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April
2004
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Dear friends and family, Well, I guess my plan to send out an update letter every month didn't quite work out. I'll try to be more consistent in the future. I hope that you are all doing well. You are dear to me and I pray for you often. We have several new things to report. First of all, God has answered our prayers for a new apartment. It has been so cool to have His peace reign in our hearts as we have continually given this situation over to Him. This has been a test of trust for us and we are so blessed to see how God continues to take care of us and meet every need perfectly. Our new apartment is only 10 minutes from our current home. We will be renting it from a woman who attends our church. Actually, this woman is part of a team going out on a church plant at the end of May. By our renting the apartment, we will help to support this woman financially in her new city. God used the situation to bless her as well as us! We are excited at the fact that this woman is moving all of her furniture and has given us permission to do whatever kind of remodeling or redecorating that we want. We will move sometime in the last week of May. The other big news is that we have taken over the Sunday School leadership at our church. The former leader has become increasingly busy with her job, family commitments, and involvement in setting up a family foster home. She stepped down from the post at the end of March. As you might remember, we were presented with the opportunity at the end of December, but we turned it down at that time. After two months, a replacement still wasn't found and our pastor approached us a second time with the opportunity. We prayed about it again and after careful consideration and some counsel, we decided to accept the position on an interim basis. The position is a little hard to define, but it includes scheduling, organizing meetings, planning special events, providing training opportunities, buying needed supplies, determining curriculum, etc. So far, there hasn't been a lot of activity, but I can see that there is much work ahead. We are currently in the early stages of Summer Camp planning. It's a bit tricky to find a good window of time with all of the missions teams that come to work here during the summer. Other than these two items of note, our lives are pretty much the same as usual. Olya will finish her first year of teaching at the end of June. She is not sure if she wants to teach next year or not. I'm not teaching Christian History every week now because of the Sunday School responsibilities. However, I will still be doing the lessons every two or three weeks. I will continue to teach science and take Russian lessons once a week. There is one last bit of news I wanted to mention. Our home group has been going pretty well and we have a core group of people coming every week. About 6 weeks ago, a classmate of one of our members, named Sergei, started coming to our home group (and eventually to church). Initially, he claimed to be an atheist, but as time went on we saw the Spirit begin to work in his heart and he opened up a bit and started thinking about God. Although Sergei started attending home group and church regularly, he didn't receive Jesus. He seemed to have the idea that it was ok to enjoy the fellowship and talk about God, but he didn't need to receive Jesus. We encouraged him not to take salvation lightly, but to no avail. Then two weeks ago, Sergei's sister and a teacher from his school talked to Sergei's mom about the fact that he was going to our church. I'm not sure if she was aware of it beforehand or not. Anyway, his mom told him that he had to choose between living at home and going to church. He chose to stay home and stop going to church. We have been praying for the situation, but haven't seen any results yet. That is all the news for now. Please go to our website (www.geocities.com/drerho) for more information about our ministry here. We have posted some pictures from the last two months. Additionally, the site has a link to our weblog (a type of internet journal) that has little bits of info that happen here. I update the weblog every two or three days. I would like to leave you with some prayer requests. Your prayers are very much appreciated. Please pray: · For wisdom, strength, and humility in the Sunday School leadership position · For Sergei to receive Jesus and for his mom to allow him to go to church again · For a stress-free move at the end of May · For wisdom and provision regarding a possible visit (both of us) to the U.S. this summer · For future financial support to be able to minister here beyond the end of 2004 · For a close-knit and God-centered marriage Shalom, Dave Erho |