EARLY FRUIT

After the spring semester, you usually don't expect much in the ministry with students. As birds fly south in the fall, so do students in the spring. Most take the train the night of their last final and go home. Some of them return for the summer semester, some don't. For the last couple of years, many have gone to work in the US on a program called Work and Travel. They labor the whole summer to earn tuition money for the coming academic year.

Zhanna Yakubovskaya (pictured above on the right) is one such student; she is working at a hotel in Wisconsin Dells this summer. We've known Zhanna since the fall of 2004. She entered ICU that summer after a year in the US as a high school exchange student. In 2003-2004 she lived with a Mormon family and was exposed to their beliefs and values, actually like many people who later were converted to Christ. She was wondering about God even before that year in the US and when she got back, those questions only multiplied. God had a plan as to how to answer all those questions.

Zhanna quickly became part of our community. She would come to just about every event and activity that the UEC and Nivky church hosted: student nights, cell groups, and different Bible studies and seminars. She also came to the Soup Group where Chris, Lena and I would try to answer hard questions that she and a number of her friends had about Christianity and the Bible. Besides attending all these studies, Zhanna was a frequent visitor at the UEC where she would check out a lot of Christian literature and CDs to satiate her spiritual hunger. Several times she shared what a blessing some of the albums that she listened to were. Books, studies, and personal encounters we had with her all had a very positive effect on her faith. Bit by bit, her questions would be answered, her understanding and faith would grow.

As time went by, many of the students from her class stopped coming to our outreach activities. But Zhanna persisted. Moreover, she even started coming to church. As time went by, she realized that she wanted to be an active part of this community of faith. From her own words, she no longer wanted to be "a visitor, a consumer." Her faith was ready to bear fruit. It's a true blessing to see those seeds of faith germinate and break through to the surface. You plant them, and then sometimes don't even see how they grow in a person's heart. And then, ah, you see a little stem breaking its way through the ground. Faith comes to the surface, ready to proclaim its existence to the surrounding world.

Right before her departure to the States this May, she made a decision to commit her life to Christ and his church. It was obvious to everyone that her faith was sincere. Zhanna wanted to become a servant after being served by so many people at the UEC and Nivky church.

So May 5, Friday night, we all decided to meet at the church building to celebrate Zhanna's birth into Christ and her new family. I was privileged to baptize her into Christ. She has found her home and now when she comes back from the States, she will have a new, spiritual family to return to, a new family that she will bless and continue to be blessed by.

By Vitaly Samodin

Posted on August 29, 2006