EBWU Committee meeting in Russia, Moscow
Report on our Visit to Moscow - March 2-11th 2012

Moscow, a capital city of Russia has 11 million inhabitants.

March 2-11th 2012 saw the EBWU committee members in Moscow, Russia.  This visit included our annual meeting for business affairs. And we participated at a Women’s conference organised for representatives from 58 regions of Russia. Our stay was in the Moscow Theological Seminary, which was founded in 1993 and now there are 8 learning centres of Russia. Dr. Peter Mitskevich serves as the Moscow Theological Seminary’s president, as well as senior pastor of Golgotha Baptist Church, and the voice of Chuck Swindoll’s "Insight for Living" radio broadcast in Russia. Since the fall of communism, Peter Mitskevich has been used by God as one of rebuilders of Christianity in Russia.

Russia has changed a lot since Peter Mitskevich’s grandfather, Arthur, established correspondent Bible courses in the Soviet era amidst communist persecution and spent more than 10 years in prison for his Christian faith. Peter’s father, Valter, was fired from his job as a dentist after committing his life to the Lord, but he went on to serve as academic dean of a Bible school.
If you are interested to know more about it, go to links:
www.russianleadership.org/assets/1302/petermitskevich_iflarticle.pdf
www.moscowseminary.org/en/

It was snowy, yet the sun shone. Although it was cold outside the fellowship we enjoyed together was warm.  The Russian women (and men) made us feel very welcome.

Church service at First Baptist ChurchChurch service at First Baptist Church

On Sunday morning we attended the First Baptist Church in Moscow which was quite a journey from the Seminary.  Although we were unable to join in the service fully due to language barriers we did experience a sense of fellowship and blessing.

Normally business takes up most of our time, and we spent three days in deliberation.  We had reports to hear, finances to approve, meetings to arrange, and decisions to make.  As Europe is responsible for the Baptist Women’s day of Prayer in 2013 time was also spent on this.

Over two days we had the privilege of joining the Russian women in their Conference which was also held in the seminary.

The theme of the conference was ‘Make every effort to add to your faith Goodness’ (2 Peter 1:5), and the motto: Goodness – A Virtuous Woman is a Successful Woman.

Women's conferenceWomen's conference

Vera Izotova, President of the Department of Women’s Ministry chaired and opened the conference.  There were women from all various parts of Russian and we were also very happy to meet women from Euro Asiatic countries a representative from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

  • Aleksey Smirnov, President of the ECBU gave the opening address - ‘How a woman ought to be in church and in the home’. 
  • There were four teaching sessions led by
  • Vera Izotova - ‘The Goodness of God’
  • Elena Boretskaya, Executive Committee member - ‘Imitation of Christ’
  • Leah Aliyeva, Executive Committee member - ‘Goodness is a Worthy Goal’
  • Lubov Vlasenko, Executive Committee member - ‘The reward of Goodness’.
  • Members of the EBWU gave a presentation on ‘Baptist Women in Europe’
  • Livija Godina, President of EBWU spoke on ‘The Successful Christian Woman’ involving three EBWU members. 
  • Aniko Ujvari, EBWU Secretary led the Bible meditation on the second morning based on 2 Peter 1:3-9.  

Throughout the conference at different times we heard testimonies from some of the participants of how they are living out their faith, some under difficult circumstances.  There were also times of worship, praise and prayer.  We were also treated to some of the sweetmeats from Russia which was thoroughly enjoyed with our tea/coffee as we shared fellowship together on the Wednesday evening and at the breaks.  It was a wonderful experience for all and the Lord blessed so much.

We are very grateful to God for our time spent in Moscow, for the richness of the fellowship with His people, for the new things we saw and heard and for the blessings poured out upon us. We had a very full week, but a very enjoyable one.  Our experience will remain with us always.

 

 

Margaret Brown and Livija Godina


click pictures to enlarge