Greater Portland Baptist Church

Adam and Angela Young: October 2007

Dear Fellow Laborers,

Praise the Lord for the exciting things He is doing in Russia!

Teaching Others Soul-Winning
We had a great blessing this month with the participation of our first Russian in Samara going soul-winning. While out soul-winning with Inna, we met Stac. He is a nineteen year old who had an interest in spiritual things. It was great to observe how God worked in his heart. We witnessed to him, and although he did not get saved right then, he did give us his phone number to contact him about it later. After I called him, and found out that he had accepted Christ as his Savior, we rejoiced not only because of his salvation, but because it showed a novice soul-winner that people do get saved.

Future Plans Concerning Facilities
During our first five months here, I tried to find an apartment for ministry purposes while being completely open about our plans for using it as a meeting place for church related activities. No one would rent to us, after finding out what we were going to do there. It was not because it was illegal, but because it would be very unpopular. So we have met rather secretly ever since, not being completely open about what we are doing there. To rent a public meeting place we must be an incorporated organization, which we are not yet. Even if we were an officially registered church, most places would not rent to us anyway. Therefore we have a big need to own some type of meeting place.

As I have talked about in the past, our local passport desk has not been very helpful, even being a hindrance at times, while the passport desk in Samara has been very professional and a big help. In order to safe guard our presence here, I believe it would be wise to move to Samara as soon as possible.

The price of land and living space has skyrocketed here. The same land for a church I could have purchased after a year of saving, would now take me at least three years to save. However, our apartment has also increased in price, and is worth about three fourths of what we need to purchase land for a church. If we tried to save the money to buy land and build a church building, it would take at least six years, three for the land and three for the building. If we were able to sell our apartment, the proceeds would speed up the building by three years.
Considering these factors, we have decided to build a "house church" on the land we already own. This will move us to Samara, free up our apartment to sell so that we will be able to complete a church building within six years, and provide a temporary meeting place that we own, so that we can have more freedom to openly meet. Please pray with us for wisdom concerning every aspect of this building program.

Yours in Christ,
Adam, Angela, Alex, Amelia, and Alisa