The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. – 2 Timothy 2:2

From January 4-15, 2010 one of our pastors from Balti City Church of Hope, Vasile Sanduleac, visited Kharkiv, Ukraine to take a leaders training institute on evangelism and discipleship. More than two million people live in this city, with less than one percent of evangelical believers.

Kharkiv Students 2010

The Precept book of the Gospel of John study was used as curricula for the training. Brothers and sisters from many churches came for the training, and a number of them are serving the Lord as pastors and deacons in local churches. There were 24 students total. Everybody was on fire for the Lord, ready to start their home Bible study groups and teach the Word of God.

The study of the Gospel of John discussed evangelism approaches our Lord Jesus used in different situations with different people, with many times through fulfilling their physical needs first. He moved the discussion to the spiritual condition of sin, showing his listeners the solution. Students were trained to use these same approaches in bringing people to Christ, when they will understand their need of salvation and forgiveness that only our Lord Jesus can give.

It was very encouraging to see Brother Alexandr Lah who attended our training in 2007 when a Church Planting course was taught. That training had such an impact on Alexandr that during the training he asked everybody to pray for the calling he received from the Lord – to move with his wife to the Chernigov region and plant a new church in a city where not even one believer was. Now Alexandr has a church of 15 believers who study the Bible using Inductive study materials. This time he came for the next training to study the Gospel of John and to be prepared to teach it to his new brothers and sisters at home.

Vasile Sanduleac teaching

During this training, the Russian Orthodox Christmas was celebrated on January 7, but our classes were not cancelled even for Christmas day. Everybody was present at the training with all their homework done.

We thank God for a special couple, Victor and Zinaida who coordinate the work in this city and have sacrificed so much to keep this Institute going. They organize the training for us every time we come, and the training becomes a successful effort that brings good results in people’s hearts through the Word of God that is planted.

Please pray for the students as they start 14 home Bible study groups where they will teach 97 students in four cities.

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.                                                                2 Timothy 2:2

James, Precept

Our first experience of learning about Precept Ministries International was about 20 years ago when Precept’s European directors, Mia and Costel Oglice came to Moldova for the first time and stayed in our home.

Mia and Costel led trainings for pastors and lay people at our church in the city of Balti, teaching men and women how to study the Bible inductively. Several years later, they became our teachers that disciple us and gave us many opportunities to minister to other people in our country as well as in many other countries. Our partnership with Precept Ministries International was a great blessing for us as we were able to assist our trainers in organizing conferences and training institutes in different cities and countries.

Svetlana and I recently went to Sacramento, CA to teach at a Precept Training Institute for leaders in Russian-speaking churches in the area. In Sacramento alone, there are more than 80 Russian churches that are in great need of Bible study training workshops. We were glad to be able to help.

The training was advertized to all the Russian churches in the city and on several Russian radio stations. The Third Slavic Baptist Church hosted the event and received people from other churches for the training. We were moved by the hospitality of Vladimir Troshin, pastor of this young and growing congregation that brought all his youth participants to the training. The young Russian generation faces difficult challenges in the U.S. Most of the parents do not speak English, and most of the youth do not speak Russian. The gap between generations is unbelievable and we could feel it during our training in the Russian language in order to reach the older generation.

We taught the book of James verse by verse, and almost every day of the two-week training we had more and more new people joining. Some of them traveled hundreds of miles every day to attend the training. All of them invited us to come back and do more training for them. While working on the Precept study we had to accomplish two tasks: first, teach them how to fill in the study book, and second, teach them how to organize and lead a home Bible study on the same book.

It was great to see many of our friends from Moldova who have moved to the United States years ago and share what God is doing in Moldova these days. At this training, we also followed up with people from other countries, like Ukraine, Russia and Uzbekistan and encouraged them to continue to learn God’s Word preach it to many that do not know Him in the United States. We pray God will bring a rich harvest though the growth of His Word in the hearts of these dear men and women who need God’s direction and wisdom for their lives and churches.