February 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.)

ПОСТ—post—fast or Lent

Is. 58: 6 " Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh?

Lent is a time of fasting, especially in Russia with the Orthodox tradition so deep in the culture.  We Lutherans also fast—giving up things for Lent.  The goal of such things is not simply to fulfill some sort of religious obligation, to lose weight, or rid our selves of a bad habit for a few weeks, but rather to practice putting our Spiritual life and growth first.

As our earthly bodies need to eat, drink and breathe, so do our eternal souls.  Just as not eating regularly and healthily, not breathing fresh air, and drinking all sorts of junk soda and other unhealthy libations leads to physical illness, not nurturing our souls on the pure food and water of Scripture along with the regular deep breath of prayer leads to spiritual illness (and even death). 

When our souls are strengthened in faith, then the fruit of good works—the fruit of such a fast as God teaches us in Isaiah 58—will readily spring forth.  We often do not value our souls as much as we value our physical bodies (it might be interesting to compare how much time, energy and money we spend on health clubs, physical beauty and fitness to the amount of time, energy and money we spend on Scripture reading, prayer and witnessing to our faith).  Jesus, Our Lord and Savior, valued our eternal souls so much that He set aside His Godly Glory, took on our mortal flesh, and physically bore our pain and death so that our souls might have eternal life (and be reunited with renewed bodies in the resurrection).

Pro-life Seminars

Romans 12:6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them….

This month the Ingrian Lutheran pro-life team has been working overtime planning seminars from the Estonian border to Minusinsk in Siberia.  Carolyn Rice, a pro-life activist from  South Carolina who has been making yearly short term mission trips to Russia and the former Soviet countries to lead Bible studies for women in post-abortion healing and forgiveness agreed to donate a month of her time to do seminars through the Lutheran Church of Ingria. 

Besides trying to arrange her schedule, travel, and so forth, Pastor Fedor Tulinin and I have been busy working up a Bible study on the relationship and difference between forgiveness and healing (they are related, but not necessarily one and the same thing) and writing and translating two new brochures. 

We have arranged at least 15 seminars from March 2nd through March 25th, so we will be very busy this month.  The hope is that after these seminars congregations may be interested in forming Bible study groups for women dealing with post-abortion healing (since 95 percent of Russian women have had at least one abortion, this seems a very important topic to address as well as a way to reach many people with the Gospel).

English Worship

Acts 2:6 And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.

     As many of you may recall, last November, due to the remodeling at St. Michael’s and other things, English worship service was asked to move.  My first question to those regularly attending was whether or not they wanted to continue (we only have a group of 12 that regularly attend).  As they all wanted to continue to worship, I began looking for another place—and the Bishop offered us the use of the meeting room in the central Ingrian Church offices.  Our new “home” is difficult to find but we still manage to get visitors (it is also smaller as we only have room for 25 or so people).

     The difficulty this month is that since so many seminars are planned for the weekends, I will myself miss several Sundays (I usually try to miss no more than one a month with other duties).  God has seen to this as well—He always provides.  Pastor Alexander Schmidt, who also can work as a translator, is able to fill in for me on occasion as is my “field worker”  Darren Johnson—an American student studying at the Ingrian Lutheran Seminary in Koltushe. 

     I am a bit nervous as this next Sunday will be the first I have missed since we moved.

 

Prayer Requests

Pray for English Worship service while I am away for several Sundays this month (for Darren Johnson and his wife Ira, my wife Zhanya and Alexander Schmidt), also pray that those wishing to attend or needing to attend can find us.  Pray for our pro-life Seminars that the seeds planted may bear fruit (the Calendar is attached—please note that Zhanya will be accompanying Carolyn to Siberia for the seminars there, so some extra prayer on that).  Pray for our children Karl and Nastya—it is very hard to keep up their English skills with them attending Russian school.  Pray for my health as travel always seems to wear down my immunity and I get a cold of flu.  Pray for Finnish Lutheran missionary pastor Juha Saari who is the acting “probst” for the Siberian congregations (he has just returned from a fact finding trip and is feeling the weight—seeing all the possibilities compared to the inexperienced few “workers” he has).   Pray for our documents—we have to renew our registration this month and are waiting for the decision for a five year living permit.

