Jul 4, 2019 | Featured, Vietnam, Yevstratenko Ministries
Then were there brought unto him little children, that He should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven. ~Matthew 19:13-14
Greetings to you brothers and sisters. Thank you for your support and prayers for our ministry here in Vietnam. Also, we thank the Lord for providing an opportunity for us to participate in a local one-week day-camp here held by the leprosy church, Rock Mountain Evangelical Church. There were about 40 children, ages 3-12, plus a few teens. The theme of the camp was “The Word of God,” how it is a living; powerful; righteous; and always fulfilled word and is preserved by God till today.
We took part in helping with some of the games and couple of lessons with the aid of a Vietnamese interpreter. We learned that from all children attending there was only one child from a complete family, all other children come from a divorced family and at a young age many already had to go to work. Also, the camp was empty but parents of many of the children were uneager to allow them to come to the Christian camp, so church members had to go to their homes and bring the children to camp every morning.
On one of the days, came a man and started yelling at one of the counselors. Turned out he was the father of one of our teen campers and he was against her coming to the camp and to church altogether. Further we found out that he used to be ill with leprosy and attended this same church because the church helped him and his family a lot, but after everything got better, he left the church and turned against God. When this incident happened during camp, we got together with others inside the church and prayed for the man, and praise the Lord, he left and his daughter stayed till the end of camp.
After the camp, we talked with the pastor of the church if we may use the site of their church to make kids’ camp in the future, since they have a big park-like area. It surprised us when the pastor said no, explaining that the government controls closely all activities of all the churches here especially when involving children and that in the beginning of each year they submit to the government a plan of all their camps, programs, events, etc. in advance for the year. They are not allowed to do anything in addition to the plan or they will be fined or worse, the church would be closed. Therefore, please join us in prayer for not only the churches to have freedom of spreading the gospel, but so there would be no restriction for children to come to Jesus. May our Lord bless you all!
Ministry in Vietnam – Tatyana Yevstratenko
May 7, 2019 | Featured, Vietnam, Yevstratenko Ministries
Our dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we would like to greet you with the proclamation: JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! Please accept our sincere gratitude for all of your financial support and especially for your prayers through which our Lord has blessed us greatly this Easter because He gave us a chance to celebrate His wonderful resurrection twice! We were blessed to make small Easter presents with sweets and put into each gift a card that said “Jesus Christ is Risen!” in three languages; English, Vietnamese, and Russian.
Christians in Vietnam celebrate Easter April 21st and after the Easter Sunday service, we took half of the presents and went through the town giving out gifts to all the Vietnamese people who we run into and prayed for them. As we gave gifts, we told everyone the phrase ‘Jesus Christ is risen from the dead’ in Vietnamese. One of these people was an elderly woman (on the photo) who we usually buy bread from and we gave her a gift and showed her the card on which it says that Jesus Christ is risen, and she just became so full of joy! Glory to God for He works even through a few words!
Now, a lot of Russian people live in our city and because Easter in Russia is celebrated on April 28th, we were blessed to celebrate this joyful day of Christ’s Resurrection again. We took the rest of the gifts and again, after our second Easter Sunday service, drove through the town giving out the gifts to the Russian population, congratulating them with Easter by telling them in Russian ‘Jesus Christ is Risen!’
Finally, we had a few gifts left so we went to the hospital in our city thinking to maybe find Russian speaking people there, but as we looked up last names on the patients’ doors, none of them were Russian. We got to the last floor and didn’t know what to do with the two gifts. We then saw an elderly Vietnamese man with his wife and the Holy Spirit urged us to go to him and we gave him the gift and the card that said that Jesus Christ has risen and to our surprise, he took the card and held it in his hands staring at it, so we prayed for him right on the spot, and his sad face transformed into a smiling man. Meanwhile, a much older Vietnamese man was wheeled out of his room and he just sat there looking out the window. Again, the Holy Spirit lead us to this man and we gave him our last gift and told him that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and that He loves him. We prayed for him as well, and the Lord filled our hearts with joy as we left the hospital! May we not forget to always proclaim to everyone that our Lord is alive!
Ministry in Vietnam – Tanya Yevstratenko
Apr 2, 2019 | Vietnam, Yevstratenko Ministries
“Come to Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28
Greetings to all my brothers and sisters! This past month of March, God has blessed us with multiple opportunities to go to the west side of Nha Trang to the City on the Cemetery, as we call it. We visited families, one of which is a Buddhist family with four children whose father is in prison and the mother left them, therefore the grandparents live with them. We also visited a leprosy church that’s next door to the cemetery. We were blessed to find out the history of this place from Thuy, our Vietnamese sister in Christ.
Thuy explained, that over 45 years ago, here was a leprosy village called “Rock Mountain.” It was a terrible place and everyone feared it. Then, around 42 years ago God sent Lieu, a young missionary girl of about 20 years of age, and that was when the Good News first came to the village and ill-burdened lepers accepted Christ (Mat.11:28).
In 1989, The Nύi (Rock) San (Mountain) Evangelical Church was built and the church grew and the leper village became mostly a Christian village. Though one by one the lepers passed away and were buried in the cemetery next to the church, their families kept going to the church. Yet, because leprosy is not a disease that passes down to the next generation, these healthy families one by one left the church because they liked the earthly life more. As there became few and fewer lepers, the Rock Mountain village just became a place where poor people would come to live. And from those poor people, came poorer people who couldn’t afford to live among poor villagers and were forced to live on the cemetery in the Rock Mountain village. Sadly, this poor village is populated with mostly Buddhist families today and even though the church is still there, it is small and just a few lepers that are still alive attend the church with their families, one of which is our dear brother who plays the harmonica with his palms because he has no more fingers left due to leprosy.
