Jan 2006 —St. Petersburg, Russia   A GOOD WORD FROM CAMP from Leif & Zhanya Camp

(Click on St. Paul Photo Albums to see photos of the Camp’s work and life.  This month’s are here.  More info at the bottom of the page.)

 

НОВЫЙ—NO-vee--new

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

      Jesus Christ makes all things new (Rev. 21:5), and that includes each and every sinner who believes and is baptized into His death and resurrection.  When we come to the beginning of a new job, a new day, a new year, it is a special time to remember that we are new creations—that we have been given a new birth, a new beginning.  It seems that as often as Christians forget the seriousness of their sins (and in turn lose the joy of understanding the value of their forgiveness in Christ), we just as often may go around trapped in guilt and regret from past sins, mistakes or decisions (or lack of  decisions).  But through Jesus Christ, God has made us new, and that means in all things—and this  means that with greater than titanic, promethean strength, we look forward, move forward, into the new year with renewed faith and hope.  

      This month we not only celebrated the New Year, but Epiphany—God’s revealing Himself in His Son, the Center of our Christian faith.  Let us keep Him in the Center this year and always unto life everlasting!

English Language Service Receives Katechet

Titus 2:7 in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility,

      On the third Sunday after Epiphany Darren Johnson, a member of Zion Lutheran, Harvester, Missouri, was installed as “Katechet” for the English Language service at St. Michael’s.  In the Church of Ingria, the service of “Katechet” covers a wide variety of duties—but in our case, Darren would be what we in the USA might call a field worker (a student receiving practice in the ministry).  He began studying at the Ingrian Lutheran Seminary at Koltushe outside of St. Petersburg this September and has been attending the English Worship service with his wife Irina regularly since.  Since I am the only American Lutheran pastor serving a Lutheran parish in St. Petersburg, I was made his supervisor for the practical part of his studies.

      Darren, a life long LCMS member, had his own business for a number of years, but began thinking seriously about the ministry.  At that time, he realized that to attend seminary he would need to finish college, so he began studying at a local Junior College, then SLU, and then decided to study abroad.  He came to Moscow where he met Irina—a Russian student from Voronesh (east of Moscow).  They fell in love, got married, and Darren figured it would be cheaper to finish his degree in Russia than in America (tuition here is a bit less expensive).  When he heard that the Ingrian Seminary was now licensed to give out Bachelor’s degrees, he called Ingria.

      Without going into all the details, he was accepted after supplying all his transcripts, a letter of recommendation from his home pastor and his district president from American.  Because of all his previous study, God willing he will finish his course work in two more years.  Ingria is already planning to send him back to Veronish to help re-establish the congregation there (the city has just begun the process of returning a historic building to the small local congregation).

      For us this is a big blessing and an answer to prayer.  I am working fervently to get him up to speed so that he can keep the English service running over the two months this summer when we plan to be in the USA.  That includes helping out with hosting any short-term missionary groups and so forth as we did last summer.  It is also a blessing to be working with another cross-cultural couple.

Two Old Dogs do a New Trick

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

      New Year’s morning fell on a Sunday this year, so St. Michael’s decided to hold a joint Russian/English worship service.  Turn about, they say (whoever they are), is fair play.  So it was only fair that I agreed when Alexander Schmidt, the Russian pastor scheduled to serve with me that day, asked if I would translate his Russian sermon into English rather than have him translate mine into Russian.  

      Of course, it is one thing to translate for groups that come in, translate conversations and so forth, but translating a sermon, the preaching of God’s Word, is a bit more intimidating—and a new experience for me.  So with prayer and study I prepared for the service.  It was an interesting and valuable experience to be on the other side of sermon translation—one almost always learns something through role reversal.  Although I rarely use a translator anymore for preaching or teaching as I can prepare my text before hand, Pastor Schmidt has translated me more times than either of us can count—since we began working together back in 1995 when I first came to Russia as a volunteer missionary (and at that time he worked as my translator).   I discovered the most difficult thing about translating what when he would make a grammatical point between the Russian and the original text Biblical text—since the English Grammar is different than both the Russian and the original (and often what is a quirk in the Russian is not in the English or vise versa). 

      Anyway, it was something new for the New Year and God’s Word was heard—always a great way to begin.

Something else New for the New Year

1 Timothy 4:12 Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

      The Ingrian Church’s Missionary Committee has decided to begin a special mission training program designed especially for youth—this has been in the works for the last year already.  The program will consist of 4 intensive weekend seminars spread out through 2006.  To initiate the program, and as a means of recruiting participants and raising interest, the Missionary committee put together a weekend retreat for over 60 youth at the village parish of Yukki outside of St. Petersburg.  This retreat covered three introductory themes:  Mission history with a special focus on the history of Lutheran missions in Russia, Witnessing to Cults, and Stewardship and Mission—our investment in preaching the Gospel.  You can guess which theme I was assigned! 