Family News

Karl is now 10 years old, I am much older (I just had my birthday), so Karl came up with a knock knock joke: Knock knock….Who’s there?  Karl.  Karl who?  So Daddy you are so old you have forgotten me?  Oh, well.  We decided to put off celebrating my birthday until after all these seminars.  Zhanya said I ought to invite some of my Russian pastor friends over for a little birthday party, maybe go to the banya (Russian steam bath), but I said with all the work I have to do, it would turn into a meeting…

.

 

Come to Calv’ry’s holy mountain, Sinners, ruined by the Fall;

Here a pure and healing fountain flows to you, to me, to all

In a full, perpetual tide, opened when our Savior died.

TLH 149
 

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:

 

02Alexander--one of the Russian pastors who fills in for me at English sevice is Pastor Alexander Schmidt. He is a long time friend and we have worked together since 1995 when he worked with me as a translator while I was working with youth in St. petersburg as a volunteer missionary.

 

02Biblestudy--Pastor Alexei asked if I would fill in for him at the Biblestudy he leads on Mondays at ST. Mary's at 11AM, I had it all written on my calendar and was even prepared, but that Monday (which is usually my day off), I got busy with some stuff at home and didn't check my calendar until after lunch... I was, of course, extremely upset with myself. Things did work out, however, as the head pastor of St. Mary's, knowing that Alexei was on a mission trip, had shown up just to check things out, so led the Bible study in my place. To my great relief I found this out when I came to see him to apologize for my forgetfulness. He said I could make up for it by leading Bible study the next week (this also gave me a chance to apologize to the group). They took it well and were most gracious. I can count on one hand the ministry things I have forgotten to do--so I was extremely apologetic and contrite. My wife pointed out this comes from my being too busy and over worked. I think it is because I agreed to do something on my day off...

 

02latenite... Here I am working with Pastor Fedor Tulinin on the Biblestudy portion of our pro-life seminars for this month. The Bible study is on the relationship and difference between healing and forgiveness. It was a late night (and it looks as if we are playing "battleship" but those are actually our laptops).

 

02MisMeeting... Pastor Alexei, Missionary Pastor Juha (and acting Siberian Probst) along with Kai (a Finnish Missionary working in Siberia as well) and me. We were having a meeting discussing some seminars for Siberia. Alexei will go this spring; I am scheduled for sometime in the fall. As Alexei speaks Finnish, it was a rather interesting meeting--they were all talking in Finnish and I could hear my name (with different endings once in a while) and understand that they were talking about me, but had no idea what the "sentence" was until they finished (not Finnished) and told me that they decided that I would go to Siberia in the fall.

 

02YelenaFedor... If this were a profile shot you would see that Fedor and his wife Yelena are expecting their first child--keep them in prayer. She is due on the day after our last Seminar this March (sometime between March 26 and April 14 is the date the doctors give).

 

March Pro-Life Calendar

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thurs

Fri

Sat

Sun

 

 

 

1 Arrives

2 to Nizhniy Novgorod

Нижний Новгород

3 Student Seminar 14:00 open discussion

17:00 Contraception

нн

4 Seminar 14:00-17:00 нн

5 return

6

7 Koltushe Sem and Cong  18:30

колтуше

8

9 Scvoritza

16:00

скворитца

10     пушкин

рushkin

14:00-17:00

11

Tюрё 12:30--??

12  St. Mary’s 11:00

13

14  Yukki  юкки16:00

 

15 Siberia

16 Siberia

Krasnoyarsk

17 Siberia

 18 Siberia

Minusinsk

19 Siberia

20

21  Presb. Sem  13:00--

22  ELCI Consulary  ЕЛЦИ консулари13:00-17:00

23

24

kingaseppe

25

Viburg

26 Leaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

 

St.  Paul Lutheran Church and School, 1025 Lake Street, Melrose Park, Illinois 60160; Church: 708‑343‑1000, School: 708‑343‑5000

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