Kazakstan by Michael and Ramish Connolly Read more about Kazakstan here KAZAKHSTAN REPORT January 10, 2005 Dear family, brethren and friends, Ramash and I want to wish you all a happy and peaceful 2005. We were delighted with the long awaited arrival of our Esfir Joan on December 15th last. Doctors had been setting and re-setting and tweaking the dates for a full SIX weeks before the birth (of course no one is going to convince me otherwise after our experiences with hospitals here that Tarot cards and “casting bones” are not a part of the training!). But we have been blessed well beyond what we deserve with a beautiful little daughter; healthy and loud. By the way for those of you who have been asking, Esfir is the Russian equivalent of Esther (our star). And Ruth has been remarkably tender with the new arrival, kissing her gently and stroking her hand. I’m sure that will change with ...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT January 30, 2006 Dear brethren and friends, Ramash and I want to wish you a belated Happy New Year. Hopefully this new year will bring us all closer to the Lord as we move one step closer to eternity. It seems that this report has been a long time in the writing, almost but never being completed, so apologies for the delay. Gospel Meeting: We have just concluded our gospel meeting with Martin Broadwell, from Atlanta Georgia. Brother Broadwell is to be commended for his desire to come to well-out-of-the-way Almaty and teach the gospel here to the brethren and strangers alike with the enthusiasm, gentleness and humour that he possesses. The brethren have been encouraged in their faith and commitment to the Lord, the good news has been preached, and the seed has been sown. And all this in a week when...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT July 2, 2005 Dear family, brethren and friends, Trip to Ireland: Our trip to Ireland now seems like a very distant occurrence. But we are thankful to all our brethren and friends there who went out of your way to show us hospitality and kindness. We even managed a few days’ holidays to the west of Ireland while we were there. I did manage to see brethren in Dublin, Cork and Bangor, our only regret was not being able to travel north to Bangor for the congregation to meet our children. We had planned it for the final Sunday of our stay, but Ramash was ill and not up to the journey. Our apologies to the church there. Lord willing, next time. Officially, we managed to obtain Irish passports for the babies, which will make traveling overseas from Kazakhstan 100 times easier. And I received a “cer...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT May 2, 2005 Dear family, brethren and friends, Greetings from a warm Kazakhstan. It seems here that we may have all but by-passed spring and gone straight to summer. Temperatures have been touching the 90’s Fahrenheit (32C) on a couple of days, and the mid-term forecast is for hotter weather. And April has only just ended! But we’re not complaining too much around here after the coldest winter in 50+ years. Our president here has recently passed a law, sponsored by Kazakhstan’s secret police “KGB” that may have repercussions for us preaching the gospel. This new law is an amendment to the already existing “law on religions” but has been amended to ban and punish “the activity of unregistered religious organisations.” Fines amount to 100 times the minimum wage for “leading” religious activitie...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT September 4, 2005 Dear brethren, family and friends, A number of people have written to ask if we have been affected by the recent change in legislation that I wrote about before, regarding the freedom of religions. And the short answer to your question is “not yet.” We have not been affected because we have not “stuck our heads above the parapet.” But Lord willing, we will be holding a gospel meeting in the New Year, and that may prove to be an interesting situation. There have been crack-downs in other cities in Kazakhstan, but these seem to be directed toward regulating either maverick Muslim clerics or enforcing emigration laws against Uzbek and Kyrgyz pastors of protestant churches. Of course, I fall into that second category, officially. And we are hoping to begin the process within the next ...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT December 10, 2005 Dear brethren and friends, The Lord's Church In September's report I described the baptism of Kulsharia, Gulmira's older sister. She had been studying with us almost since the start of our bi-monthly Bible studies with Jumabai in the village of Chilik. As you may be aware, life in Rural Kazakhstan is difficult to endure when there is no fixed income apart from a small retirement pension and Kulsharia decided during the summer to relocate herself and her 2 sons to Almaty to look for work. Life has been even more difficult, I believe, since she made that move. The cost of living is comparably 10 times higher in the city than in the village! And she had been moving between temporary jobs and dwellings all summer. Brethren had been helping her too. As I have previously written, ...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT March 30, 2006 Dear brethren and friends, Spring has been coming and going here in Southern Kazakhstan for the past couple of weeks. We have had the usual wet spring weather, then snow fall, thaw, and more rain. But we cannot complain, as winter here has been milder then previous ones. Baptisms In February I announced to the brethren that the church needed to hold a business meeting in order to discuss some arrangements for the coming year. I made it clear that the meeting was open for Christians only to attend. And that statement seems to have helped two ladies who have been attending for a time to understand their position both in relation to the Lord and in relation His church here in Almaty. Saule has been attending and translating for us since last summer. When that statement was ...[more] KAZAKHSTAN REPORT May 16, 2006 Dear brethren and friends, Gospel Meeting The church here has recently ended our second gospel meeting of 2006 where we advertised and letterboxed “God’s Plan for Kazakhstan”. It was a mixed bag. On the one hand the gospel has been preached and the truth has been told and that always is good (Isa.55:10-11). Slava preached his first gospel meeting lessons on two of the evening, and did a really good job considering. He’s come a long way in his understanding and organizing a lesson and continues to improve each time. Altogether we had 6 separate visitors, two of whom came as a direct result of our letterboxing and street advertising efforts before the meetings began. Lord willing there will be possibilities to follow up on some of these contacts in the coming weeks. But on the ot...[more] back |