The Lord is at work!  I continue finding myself doubting that we are really being effective here, and then we will hear a report such as the one below.  I keep asking Pastor Andre Furmanov if people are just being nice, but he assures me that Russians are very blunt and will really tell us what they think – they actually think that Americans can be quite superficial!

After church yesterday, a family (circled above) passed us a note that they had one of the English-speaking members translate.  It was very sweet of them and pretty well summed up what we’ve been hearing every day we’ve been here.  We’ll go into the history later, but suffice it to say that God has clearly been preparing this church family for our visit through some very amazing and turbulent events over this past year.  But read now what one family has written to us:

Dear Andie and Scott, we, the Kutchkov family (Loysha, Diana, Anfisa and Arseniy) are very grateful to you that you have come to Russia and we could listen to your seminar about home teaching! You’ve inspired us to teach our children at home, opened our eyes to what the Bible says about it.  We’d like to share the lessons we got after our meeting on Monday:

1. God has given our children to US and it is OUR responsibility to raise and teach them.
2. It’s OUR responsibility to defend our children from this world’s influence as long as they are not ready to resist it and home teaching contributes to this idea.
3. Families with home teaching are much stronger!
4. Both parents can teach at home (not just mother only). A father can give 1 to 2 lessons a week as well.
5. We should make our lessons interesting.
6. Shouts and annoyance are poison to relationships.
7. It is important that father has quantity time with children.

 Thank you for the blessing to see your example!  We believe that God will make a great difference in our church through your family’s labor.  We are glad to meet you!  May God bless you!

 With Love, The Kutchkov Family