News from Turkmenistan

Greetings from Turkmenistan !
The new year’s begun and we entered into a new stage of adventure with the Lord, and He always has lots of different variants of these adventures.
At the end of passed year we gathered together to resume it and to see where we’ve moved forward and what things still have to be corrected. And we’ve got rather fun team meeting.
One of the positive facts was that during last year we’ve rarely changed our places for the services. But… just after Christmas it seemed like we began to make up this “deficiency” . Since January we’ve changed our location for the 4th time! And there’s the only reason: a fear of the halls owners – what would people say or think of them if they know the church services are being hold there. Please pray for this point, because it’s getting hard to find a place that we could rent for Sunday services in Ashgabat. It’s an expected “problem” for us, but it’s more marvelous to watch the Lord faithfully bring new people on each service. And you may ask as many questions as you want, “Lord, I can’t understand – are we losing or gaining?”, but He meanwhile just keeps on adding to His Body.
This year attendance of our services is stably of about 80 people and still keeps growing – praise God. The Lord is faithful in answering our prayers as well: men attend the services – and their “rows” become bigger and bigger! And we can’t go into a small hall.
Since February 1 we began our spring semester Bible College classes. This semester we’ve got only 2 disciplines – Survey of Doctrines-1 and Methods of Evangelism. 19 students have started their long-distance race.
During the Bible College vacations we (not so big group of 5 people) went for 3 days mission trip to Turkmenbashy city (former Krasnovodsk). It was a great time of street soulwinning, prayers, discussions, salvations in this port city. We even climbed up to the one of the mountains that were just in the center of the city and watched the marvelous picture from there: the ice on Caspian sea. There wasn’t a thing like that for many years – so that the sea has frozen up to 1km from the shore.
Our weekly trips to the city of Mary are going on, where we have Wednesday evening services, and where the Lord is faithful in bringing His people too. Usually the team of 2-4 goes there, holds a service and comes back the following day. Please pray for the leader for Mary. The constant team is needed there. We’re short of human resources, but we believe the Lord will answer this need by the abundance of His grace.
Our prayer needs of paramount importance:
1. A constant place for the church services in the city of Ashgabat;
2. An opportunity to rent a bigger place for the church office and Bible College;
3. Jobs for the unemployed church members;
4. The church finances and financial opportunities for Pastor’s family;
5. An opportunity for the people from church to attend the GGWO conferences;
6. Guests to visit us!!!! (they don’t let, but try!);
7. A notebook and a projector for the worship ministry.

Be blessed,
P. Vladimir & Svetlana Tolmachev

E-mail: heaventm@mail.ru
heavenkg@mail.ru
Skype: ggashgabat