Diana Lukina
When I was waiting for the drama team reheasal in the church I remembered that I had witnessed to nobody that week because of busyness. I felt ashamed becaused my desire is to become a wife of a missionary and it means that I will have not only to teach in Sunday School and stage Bible dramas but also to share about God. I prayed and came out on the street. I did not have to wait long. There were two men and one woman sitting by the church. They were going to drink a bottle of vodka that one of the men carefully took out of his pocket. I felt a bit scary to talk to such a company but I prayed by myself and came up to them.
I said "Hello" and asked them whether they knew anything about God. Their response was "Yes" so I asked they if they knew anything about church. They reply was not quite clear but they had a general idea about church. I asked them how they could sit there and drink vodka by the church. The woman whose name was Tanya told me that her husband had fought in Afghanistan. He was suffering from nightmares and vodka helped him to forget about the people he had killed in the war. We had a nice conversation and I shared about the freedom that Christ can give. They asked me about salvation, church, worship, prayer, icons. Their aggressive attitude melt away and we kept talking for more than one hour.
Before they said "Good bye" my new acquainted gave me their addresses and invited me to visit them and I gave them a small book that describes Christ and salvation in a simple language.
Alesya Kozlova
I was going on a bus. There were few people and a young woman stood right by me. I took it for a good sign to start a talk. I came up to her and asked if I could ask her a question. The woman got interested and answered positively. I asked her if she believed in God and so the conversation started. Nastya - that was woman's name - had never heard about Christ but occasionally she attended the Orthodox church. I told her about the way of reconciliation with God on the basis of 4 spiritual laws. Nastya asked me to share how I learned about God. I delivered my testimony and she listened very attentilely to me. We kept talking till the bus approached the bus stop where Nastya was supposed to get off. As she left I was praying and thanking God that He enabled me to share about Christ with another person.
Maxim Gashko
Once I went with my friends to Borisov. It happened that 3 young men sat with us. They were excited and later I realized that they were a little bit drunk. A few minutes before they came to our carriage we had taken the guitar and started singing. Many people paid attention to us but those guys just sat together with us and listened to our singing and then ordered several songs. We said we didn't know those songs but even if we did we wouldn't sing them since they didn't glorify our Lord.
That how the discussion started. One man, Andrey, was a leader among them, he asked the majority of questions and tried to trick us.
In the beginning I just quietly listened to him. I tried to understand how we should talk to him. He was hot-tempered and got angry easily. We had to be very careful. Andrey started to insult us, called us cult. Then he began to attack our faith and God. And I couldn't be silent! I almost quoted to him the words of John the Baptist to the Pharisees. He was astounded by my attack. I felt the presence of God and realized that God wanted to talk through me to the heart of that man.
We took another seat and started our conversation. Though our conversation was more like an argument, I tried to explain to him that God loved him and He had design for his life. I told him that he was a sinner and had to repent in his sins. He kept interrupting me saying I was a member of the cult and tried to involve others into that group. I explained to him that cult was a closed group of people and if I were a member of such group I wouldn't talk to him about God at that moment.
He said he couldn't understand anything and his mind was perplexed. I don't know if he either didn't want to accept the truth or his heart was not prepared for that. I hope that God began to change his heart through our conversation.
His friends who had heard our discussion calmed him down and said to him: "He is right". I talked to them too. I told it was their choice to make a decision. It was interesting to hear the words of thankfulness.
At the end I said to Andrey that even if he forgot everything we were talking about he might remember one thing - God loves him.
Praise God that he is working through his children. That how we spent two-hour trip Borisov.
Konovalhik Alexey
That episode happened in the last days of warm summer. The youth from our church had camping at the river outside of town. We had a few non-Christians with us. One of those young people had been in our group before. It seems to me that God arranges these meetings for him.
We went boating and fishing, had barbecue and a lot of fun. In the evening we gathered about the bonfire since no one had desire to go to bed. Some questions of our non-Christian friends sparkled a hot discussion.
First they accused us in narrow-mindedness and inability to see anything else but God. We gave them examples of many Christians who had achieved successes in different spheres of science and culture. We also said that without God man had depraved mind.
They didn't believe in creation saying that they were gods themselves and that the world had appeared in the result of a big bang. We tried to explain to them the goal of creation of the world and the role of people in it.
They asked us a lot of other questions. We liked their openness though we couldn't in any way agree with their concept of the world.
It was morning already when we decided to go to bed.
Leonenko Lina
One summer day I went to visit my friend who lived in another town. I went there by train. On one of the stations a woman and a man got on and sat by me. They were talking and the man said: "I've eaten almost everything in my life - turtle, dog and even hedgehog, but I cannot drink goat milk!" I looked at him and smiled. In a few stops the woman got off. In a while the man asked me: "Why did you smile when I said that I couldn't drink goat milk?" I said that it was interesting to hear that he had tried everything but couldn't drink such thing as goat milk. He admitted he hadn't eaten snakes either. That was the way we started our conversation.
He told me about himself and I shared about my life. When I mentioned that I studied at Bible College he asked me: "Are you a believer?" I said: "Yes". I told him about God and that Jesus Christ had died for us so we could live. It was easy to witness to him since he listened to me with profound interest. I gave the address of the church he could attend.
Our trip lasted an hour and a half and within that time we learned a lot about each other. We parted as good friends as if we had known each other for long time. May God work in the heart of that man Valera and transform him. I am glad that I had opportunity to talk about God with him.
Sosnovskaya Olga
This story caused me to think of how often we speak with people about the love of God. In the strained smile of this world we can see a lot of unhappiness, grief, worries, hopeless situations that often lead to suicide.
One Tuesday I went to the "Gospel light" church. Standing at the entrance I saw a woman running to the church, closing the door and saying: "You won't come here. It's a holy place". She ran to the hall shivering and then came back to the door. She was pale, her hands and legs were shaking, she was breathing rapidly, and her eyes were full of horror. I haven't seen people like her before. At first I thought that somebody was chasing her and she decided to hide here. I decided to talk to her. I asked her whether I could help her. I had to repeat my question 3 times. Then she turned to me and said: " Do you think that I am insane? But I am not. Somebody is standing behind the door". There was nobody behind the door. Realizing that something was wrong Nadya, the woman working at the church, and I decided to talk to her. Later two boys of 5 and 7 yeas old came. They were her sons.
The woman (her name was Teresa) told us that a demon had been talking to her for two days. She couldn't find rest since she ha visions, heard words and orders from outside. Her husband thought that she got mad; her children couldn't understand what was going on. She asked her friend to take her to the witchdoctor, but her friend also considered her mad. We realized that it was a serious case. We asked her about her past wondering whether she had any cult experience. We explained that she needed to ask Jesus Christ for help, reject everything that was in the past, and repent before God. Only Jesus could help her. We explained her how she could do it.
In despair she kneeled and started praying first with the prayer she had learned in the Catholic Church, but then in her own words she asked for forgiveness and help in release from the evil spirit.
After that Nastya and I prayed. After the prayer the woman calmed. She ceased seeing visions. We encouraged her to pray when she is in that kind of situations and we also warned her not to come to any witchdoctors or other occultists.
Teresa took her sons and went home. We stayed in the church and prayed for that unhappy soul torn by Satan and for her family.
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