us. Instead of welcome formalities she began to tell us how God had answered to her: In a cold day last winter she walked to this village through the forests. There were wolves, and she could only pray for protection. "I asked the Lord for money to buy a bus ticket", she said. Only one month after that, we began the church planting program.

"Thank you for your support" Olga said simply - and behind her 18 newly converted Christians, preparing to be baptized, were listening to the preaching.

When they came up from the water, Olga met each of them with a towel to wipe their faces. What a symbolism! What a care for the newborn! We in the West could learn a lot from these people who burn with enthusiasm and are ready to sacrifice themselves.

Revival meeting at the village bakery

In the center of the next village there was a coffee place and bakery. 30 people of all ages had occupied the tables and our missionary lady was preaching and singing to them. After an invitation to repentance almost everybody responded. How many of them will grow in faith will be seen in the following months, but everybody felt a fresh touch of God in their hearts. Two old ladies who had just became Christians asked missionary Svetlana Grebenkina:

"You are not leaving us, aren't you?" The missionary answered without hesitation: "We have come here for good."

Four more missionaries

On the next day we met the Udmurtian church leaders who said that in these three months 20 new groups of believers had been established. We chose in faith four more church planters to be supported by Mission Possible.

We left Udmurtia inspired from having seen that God is working and Mission Possible can be a channel for such a blessing. Praise God!