Gospel News · September - December 2016

33
parallel English-Farsi- see link at the bottom
of page 32.
Sister Robin Jones reports on the house meet-
ings in Croydon that her and Steve were
present at whilst in the UK: “These are really
wonderful meetings, the Spirit of God is
clearly working here, bringing together all
kinds of people speaking various languages,
like Persian, Polish and Bulgarian; as well as
local British people like Lucinda, who was a
Catholic who came to the truth and was
baptized in Duncan and Cindy’s bath tub,
where a few dozen have already been
baptized in the last year. She disliked the
formalism of the Catholics and domination of
the male priesthood, and just so loves being
part of a house group. Last week S was
baptized and today we witnessed the baptism
of two more lovely young Iranians, M and H.
Although their English was poor, their
sincerity and zeal for God was truly inspiring.
Duncan showed powerpoint presentations in
Persian on the wall to also help teach them in
their language. Another Iranian Brother and
his Bulgarian wife drove for 2.5 hours to be
here so they could translate between Farsi
and English. The two new brothers have been
in the UK for 5 months, but as refugees still
await acceptance here. Another Iranian
brother present told us of getting 180 lashes
(from shoulders to heels) in Iran. As refugees
they are not allowed to work and have little
money. We gave them some blankets from the
good folk at Bodalla Australia (pictured
above) - as they have no family here and few
possessions they were deeply touched that
others would go to such trouble to keep them
warm. We felt really sorry for sister Ayesha
from Bulgaria who had just lost her job; her
husband has no right to work in the UK and
she was doing a cleaning job, sometimes
working from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. She has gone
to Tesco supermarket to look for work but
only got offered part time work. Carelinks
gave her some money although she didn’t ask
for any. She clearly would so love to have chil-
dren but she has to be the breadwinner and
living on the minimum wage in this country
means she really has little chance to ever
have a family. We gave her some of our
Australian hand knitted blankets and she was
very touched. And then there was brother
Mojtaba who brought his dog along to the
meeting, providing great entertainment for
the kids. There was so much warmth amongst
strangers - an eclectic group united by Jesus -
indeed a very uplifting experience”.
Carelinks | Ukraine
T
he Ukraine Bible School was a great
success, thanks to your prayers. The venue
we had booked pulled out on us the day
before we were due to arrive... and many
travel over a day to be present, with little
chance of contacting them. We found another
venue nearby- no small order, seeing we were
over 80 in attendance- at greater cost of
course. In the middle of the School, Brexit
occurred, meaning that the British pound
collapsed in value exactly around the time we
had to pay. So this school turned out really
expensive... any donations towards it will be
really appreciated. But there was a truly
wonderful spirit there, with five wonderful
baptisms, of Pavel [Paul], Petr, Vita, Ludmila
and Yana- despite the broken down nature of
things in Ukraine, with wounded soldiers and
civilians arriving in Kiev for treatment on a
daily basis from the ongoing war in the East.
The baptisms were performed in the very
same lake where 19 years ago, at least three
of the older sisters present were baptized.
This is a powerful testament to the Lord’s
ongoing work in the lives of His people, and
how our labour over the years has not been in
vain under His usage and guidance.
~ continued ...
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