Dear friends and family,

As usual, I hope that this update finds you doing well. The time since the last update has gone by quickly and I can't believe that it's been almost two and a half months since I last wrote. We are healthy and have been blessed by God in so many ways.

Olya finished her first year at the University in the middle of June. She was quite relieved to have the mental break. The dean of the Foreign Language department invited Olya to work on a similar contract for the 2004-2005 school year. Olya accepted the offer. It will be the same commitment as this past year. She will be teaching English grammar, reading, and phonetics to first-year (paying) students. In case you aren't familiar with the higher education system in Russia, students are required to pass entrance exams to be admitted to a university as well as to receive free tuition. However, some universities have programs available for paying students. Olya's university has an evening program specifically for paying students and last year they added the afternoon courses that Olya taught. The difficult part of the job is that Olya's group is composed of the students that weren't able to pass the entrance exam. Thus, she is getting the weakest students (and some of the most difficult parents as she discovered last year). It should help to have a year's experience under her belt. Please pray for her mental and spiritual preparation for the upcoming school year. Classes start on September 1st.

For those of you who didn't know, Olya's visitor's visa application to the U.S. was denied on July 1st after her interview at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Apparently the problem wasn't her ability to show her ties to Russia. The Embassy had a problem with my lack of strong ties to Russia. They feel that my current status as a 1-year visa holder (expiring in January) isn't strong enough to keep us from staying in the U.S. if we visited. They seemed uninterested in all the ministry commitments that require me to return. So, we won't be able to visit the U.S. together until something changes. There is a chance that I may apply for a 3-year permanent residence when my current visa expires in January. This status would save us money on renewing the 1-year visa as well as strengthening my "ties" to Russia that may give the Embassy enough confidence to grant Olya a visitor's visa. Of course, all of it depends on whether or not God wants us to be here past this school year. Please join us in praying for God's direction in this area.

July was an incredibly busy month for us. There were a couple different teams visiting from the U.S. during the first half of the month for various evangelistic outreaches across the Vladimir region. Olya and I had a chance to travel down to two of the cities on two different days to help out with the ministry. In case you haven't been reading the blog, I will retell one of the coolest miracles I have ever seen God do. We went to a very small town about 3 hours south of Vladimir to hold a concert. We planned to hand out invitations to the concert for about 2 or 3 hours, break for dinner and then have the concert outdoors on the bed of a truck in the center square of the town. As we started to hand out invitations, large storm clouds loomed overhead. About an hour into the distribution of invitations, the clouds ripped open and we were right in the middle of one of the most powerful rainstorms I've ever seen. The rains feel hard for a good hour amidst brilliant flashes of lightening and booming thunder. There were no ends to the clouds and it seemed like the concert wasn't going to happen. Right before dinner the rain let up and the lightning passed, but the clouds were still present and still dark. By the time we finished with dinner and walked to the concert site, there was a beautiful blue gap in the clouds right above the city square. The band was able to perform, the Gospel was preached, and some people received the Lord. Perhaps the coolest thing for me was the fact that the rain started again at the precise moment we loaded the last piece of equipment into the truck. I'm not exaggerating and I was completely amazed at God's power and timing. I hope you are encouraged by this story.

Much of July was spent planning for the Vacation Bible School or "Summer Camp". We scheduled the VBS for July 19th to the 23rd, the week sandwiched in between two teams from the U.S. The planning was interrupted by a youth group campout from the 15th to the 17th. Since we are also helpers with the youth group, we were heavily involved in that event and therefore split our time between the camp planning and VBS planning. Both of them went very well. I won't go into details about either of them, but I will say that God blessed them both wonderfully. I encourage you to go to the web blog (link below) and read the entries for July. I do want to thank anyone who was joining us in praying for both of those events. Leading the VBS was an especially wonderful experience for us. We learned a lot about what we can do when we trust God to lead. I was also happy that out of the 26-30 kids that came everyday, 6 were unchurched kids and had the chance to hear the Gospel and learn about God's love for them and how we can love Him and others.

We were pretty wiped out after the VBS finished up and we started looking for a place to go to have a little break. After checking out several different options, we ended up heading to St. Petersburg for a week. Before we left, we had our last home group of the summer and celebrated a successful camp with the helpers. We left for St. Pete on August 2 and came home this past Monday. We're now resting a bit from our vacation and getting ready to get busy again.

Before I finish, I wanted to mention a ministry that a few of us are trying for the rest of the summer. We will be going to a local school playground 1-2 times a week for the next month or so to try some sports evangelism. Many of us have thought about doing it for some time and Jeff gave Al and the rest of us the go ahead before he and his family left for their 2-month furlough in the U.S. I just returned from the first outreach and it was awesome. After playing for about an hour, a rainstorm interrupted the game. As all of the local kids and the three of us from church stood underneath a shelter we started talking. God opened up the door for me to share the Gospel with about 17 kids (my friend Sasha did a great job interpreting). While none of the kids asked to receive Jesus, I could really see that a few of them were locked in. God allowed us to plant some seeds today and He is the one that makes them grow. I was so humbled and full of praise that God let me have that opportunity. I am excited to see how many kids show up on the other days. Please pray for this new ministry. Pray that we build relationships with these kids. Pray that they will be able to put their faith in Jesus. Thank you.

One more thing; we have new pictures posted on our website. If you want to see our apartment and some other things we've been up to check them out. Again, the link is at the bottom of the message.

That's about it for now. I will leave you with some prayer requests.

Please pray:

· For wisdom and provision for the Sunday School
· For Olya's preparation for the upcoming school year
· For the sports evangelism
· For more open doors to share with people
· For direction regarding our future location and activities
· For a close-knit and God-centered marriage

Shalom,

Dave & Olya

www.geocities.com/drerho (main website)
http://erhosinrussia.blogspot.com (blog web address)

Novo-Yamskoi Pereyulok 6-66
Vladimir, Russia 600015

Phone: 7-0922-38-04-39