Minsk Belarus 09

Brother Nikolay.

Sunday May 10, 2009 Belarus
Yesterday when I got here they were celebrating “Victory Day”. It was a celebration of the end of WWII and their participation in it. About 10:00 at night the city had a fireworks display. The hotel I stayed in last night was right across the street where they were shooting them off. Since I was on the 11th floor I had a great view. The only problem was I fell asleep at 9. I had been up for 31 hours. I did manage to catch a couple of 50 minute naps on the plane from Dulles to Frankfort, and then one 40 minute naps from Frankfort to Minsk. I woke up hearing the fireworks, watched them until it was over, and then went back to bed. The next thing I knew it was 7:00 the next morning.
They wanted me to preach and present a special and take up 40-50 minutes. The special wasn’t what I was worried about, it was the preaching. My part lasted about 35 minutes. It’s a good thing they have 2 sermons every Sunday. The church was located outside of the city of Minsk. It’s very, very difficult to get property in the city of Minsk. It is very costly. Their vision is to build a building that will be big enough to start some community activities for the people who live around them. They also understand that the city of Minsk is growing and in the near future they will be located within the city of Minsk it’s self.
As you can see from the pictures they are a very intergenerational congregation. The building was acquired from another congregation who started building up but then ran out of funds. They took over and now have at least this one level completed enough to have a corporate worship service in it. When the worship area is completed it will be able to sit 800.

By the time we finished with church went out to eat and then get back to the seminary I had about 30 minutes to get ready for the conference.
There were about 20 in the class from about 10 different churches. One of the worship leaders there was Daniel. Daniel was in my TCMI class when I taught it here at the seminary last summer. It was good to see him again. He had 5 other people with him. It was good to talk to him and find out how he was doing.
My interpreter is a young man by the name of Gera. He just started talking classes with TCMI, so I may have him in my class someday.
I’ll have pictures of the class tomorrow.
Das vadanya