We recently held our annual winter conference for students. This year, we had a diversity of themes covered, and, even though at first glance they didn’t seem to have much in common, they ended up painting a wonderfully rich picture in the end. We had lectures in the morning from a Ukrainian Christian college professor on “Loving God with all your ____”, and in the evening on Church history from a former student worker and current pastor from England. In between, we had a daily Bible study in the book of Isaiah and a selection of seminars every day on topics from “How to study the Old Testament”, to “How to relate to your non-Christian parents” (a huge need here for Christian students). I co-led a seminar on “Hearing God” and led another one on spiritual warfare.
Quite surprisingly, we had a number of non-Christian students come, although we specifically stated that the content was mostly for believing students. The Spirit worked quite powerfully throughout, during the program times, fun times, and conversations in between, and we had a number of testimonies of lives impacted by the conference. Here are a couple of stories of students from Minsk who made the trip:
—N is a girl who has been involved in our ministry for about a year now, starting with her involvement in an evangelistic discussion group last spring and continuing with Bible study this fall. Her desire to know more about God has been surprising, and she has taken every opportunity to find out more—seminars, church services, Bible studies. Although she believes the truth of the Scriptures, she has not been able to come to the point of surrendering herself to Christ. We were hopeful that the conference would be a turning point for her, but up to a week before the start, it looked as if she would be unable to come because of a conflict with an internship. Problems with that internship enabled her to come, and sure enough, in conversations and in the lectures she heard what was needed to free her to follow Christ. Now she is preparing for baptism at our church, and continues to grow.
—V was involved in our summer English project, and had come to some of our weekly meetings, but otherwise had not taken many steps in her spiritual journey. The night before the conference began, as we were riding to the site of the conference, one of our volunteers called her to ask if she would fill a spot that had opened up when another student couldn’t come. After quick thinking and packing, she arrived the next day. Although she had never really been in a similar atmosphere, she did remarkably well, and was very interested and involved throughout. Of course, she had a number of questions, and didn’t find answers to them all yet, but her search was definitely jump-started, and we are confident that we will continue to see her seeking for the truth in this new semester.
Please pray that the Lord would protect the Word sown at this conference, and that it would bring fruit in both the short and long terms.
