September - November 2007
Autumn Activity
The apple trees in our church yard gave us a pretty good harvest this year. Ruth and April made lots of pies, apple crisp, and fruit salads.
Missionary Travis Decker and his family have been a great help to our family and our ministry since they moved here. They are working hard to complete construction on the unfinished house they bought in a nearby village. We have been helping them lay concrete blocks, mix cement, dig ditches for the water pipes, and build the roof. Now most of the remaining work is inside the house.
We celebrated a blessed Thanksgiving together with the Decker family. Before they came here, the closest Americans were over 250 miles away, so it was nice to have friends over to share the holiday. It took quite a while to find a turkey, but we finally did, so I was able to make my famous onion-stuffed Thanksgiving turkey. Travis Decker brought over a large supply of his famous iced tea. We had large quantities of all types of holiday food, for which we were very thankful!
Our Sunday service is growing! Almost every week we have a new visitor or two, because of the many thousands of tract-invitations we have been distributing around town. We recently had 14 Russians, plus nine Americans for a total of 23!
My son Alan and I took a trip back to Kiev, Ukraine, where we used to live some years ago. We went to the monthly Christian book market there to buy books for our church library. Missionary Matt Hudson invited me to stay with him for the weekend and to preach his Sunday service. We had a wonderful time there, and saw many friends we hadn’t seen for a long time.
I was once again invited to speak to a class at the Oryol State University. The students are studying the history of England and America. The professor asked me to speak about "Why the puritans felt that they had to leave England to find religious freedom". It was a good opportunity to present the idea of a simple Biblical faith, rather than an empty manmade religion. There were about 70 students, and they asked lots of questions. I invited them to visit our services, and gave them some literature.
A missionary friend in Kharkov, Ukraine invited me to preach his mid-week service. We had a really good time of blessing and fellowship together.
We have paid $23,850 for our church building, which is about 46% of the loan. You may want to help by sending a gift to: BIMI, P.O. Box 9215, Chattanooga, TN 37412. Designate it for “Ossewaarde - Project Russian Church Building”.
We are making definite plans for a furlough next summer. If you would like
me to visit your church and give a report, please contact me. I have available
dates from the middle of June 2008 to the end of September 2008.
In the service of the King,
Don Ossewaarde