There are times of sadness and despair when unbelievers are happy to go with you to parties, hikes, photo-tours and picnics, but when you invite them to church, no one or only handful of people come. So we decided to invite people over to our house (Sasha Malamuzh) for games, food and a service dedicated to Thanksgiving Day. And God has made a miracle. We had 45 guests come over!

This must be first time in a few years that we were not tired after a project. When everyone left we just sat next to the fireplace and thanked God for the wonderful day.

We want to just say how thankful we are to the leaders that worked along with us, we thank them for them for being so initiative and reliable. They came and helped prepare the territory and help prep food.

One of the people on our team said that this was the quietest service ever. Why? Because the kids had their own program that was led by our amazing volunteers.

We had 7 blocks:

• a musical meet and greet. It is challenging to get 45 people to get to know each other and remember names. Volodya, a personification of an entire orchestra, got everyone comfortable and broke the ice.
• breakfast.
• an interactive service. We began with prayer and christian worship songs. One of the preachers noticed that some people became stiff and weren’t singing with us, so we added a couple secular songs to bring those people back into the “circle”. After that we had a sermon that was well taken by the people.
• a forest hike.
• a couple games.
• a seminar on building relationships and raising children
• a Thanksgiving dinner.

We gave each of our guests christian-themed calendars for the 2019 year that had Bible verses in them. Some people shared that this was a refreshing time that was a first for many of them.