stevecuringtonministries.com

Our Quote for Today:

Good Morning! Our ministry team has returned safely from our trip to Ukraine and it is good to be back with you. I want to give you an update on what God has done while we were away.

To say God enlarged my heart for the people of Ukraine would be an understatement! Our training classes were held in conjunction with the first quarter classes of the Slavic Baptist Institute. SBI means for one week every quarter, with the students going back home to their churches with a complete quarter of a year of homework and preparation for the next quarters class. When they return three months later, they are tested on what they learned in the previous quarter's classroom training and their retention of information learned from their three months of homework. These students, to say the least, were very sharp!

But every single one of them knew many people who were addicted, severely addicted to alcohol, usually, vodka. For many, it was even their parents or siblings. To say the alcohol problem in Ukraine and neighboring Russia is at epidemic proportions would be another understatement!

Almost everyone over there drinks and most of them are drunkards. 60% of the population drinks every single day! I am told that 90% of the population makes their own vodka. The situation is dire and God is asking us to get involved in a major way.

We have officially partnered with Neil Cadwell Ministries. Neil is the President of Slavic Baptist Institute. His ministry has the infrastructure and the contact relationships to assist RU with an immediate expansion to this part of the world. Neil is willing and ready to begin this expansion. He is lending to our organization his finest staff people part time in order to advance our ministry throughout Ukraine.

We came back with eight churches wanting to begin and four housing ministries wanting our organization to assist them in their operations. The opportunities are endless, as this seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. As I was leaving the county we received a call from one of the churches indicating that nearly 70 of the 150 churches in their "counsel" affiliation were or would be immediately interested in starting chapters almost immediately.

From here Neil and his staff are completing and improving our recent translation of our work, and they are interpreting our training videos with a voice override track to begin immediate training across this nation. All curriculums will print in the month of April and May 1^st will be the launch of this ministry into active, vibrant chapters.

On another note, I am five days delayed on restarting my blog because I came home and our internet provider and changed hands and we needed to wait for a service rep to come out before they could restore connectivity. So, I apologize for the delay, but must also make you aware that this will be my only blog for another 8 days as my wonderful wife and I will be traveling next week to IRELAND!

No! I am not "quite the international traveler"! But it sure seems like it. We will be traveling to Ireland to join our friends at Lifegate Baptist Church for the grand opening of their RU Men's School of Discipleship. The Pastor, Dave O'Gorman and the RU Director, my dear friend Layton Kelly will host this event and have invited my wife and me to join them. We are extremely excited to see this home, which is already successfully in operation, first hand and meet the students who this chapter, church and home are helping.

Please pray for our travels and enjoy the break from my blog. I will try to stock up and do a few extra so that in the future I might have a reserve to glean from. However, 8 days with my wife in the most beautiful country in the world does not lend itself to advance work related preparations, if you know what I mean.

Well, I love you all and covet your prayers. By the way, our Russian ministry will need people that will pray and personally consider investing. We have the money we need for the translation work and our opening curriculum inventory purchases (praise be to God!). But soon thereafter we will need some seed money into this part of the world. This is something you can begin to pray about and see if you think is worthy of investment from your God given portion of kingdom funds, whatever they may be.

God bless and keep you,

Steven Curington