Pastor's Dave's Trip (2nd Update)

It has been a busy week in Belarus and 21 hours of teaching through an interpreter can be exhausting.  I feel like we've covered so much material this week, from child development to learning styles, even studying personality types.  My teaching will finish up on Monday and Tuesday, with final presentations and exams being on Wednesday.

It took awhile for some of the students to grasp the importance of children's ministry, but once it sunk in that children's ministry is important and everyone's business, they all became more involved in the discussions in the classroom and the interest level in the topic has steadily climbed as the week has gone on.

I learned a lot about the history of children's ministry and how that has shaped - or misshaped their present thinking regarding children.  Under the former Soviet Union, it was illegal to take a child into a church until they were 18 years old.  Only at age 18 could someone go into a church. Armed guards were posted at churches to ensure the law was followed.  When the Soviet Union collapsed just 17 years ago, people were almost confused as to what to do with children.  Bible teachers from America came to help new churches get established, but dealing with the children was still a low priority.  Even now, most people would not think children can make serious decisions for Christ, and to have a child under 12 years old baptized is unheard of.  For the students I'm teaching, this is the only class they will get over a two year time in school that will teach them anything about children's ministry.

The school has found a way to solve the visa crisis, and future teachers have been getting visas to come to teach.  That was good news at the school this week.  Sergei, the president of the Bible College and Victory, the lead pastor at Bethlehem church in Minsk, headed on Friday to California where they are guests at John McArthur's Shepherd's conference.

This past weekend, a translator from the school took the other teacher, John, from New York to St. Petersburg, Russia on a little trip.  Actually, it was 15 hours one way by train.  We left Friday evening at 6 p.m. and arrived Saturday morning.  We spent the day sightseeing in St. Petersburg on Saturday, then boarded the train at 7 p.m. in the evening Saturday and arrived back in Belarus Sunday morning. Both of us are skipping the morning worship service, but will visit the Sunday evening worship service tonight. John has been here before.  He was here a year before I was on his last trip and because both of us went to Moscow then, we both chose St. Petersburg this time.