Pray for Mikhail!

Sorry I haven't been posting on here very often; life has been crazy and I've been super busy.  My time in Moscow has been nothing but awesome.  I love everything about it here and I can really see God working.  We've been able to share the Gospel WAY more than we thought we would be able to (typically at least 1-3 times a day, which is a huge amount based on how this culture typically thinks about spiritual things) and we have seen people getting more and more interested in Jesus and having a relationship with Him. I've had several good conversations with people and have made several contacts with whom I will be able to meet up with again and further talk about the Gospel, but I want to focus on one story from this trip, and that happened today.

We were on the campus of Moscow State again, which is probably the top University in Russia.  We have spent most of our time here and have found a really mixed response from students in regards to being able to share the gospel with them or even talking about anything deep.  It is a bummer that we can't get into the University (it's guarded at every entrance and students can't even take us in), but we have been able to talk to many students outside of the buildings (praise The Lord for beautiful weather!).  I was with one of our project directors today while sharing and we struck up a conversation with a guy named Mikhail.  He was sitting outside the Law building waiting for a friend to finish an exam.  He was super happy to talk with us about culture and life in Russia and we eventually turned the topic to spiritual things.  He said he was raised Orthodox Christian and it's important to him but he doesn't really believe a lot of it or practice.  He believes in God, but it didn't seem like he really know what the Bible said about God and he really didn't know anything about how God felt about it.  Julie and I had the opportunity to share our personal stories of God's love and how we don't need to do things to earn favor with God because of what Jesus did on the cross.  He asked about my views on different religions as well because I mentioned I study religion, so through that I was able to share about the historical evidence of Christianity and what makes it different from other religions.  The conversation was going so well, it was truly the Spirit working.  Eventually we kept talking about what he believed and sharing what we believe about salvation and God and I started sharing with him the Gospel more fully and showed him several diagrams from the 4 spiritual laws booklet we have in Russian.  He was so captivated and interested in what we were saying.  I was almost positive he was going to put his faith in Christ but just as we were finishing up his friend came out of his exam and they had to go.  He was so excited to take the booklet though and said he wanted to read through it and talk about it more.  We exchanged information and hopefully we'll be able to hang out a few more times and talk about the questions he has.

This was so exciting for me because it was by far the best conversation I've had with someone in Russia.  He was so open to the Gospel when most students just push it away and want nothing to do with it.  He is the only person who has followed what I said so closely and really wanted to think more about his relationship with God.  We've been praying for changed souls and salvation for students here, and I really think Mikhail may be the one we have been praying for.  Please labor in prayer with me as I continue to meet with him and befriend him.  Pray that I let the Spirit speak through me and that I won't rely on my own words to try to make him believe.  Pray that he would be a student who becomes a leader in starting movements at his university and that he would become a passionate follower of Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for your prayer and support! I will try to update this more often, but I suspect our schedule will get more and more busy the closer we are to leaving.  It's crazy that we have just about two weeks of ministry left.  It has went by so quickly.  Everything here has been great, so praise The Lord for that as well! Feel free to ask any questions about my trip!

Пока!

Nich