Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 23:04:35 +0400 (MSD)
From: yves@choch2.vrn.ru

Subject: REPORT 6
 
My dear brothers and sisters,
 
"Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again"
                                                        Ecc.11:1
"As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is a good news from a far country "
                                                        Prov.25:25
We are sending you some good news from a far country: much bread has been 
found!  Nelly Karlinskaya ,the mother of Volodia was babtised the 29 th of
March.  When Frank was in Barnaul, in his usual spontanous generosity he
decided to buy  her a plane ticket and brought her over here so she could
help her daughter in law. We were all surprised ! What was even more
surprising is the fact that she started to come regularly to all the services
and finally asked for individual Bible studies. Already her 3 children have
become Christian, so that when her husband will accept Jesus as the Messiah,
the entire family will have turned  from judaism to christianity.
God has some mysterious and "funny" way to work in people's lives: Nelly
could  have become a Christian a long time ago in Barnaul where there is a
large and strong church . Instead she had to be isolated here with the
"Barnaul mission team to Voronesh" to finally submit her will to the Lord ! 
If her husband and money allows it, she would like to stay in Voronezh until 
the end of june so that Volodia can be used as much as possible during the 
campaign of North Atlanta in the last 2 weeks of June. 
The 4th of April, Dima was baptised. This too is a great story : in the last 
campaign of North Atlanta in Apil '96 Irene Terekhova, a student of english, 
was  baptised. In the summer, another Irene and Stephanie, 2 of her
classmates were baptised.  After this, Dima remained very suspicious to
this new mission team in his class, but he still showed some curiosity. 
After trying transcendental meditation and other type of new age
philosophies, he began studying the Bible  with Vladick and finally found
all the answers he was looking for. This adds a 4th Christian to the
class of 13 students, so we are praying for the remaining 65 %! Already many of them have shown up at our conferences and the video 
nights I hold at my place (we watch the videos that I brought with me from
the States:  it's all with a pure american accent, not corrupted by a
french accent a la Yves! )
Another encouraging news: this strong and very faithfull group of english 
students(Ira and Stephanie have gone for 2 weeks in April to help the North 
Atlanta campaign in Chelyabinsk) will be now strenghened by 2 english
students  who have been restored to the church. Olga and Vita were 
baptised last April, but ever since they never showed up again. We went
many times at the place where they live, but were never able to see them
personally. It is so encouraging to see them now coming to all the 
meetings of the body !
Talking about the kingdom : the 15 of March, my wife, myself and the baby
were invited  by one of the churches in Moscow to preach at their Friend's
day.  After leaving Voronezh for 3 days we realized how needed it was. 
Every 6 months one needs to see and smell something different than his own
mission field ! But, of course, the encouragement was not so much in the
change as in the starting of a great friendship with Tim and Rebecca Brinley. They are a very experienced 
missionary couple of 4 children (they worked in Greece and Turkey). Because
of their experience, God has been teaching and encouraging us through 
them.  He always knows how to meet our spiritual needs ! Some days before,
Vladick and Sacha came up in Moscow to meet Gary Mc Lachlan, a brother whose
heart is as big as the shipment of humanitarian help he had brought over ! He
had 8 big boxes of medecine and surgical instruments for the maternity where
Julia gave birth ! Unfortunatly, we still have not been able to deliver any
of these boxes because the customs people in Voronezh have tried to stop the whole shipment. We have "hired" high official 
to solve this problem in the official way. It takes time, but they are far
less "expensive" than the amount of money the corrupted custom people 
wanted! (Gary: may the Lord bless your health as much as He blessed your
nerves ! )  A needed refreshment for us is the Sunday service attendance: we
have in average 20 people coming regularly, of whom over a third are
non-Christian.  This is encouraging because most of those people are the
follow up of a one time advertising we had 6 weeks ago ! I can wait to see
what will happen when we will be able to have massive advertising again ! 
The video projector that was sent through the generosity of the Redbank
church has been very useful; we hold conferences Sunday nights on the
theme of men-women relationships. For this I use the excellent videocassettes called 
"biblical portrait of marriage". At the end of the presentation, people ask 
questions to which I can give answers that meet the needs of both Christians 
and Non-Christians. 
The next 6 weeks, I will hold conferences in various universities about the 
theme of men-women relationships, in order to attract many students both to
our church services and to the american campaign we have in June. I have
found that everywhere I talk about this theme, it is very well received.
Besides the fact that I am a foreigner, which is a big plus in Russia, I
think there are 2 other reasons why people have such an interest : First of
all, half of the marriages end up in divorces, and Russia has one of the
highest percentage in single moms and alcoholics in the world. Secondly,
there is a tremendous lack of help and information in this area. Books and
seminars on the theme are very rare.  Psychologists here are more trained
to be psychiatrists dealing with serious pathologies. Marriage counsellors
simply do not exist. For instance, just to show you the extent of the
problem : an intelligent university professor came to one of my
conferences when I was talking about the theme of "depression and
forgiveness ". At the end, she told me with tears of relief that she had
never heard before such explanation of her problem. She is suffering from
chronic depression and all what she had gotten from the psychatrists were
pills! (Ever since she has been coming to all the church services and we
regularly studied the Bible together. I strongly believe she will become a
Christian.)  As you can sense, I am as busy and happy as our 9-month-old
son! I only wished I could climb all my challenges as quickly and as boldly
as he climbs the walls! Nothing seems to stop him; he pulled down a whole
shelf twice his size over himself, got a little scared about this "moving"
surprise and kept on exploring! No wonder Jesus called us to imitate little
children!  May the Lord give you such a simple faith and boldness to
approach all your daily challenges!
 
Grace and Peace,
                Yves
 
********************************************************************************
Yves, Anna and Yann Perriard
Ulitsa Kukolkina 33 / 270
394030 Voronezh, Russia
Tel.0732 / 71 98 48 (add 8 hours to Eastern time)
for further information :
Jimmie Eaton, Chattanooga TN , (423) 875-4816
Frank Chappell , Columbus OH , (614) 855-0754