The work in Eastern Europe has been continuing from the office in Tartu since my 25 February arrival. The literature distribution has now reached an approximate total of 700 Good News magazines, along with booklets and other periodicals.

New requests of approximately 100 per month continue to be received.
Commercials that have been run on Pere Raadio (Family Radio) netted 50 new subscribers to the Bible Study Course. These commercials also offered three booklets that have been translated and published in Estonian. Presently, commercials are running for the first time in the Russian Language and also Ukrainian.

David Teague, a talented artist from New York drew pictures of The Tree of Good and Evil, and also The Tree of Life. At Sabbath Services in Smiltene, Latvia, on 14 March, the picture of The Tree of Good and Evil  (pictured on the right)was presented to the church congregation. Plans call for the picture of The Tree of Life to be presented on 28 March, just before leaving for home. Several church members were motivated by the picture to comment on how profound those trees are. This was something they had never previously considered or realized. Obviously they had not ever met or heard Mr. Armstrong. It is said that one picture is worth a thousand words.

Sabbath Services were held in Tartu on 21 March with nine people present, including four Latvians. Artur Aleksandrov, a tri-lingual 18 year old Russian from Tallinn attended Sabbath Services for the first time. Artur is planning to start college classes at Tartu University in September.
 

On a sad note, Helga Mägi, longtime faithful member has not been able to leave her house for the last two months. She does not even come out for Sabbath Services.  

Prisoner Valdur Vesingi continues to do well at the Tartu Vangla Prison. He translates booklets into Estonia and is quite good at it. His biggest problem is that he only has limited time on the prison computer. We hope to be able to get him his own computer, but this will be arduous. We will need to make a special petition to the warden of the prison in hopes that he may allow Valdur to have a computer. He has not been inclined to do this in the past.

In the last two issues of the Good News, we have been able to include articles translated by Natasha Weatherhead into the Russian language. A special thanks to Toomas Schvak who has faithfully translated Good News articles into Estonian for several years now along with other translating and editing work which he does for the United Church of God. 

The objective is to complete a total of three months mailings before leaving Estonia on 30 March.

 

                                                                                  -- Johnnie Lambert

 

While on a recent trip to Phoenix with my wife Beverly for a Women's Weekend I was honored to take part in Albina's baptism which was done at the home of deacon Monte Knudson and his wife Susie.

 

Pastor John Elliott conducted a short Bible Study for all present about baptism. Then the both of us baptized her in a pool. This was followed by a dinner when all present shared in the joy of this ceremony. On the photo from left to right are Albina Biktimirova, Victor Kubik and John Elliott.

 

Albina comes from remote Russia south of the Ural Mountains that separate European from Asiatic Russia.  It took her two and a half days to get to Moscow by train before her long flight to Arizona.