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Ray & Rebecca
Curran
June 1997
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will give you pastors after my own heart, who will feed you with
knowledge and understanding." Jeremiah 3:15 Greetings to our dear family and friends from Ray, Rebecca, Elizabeth, and Dara Curran in Khabarovsk, Russia! We wanted send out this news and prayer letter to you to keep you informed of the ministry here. We truly appreciate and need your valued involvement through prayer. The mission field in a country such as this is unique in that there is an especially powerful presence of the enemy to do battle with each day. I welcome the challenge because the rewards are great! More souls in heaven! But I truly need and desire you to join me in this effort. WELCOME NEWEST MEMBER OF THE FAMILY! This past Spring has been active for us. We visited California and Oregon in May and it was a joy to share a moment of time then with many of you. The highlight of spring was the Lord blessing us with our second child, a son, Macdara Raymond, born on May 9th in California. He is a special joy to Rebecca and I. Three year old Elizabeth too is very fond of her new little brother. His health has been excellent and we thank the Lord for that. We never want to take such a blessing as good health for granted. Please pray for the physical health of our family here. Speaking of new babies, our dear friends Sergei and Natasha Matyushchenko are excitedly expecting their first child in mid-August. Also, the piano player in our worship team, Irina Kolchinskaya, is joyfully expecting her 3rd child in January. Gosh, this is one way for the church to grow! BACK IN THE USSR! We returned again to Khabarovsk on May 31st to continue to pastor the church here. We hope to be able to now remain here a good long time, at least 2 years, before returning to the States again. As long as the Lord continues to call us here and provide, this will be our home. On July 4th, we're forced to say goodbye to our old apartment that we've been living in for 3 years, as the owner is returning to live in it. But the Lord has provided us with a nice 3 room flat nearby for our growing family. Now I finally get to have my own office! RUSSIAN LEADERSHIP! In my absence from Khabarovsk in May, a 20 year old Russian young man named Genya Klimenok pastored the church here. He did well, considering it was his first time ever doing something such as that. I hope to spend more time now working with Genya and training him further in pastoring. Please pray that the Lord would raise up many more Russians from this church to take roles of leadership. Rebecca and I certainly cannot do it all. Besides Genya, there's also two other men mature in their faith, Dmitri Kostin and Vladimir Shevyelyov, that have much potential as leaders. And Please pray for me that I would have much wisdom in how to develop and use all these men as leaders. I hope to see them begin by teaching home Bible studies. My vision is to see these men further mature and hopefully, in the future, use one of them to possibly start a second church in this city. LIBRARY IS OPEN....QUIET PLEASE There is virtually no Christian literature in Russian available here, especially anything of real quality. I praise the Lord that I was able to obtain in the States a good variety of quality Christian books in Russian, both reference books and inspirational. I brought them back here and we set up a library of sorts at the church. So far it has been very popular. This library is one of a kind for this whole region, as far as I know. We plan to obtain more books later this summer. It's always a joy for us to see people go from lost to saved, then feed and grow in the things of God. A FEW MORE REQUESTS Please pray that our church will be able to continue to operate here and always have a place to meet. For almost 3 years now, the Lord has granted us much grace in the eyes of the director of the building we rent for church services. However, the authorities here could theoretically close us down if they chose to do so, since we are an unregistered church. Foreign churches are not allowed to register here. I'm not really worried, but we are always praying for this issue. We have begun again our weekly evangelistic English classes. In the past, this has been a very fruitful outreach method, drawing many to the church. Please pray that the classes will be a success again this year. FINALLY...MANY THANKS! We can't express enough the deep appreciation we have for many of you who have caught the vision for this ministry and sacrificially give and pray to maintain it. It's a tremendous encouragement to us. On behalf of the many souls saved and discipled through this ministry in Khabarovsk, the Lord bless you! Please write us by letter or e-mail when you can. It's always encouraging to us. Ray Curran 6/27/97 |
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