Finding out the story behind this place made us praise the Lord for His works, for He took those heavy laden and ill-burdened lepers and gave them more – an eternal life. Then, what made us glorify our Lord even more, was that we saw a grandma bring her granddaughter to Sunday school, the same Buddhist grandmother that we visited in the cemetery! This gave us joy and hope that after we evangelize to the poverty-burdened people on the cemetery, they can also come to Christ and this no longer a “leprosy village”, but a “poor village” may fill up the church again! So I ask you, my dear brothers and sisters, to join us in prayer for these, heavy laden and poverty-burdened, people in the village to come to Jesus Christ!
Ministry in Vietnam – Tatyana Yevstratenko
Mar 5, 2019 | Vietnam, Yevstratenko Ministries
“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”-Exodus 20:3
Greetings, brothers and sisters in Christ! On one of the evenings, for about an hour our group went through the streets of our city and prayed for the people of Vietnam. We prayed for everyone we saw; people in different coffee shops, stores, parks, etc. To tell you the sad truth, I personally had little faith in the usefulness of what we were doing because we prayed for these people every time at home anyways.
Yet, God started opening to me the spiritual situation here in Vietnam even more than before. Throughout a couple of weeks, we heard many bitter news; on the beach right by our house, two gentlemen drowned even though lifeguards tried to save them. Then, not far from us, two young ladies got into a motorcycle accident where one lady died. And there was more of these kind of fatal events around us and all we could do is pray for their families. Until we personally saw a fatal accident, where a huge semi-truck cab (without the attached load) drove over a young girl on a motorcycle. Instantly the people nearby found something to cover her body and in her cracked helmet stuck incense sticks and lit them. We stopped and Pastor Alexander started to pray but they forced us to leave. I was shocked at how much they cared for their rituals and how much Satan did not want us even near this occurred situation.
After all these horrible events, I remembered the huge mountain we went on, where there stands a big temple and many gardens full of countless idol statues. Yet the ones that got my attention most were the 3 women idols, about 6 meters tall, standing above our city and showing some kind of signs to the city. This made me realize on how much the lives of these people are under the control of their idols and how deceived these people really are by the one who stands behind all their idols. Then, I found out that statistically, in Vietnam, every hour someone dies not by their own death but by some unfortunate accident. I chose the word “Perishment” in my tittle because perish means: “to die or be destroyed, especially in a violent or untimely manner.” (“…neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?” -Ecclesiastes 7:17) Here, Satan has the people lined up on the death row and “executes” them every hour because they blindly serve him and don’t know that the only One true God would take care of them (“…for You alone, O LORD, make me dwellin safety.“ -Psalms 4:8).
This is how God opened to me that going through the city and praying for these people is not just useful, it’s critical! So please, join us in prayer for the lives of these people, so that God helps free them from Satan’s lies and they accept the Truth!
Ministry in Vietnam – Tatyana Yevstratenko
Jan 14, 2019 | Featured, Vietnam, Yevstratenko Ministries
The first time when I first through the streets in Vietnam leaving the airport, I was not surprised to see how poverty-stricken the city is since I saw something similar in Mexico when I went there with our youth. But what surprised me, was that later on when I visited these poor homes, I noticed that, no matter the financial status, they had an altar for their gods to whom they sacrificed food, money, and incense daily. Some homes had just one tiny altar in a corner, while others had a whole room dedicated to their gods with different flashing colored lights 24h a day, so their gods would feel happy. After I met Alexander and Irina, I found out that there is only a very small percentage of Christians in this country, most of which are Catholics. I asked them how are they able to evangelize to them since they don’t know the Vietnamese language, and they answered, “In the language of love – God’s Love.”
I was blessed to be part of a few mission trips with Alexander, Irina, and Evgenia out of the many that are serving in. We visited the girls in the boarding school with children from different ethnic groups whose parents aren’t able to provide for their education. We told them about how God loves us that He gave the best to us – His Son. We sang to them and made crafts with them, each girl made a paper vase and a special flower where they wrote on the petals John 3:16. It brought so much joy to me seeing how these girls were happy with the interaction and the attention we gave them.
Another ministry I had a chance to be part of is helping those who live in the city on the cemetery. Heavy rain started when we were about to leave and Alexander said that we should just go now, so we went in the rain to visit one family. When we arrived, I was a bit sad to see how four children are being raised by their grandparents amidst all the graves in a broken-down hut. But when we gave them food and candies, I was surprised by how a small handful of candies brought some joy to the little ones. We also prepared some clothes we wanted to give them, but we forgot them at home. The next day the rain was still pouring and many streets and homes were flooded, including the home of the family we visited. The day after, we went to visit them again and brought the clothes that we forgot, and saw it as God’s hand that He planned for us to provide them with dry clothes after the flood. Praise be to our Lord!
In those two weeks, I saw how devoted Alexander, Irina, and Evgenia are to the Lord by serving the Vietnamese people, and I understood that the work there is something that can’t be done by coming – doing – and leaving. In order to be the light of Jesus and to witness His love one needs to live among the people of Vietnam, and it would be a great blessing for me if I am part of that!
Ministry in Vietnam – Tatyana Yevstratenko
