Russia Initiative
This year's Christmas trip to Russia was a great success. There were three from our church traveling, and a total of twelve from the entire Miami Valley District. There are many ways to support this ministry both financially and spiritually. Please contact the church office, 293-7279 or the leader of this group, Laura Thie, 643-1539 for ways to support this mission. Please be in prayer for this group during their travels.
Linda Compher, one of the women on our trip, created a great blog with pics of our week in Samara. Check it out: http://www.russiamission2010.blogspot.com/
Other blogs: www.russiachristmastrip2010.blogspot.com
U.S. Methodist churches have been formally supporting
Russian Methodist churches for nearly two decades.
Bishop Vaxby describes his Methodist churches this way, “The United Methodist Church in Russia, and other former
soviet republics forming the Eurasia Area, is a young church.
All our pastors are young as Christians, having committed their
lives to Jesus in the 90s or later. The lay members have similar
short faith journeys. There is not a capital of either lay or clergy
leadership experience, and the few experienced role models are
mostly foreign missionaries and short-term volunteer workers.”
Oakwood UMC has recently joined this partnership with fundraising and traveling to Russia. We invite you to join us in this new way God has called us to make disciples! Find out more at: www.westohioumc.org/page.asp?PKValue=992
n 2009, a team of eleven spent 2 weeks in Russia. The first five days were spent in an orphanage in Samaria while the children were away at summer camps. This conference was based on Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew and was entirely youth and young adult led - quite a feat considering that when our first team traveled to Russia four summers ago, the idea of youth ministry and youth leadership was foreign to the Russian United Methodist Churches.
The next two days were spent in day trips to nearby Methodist Churches visiting Samara UMC and the drug & alcohol rehab center they support. The team traveled to Otrodny UMC for a fellowship lunch and to spend time out in the city as a visible group of Christians supporting the Methodist Church. (The Methodist Churches are at most 15 years old in Russia and, because many of them do not have church buildings yet and meet in homes, are viewed with suspicion.) They also traveled to Novokublechevsk for worship in a small apartment and to celebrate the new dance ministry two of the youth have begun in a recently acquired room adjacent to their worship space.
The next three days were spent in Saratov, an overnight train rides’ distance west of Samara. While iin Saratov, team members were hosted in homes and were able to participate in a clean-up day in the newly-constructed Saratov UMC. They also visited the WWII museum, were again walked around the city as a visible sign of the presence of the Methodist Church, and were treated to wonderful home-cooked Russian food and hospitality.
Another overnight train ride, this time going north from Saratov, ended in Moscow for the final leg of the trip. Accompanied by a tour guide, the team learned of the history around the Kremlin, visited inside the Kremlin walls, toured the city by bus, visited Moscow’s WWII museum, and walked the historic Arbot Street.