Bob just returned from visiting the Tobolsk Church. Even though the temperatures are still below freezing in that part of Russia, the warmth of God's love is melting cold hearts and people are hearing about Jesus. Eleven people were recently baptized in the church. There is a renewed desire in the church to prayer and reading God's Word. Even the youth are meeting twice a week in the morning before school to pray for their classmates to come to Christ.
The church in Old City Tobolsk is also growing. Since over 80% of those that live in that part of the city are Tartar (Muslim), the church is focusing their prayers on reaching this people group. Recently, an Uzbek Christian family moved there from Uzbekistan to Tobolsk. This couple is now leading Bible Studies and interacting with Muslims about their faith. The Social Center, which is connected to the church, is being used to temporarily house several Muslim families who have no place to live. The Center is also used by the church to reach out to the community with weekly kid's clubs and a women's aerobics class.
The Rehabilitation Center outside of Tobolsk is moving towards completion. The roof is on and the inner walls are complete. In June a short term missions team will come and hang drywall. The need for this ministry is increasing as the financial crisis hitting Russia is driving more and more people to drinking. Drug use is also on the rise. Recently this article appeared in the Moscow Times newspaper:
Heroin Seen As Threat To Security
10 March 2009
Russia has become the world's biggest heroin consumer, and the flood of the drug from Afghanistan poses a threat to national security, said the chief of the Federal Drug Control Service.
Viktor Ivanov said the international community's failure to uproot poppy plantations in Afghanistan, as envisaged by a 10-year UN plan adopted in 1998, had caused heroin to flood into Russia across Central Asia's porous borders.
"In recent years, Russia has not just become massively hooked on Afghan opiates, it has also become the world's absolute leader in the opiate trade and the No. 1 heroin consumer," he said Friday in a report.
Ivanov said 90 percent of Russian addicts now take Afghan heroin, and the drug is partly to blame for increasing crime and a fall in Russia's population.
"Our people are dying. Some 90 percent of drug addicts in Russia are on Afghan heroin," Ivanov said. "This is a threat to national security and to our country's society."
Health Ministry officials say Russia has up to 2.5 million drug addicts out of a population of about 140 million. Most addicts were aged 18 to 39 and lived seven years at most after starting to take heroin.
