Story Title
From fearful Yazidi to child of God
“We are all going to hell!” Boris remembers his Yazidi grandmother in Armenia telling him this when he was a young man. These words frightened Boris, who turned to a Yazidi spiritual leader for hope. But he told Boris that only a select few would make it to paradise and that even spiritual leaders like himself couldn’t escape hell. Hopelessness and poverty surrounded Boris and led him to become an alcoholic. Despair among the Yazidi people is not surprising, says Don Parsons, Mission Eurasia’s ministry director for unreached people groups. “The Yazidis are a religious subgroup of the Kurdish people,” he says. “Most of them are animistic pagans who worship the sun and pay homage to Satan.” But someone shared the Light of the gospel with Boris. At first, when he heard about Jesus, Boris thought that Jesus was just the Armenian god. But he cried out to God and…
Her disability didn’t stop her from serving the Lord
Elnara was desperate for a new start – deaf, unable to speak, spiritually lost, and a single mom raising two children on her own in Kazakhstan. It’s a place where more than half the population is Muslim, Christians are persecuted for their faith, and churches have been closed. Mission Eurasia’s School Without Walls (SWW) program reached out to Elnara – and her life hasn’t been the same. She shared, “I am 27 years old, and Tatar by nationality. I am also deaf, so I can’t speak. About two and a half years ago, sin reigned in my life, and my family broke apart.” After Elnara and her husband divorced, she rembered feeling “very broken” inside. “I had always called myself a Christian, because my mom and I went to church on holidays, but I didn’t live a Christian life,” she said. “When I was older, I worked as a model, and my entire life…
‘Relevant’ skills: School Without Walls students thankful
Mission Eurasia’s School Without Walls (SWW) program is equipping and training Next Generation leaders for evangelism and discipleship – one young life at a time. In their own words, these young believers in the Eurasian country of Georgia share how the program has helped prepare them for ministry. Salome’s story When Salome – now 25 – was a child, her grandmother told her about God. “And even though I didn’t understand much of what she said, I was always impacted by the love she felt for the Lord and the kindness of her voice,” Salome shared. “As I got older, I never really thought about whether the things I did were right or wrong.” But Salome said her family told her that she needed to decide if she was going to pursue a “real relationship with God.” As she struggled with this decision, she realized, “I couldn’t find any evidence…
Irina’s Story: A Heart Transformed by Summer Bible Camp
God can transform even the hardest of hearts in an instant, and at our summer Bible camps each year, thousands of young people surrender their lives to Jesus. For the last four years, the village of Andreyevka, Ukraine has endured the violence, destruction, and despair of war. In order to share the eternal hope and peace of Christ with the children and youth living in these tragic circumstances, our School Without Walls (SWW) students from Berdyansk have been hosting summer Bible camps in war-torn Andreyevka since the war broke out. Last year, Irina, a young woman from Andreyevka, was invited to camp by one of her friends. At first, Irina and her group had no interest in Christianity and just wanted to hang out together, but then God started working in Irina’s heart. “I wanted to relax and get away from my everyday worries, but then I saw a completely…
Abandoned by the World, Adopted by the Church
“I am a Christian because when the rest of the world turned its back on me, the church was there for me,” shares Sanzhar (name changed for safety), one of our current School Without Walls (SWW) students from Kazakhstan. Despite the danger of being an open Christian in Kazakhstan, Sanzhar refuses to stop sharing the Good News because, in his own words, “Now that I am saved, I cannot help but share this Good News with others. I must share God’s love with a dying world.” It was a long and painful journey for Sanzhar to come to know Christ and join SWW. He was born to alcoholic parents, and he and his younger brother suffered a lot growing up. However, even through he had never been taught anything about God as a child, he found himself praying in his darkest and most difficult moments, and that brought him comfort…
Young Christians Sharing Christ in Rural Mongolia
The name of our School Without Walls (SWW) program comes from the flexible, adaptable nature of this strategic leadership training program—our SWW sessions and students are not confined to the traditional walls of a school building, but instead they are encouraged to conduct ministry training on the ground wherever it is needed most. Any place where a group of dedicated young believers is gathered can become the site of a vibrant SWW movement! A recent SWW conference titled “I Am, I Can, I Will” took place in a yurt base in rural Mongolia. The goal of this conference was to encourage nearly 50 young Next Generation Christian leaders from western Mongolia to deepen their own relationship with God and motivate and equip them to share the gospel with their surrounding communities. Many of the young who attended the conference became involved with SWW through Mission Eurasia’s summer Bible camp ministry,…