     

Prayer Requests

Pray for Darren and Irina Johnson as they begin working and learning with us—and for Zhanya and me as we begin “mentoring” them.  Pray that God bless the planned missionary training for Ingrian Lutheran Youth, that the youth may be equipped to better spread the Gospel and defend and explain their faith at all times and to all people.  Continue to pray for our documents as we continue to struggle through the bureaucracy.  Pray for the Russia that God grant her leaders to avoid the mistakes of the past, and to move forward to protect freedom while curbing true vice, corruption and crime.  Pray for us as we begin to plan our visit to the USA, that logistic and financial questions might be easily answered.  Pray for all the pastors of Ingria, especially those who are facing the difficult decision of leaving the ministry in order to provide for their families the basics of life—a home, food, clothes and basic education.  Pray for Karl and Nastya’s English language skills and for my Russian langauge skills.  Pray this for Pastor Alexander Schmidt who just had a birthday (the 28th of January) and for Karl (whose birthday is Feb. 7th) and Leif (whose birthday is Feb. 28th).  And as always pray that God grant us new each day wisdom to know His will, faith to trust His will, and strength to follow His will.

Prolife

      We are finishing up the editing of our brochures and are also hoping to write a few more.  Especially here in St. Peterburg, people pay particular attention to language, and with the growing nationalistic ferver in Russia, things that sound translated from foreign sources are less and less well received, especially among the youth (a group we are particularly interested in reaching).  Even the brochures I have written, because my thinking is not yet “Russian” still have a foreign twang to them.  All this said, the prolife volunteer corps has been methodically “foreign” tangles from the weave and warf of each brochure so as to make each brochure more accessible.  The message itself is confrontational enough without having the language be an additional stumbling block.

      The plan is that when we have finished to run a large printing—up until now we have only printed off a few hundred brochures at a time.  At each distribution we catch more mistakes and make more edits—we are planning that this will be the final edit on the brochures we have so far.  Then we will concentrate on expanding our literature.  We are planning a couple more brochures for youth and a few on medical aspects related to abortion.      God willing by next month we will have some more progress to report.

Family

The other day I caught Nastya walking to the kids’ room carrying a plate with what I thought was her dinner.  I asked, “what are you doing?”  She answered, “I am bringing this to Karl; I don’t want him to starve to death.”  Karl was busy studying at the time…

 

Jesus! Name of wondrous Love, Name all other names above,

Unto which must ev’ry knee bow in deep humility.

 

Jesus, only Name that’s given under all the mighty heaven

Whereby man, to sin enslaved, bursts his fetters and is saved

 

Hymn #114 verses 1 and 5 TLH

 

In Christ,

Leif & Zhanya Camp

_________________________________________________________________________

Click on St. Paul Photo Albums to see photos of the Camp’s work and life.  This month’s are here and descriptions are below:

 

Pictures:

·         YukkiYouth: some of the 60+ youth gathered in the village of Yukki outside of St. Petersburg to learn more about missions.

·         YukkiAlexei: Pastor Alexei, pastor of the Yukki congregation and Ingrian Missionary Committee co-director, opens the seminar.

·         VoroneshChurch: a picture of the building that the government is offering toreturn to the small Lutheran congregation in Voronezh, a city east of Moscow.

·         NewYearLeifSasha1: pictures of preparation and translation of the Sermon for the New Year's combined English/Russian Worship service--Pastor Alexander and I are going over his sermon so the translation will go more smoothly--such advance preparation is always helpful before oral translation. Then the preaching and translation.

·         KarlsingYukki: The youth asked me to sing a song--one of Karl's favorite Russian Christian Children's songs, so he joined in.

·         DarrenIrina: Darren and Irina Johnson, Darren has been received and blessed as Katechet for the English worship service (read about that in the attached letter).

 

 

CONTACT ADDRESSES Feedback, questions, whatever are most welcome.

Our Russian home address:

Leif and Zhanya Camp

18 line V. O. dom 43 Kv. 7

St. Petersburg, Russia, 199178

 

Stateside contact address:

Leif and Zhanya Camp,

C/O Marli Camp

902 N. 12th

Melrose Park, IL, 60160

Russian Lutheran Church Address:

Ev. Lutheran Church of Ingria in Russia

Bolshaya Konyushennaya dom 8

St. Peterburg, Russia, 191186

 

Telephone: after getting an international line by dialing 011, dial 7- 812 (our area code) 321-1508(our phone number)

Note—Between St. Petersburg and central US time, the difference is 9 hours.  Stateside contact telephone: 708-344-4472

 

E-MAIL:  lzkcamp(at symbol)mail.ru & leif.camp(at symbol)elci.ru.  Prolife web site with Russian materials you can down load: prolife.elci.ru.  Other websites: Lisa Stapp has set up a website which has some of our last newsletters (with their cover letters and pictures):  http://www.worthywomanpage.com/camp/index.html.  Also my mother's home congregation has our newsletters--the latest can be downloaded from: http://www.stpaulmp.org/camp/  a second site archives our past newsletters since 2002 http://www.stpaulmp.org/archives/ .   Please feel free to share this newsletter with your Church, friends, or enemies if it might help (just please do not quote things out of context or edit my words in such a way as to change their intent).  If you would like to receive a copy via e-mail, simply email me directly and ask!

 

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