January 2017 Partner Letter

We hope you had the opportunity to celebrate Christmas surrounded by your family and friends and enjoyed every single moment together!

What a year 2016 has been—all around the world! We faced many new challenges in 2016, especially in regard to processing our annual Work Permit/VISA. It was a long drawn out situation this year, requiring us to wait four months to return to Russia! Mid-October we finalized the documents to return and about six weeks later we extended our VISA until September, 2017.

It seems nothing was simple about 2016. A quick look around the world suggests life on the planet earth is anything but simple any longer. Living life just seems to demand a greater resolve and focus than ever before. And as Christians, chosen by God to walk upon the earth in these tumultuous times, how much more determined and indomitable our walk with God must be! We must be a people who understand the times in which we live, strengthening ourselves for the assignments at hand and remembering who our God is!

Deuteronomy 7:9
Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 

A closer look at this scripture reveals the Hebrew names Lord (Jehovah, the Unchangeable, Intimate God) and God (Elohim, the Sovereign, Mighty Creator). The Unchangeable, Intimate God—your God, He is the Sovereign, Mighty Creator, the faithful Sovereign, Mighty Creator who keeps covenant and mercy…

The Lord, Jehovah, is forever our loving Father who greatly desires a close, personal relationship with us. And He is our God—our Sovereign, our absolute, incomparable, Mighty Creator who keeps His promises to us and is merciful.

Throughout the Bible we read account after account of the mighty acts of God on behalf of His children. We see His great desire to show mercy and to uphold His Word (His covenant promises). The God we serve has the power to keep His promises!

People make a lot of promises, and sadly; they fail to keep them. It is absolutely not part of the nature of our God to break His promises to us. Within Him lie the innate capacity and power, supremacy and immeasurable ability to keep His Word!  He cannot fail!

Time and again God (Elohim, the Mighty Creator) demonstrated His ability to keep the promise He made to Abraham.  Many times, against ALL ODDS, Elohim came on the scene to change the course of history, keeping His will and plan and promises to His people intact. Hebrews 11:11 talks about Isaac’s birth: “Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed.” The word strength is the word dunamis, which means miracle-working power. Who gave Sarah that miracle-working power? Elohim, the God of might and power.

The same God who shut the mouths of lions for Daniel is your God, who opened Sarah’s womb and by His Spirit impregnated a young virgin to bring to birth the Savior of the World. His power and abilities are immeasurable. He is the God who promised redemption of the World rescuing mankind out of the hands of the god of this World. He carried it out without a hitch raising the lifeless body of Jesus from the grave seating Him at His own right hand.

Oh, hallelujah!!! Our God is able, He is willing and within His nature resides the power, the ability, and influence to have the last say when it comes to His promises to us.

Solomon said, “…LORD God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like You, who keep Your covenant and mercy with Your servants who walk before You with all their hearts” (I Kings 8:23).

Even if our worlds are turned upside-down, spinning out of control and leaving us wondering if we will ever feel joy again as we face impossibilities we never dreamed we would encounter, our God has not loosened His grip on His promises to us nor has His ability to come on the scene and set things right diminished. He is Elohim, Almighty God…and our God.

Welcome to Our World

It has been an interesting season for us. At the beginning of November we were packing our apartment to move to another. We moved, unpacked and worked on settling into a new apartment quite a bit smaller than our last one—a big chore to downsize and find places for all our things. Of course, our accumulations of things over the past 12+ years did not all fit so we gave away many cherished items which made a lot of people happy.

Our new apartment is smaller and so is the area to park our car. You wouldn’t believe where we leave our car at times, praying it will be ok. For the most part, we parked our car on the street which makes our car an easy target for slush and grime and in time, most cars look the same—a black, dirty, greasy dark color during the winter months.

So I said all that to tell you something that happened to us yesterday. A couple of days ago Katherine took a taxi to join two of her girlfriends for an afternoon at the banya (Russian steam bath which is quite popular). While she was gone I took our car to be washed without telling her. When she left our car was a grimy black color, but when she returned it was its natural silver, but she had not seen it yet (my little secret). The next day we were walking about a half kilometer to a paid parking lot where we now leave our car. Katherine was looking down as she trudged through the ice, snow and slush. Just before getting to our parking space she looked up at our car and got a most puzzled look on her face as she looked around for our car. I finally had to tell her it really was our car, but she did not recognize it clean! Can you imagine going for weeks or months with your car the same grime color as everyone else and not being able to wash it? (Temperatures are often below freezing and doors can freeze—and have frozen shut.)

But let me explain what makes Katherine’s puzzled look even more understandable. Just a few days before we headed out to where our car was parked on the street to go to a meeting with some of the church youth who wanted Katherine to teach them to pray. When we arrived where we had previously parked, the car was gone. What a shock! It turns out we had parked too close to a crosswalk and the police had towed it away. What a relief to find it had been towed and we could easily get it back rather than find it had been stolen. Can you imagine being happy your car had been towed?

Combining the towing with not recognizing our car and you may have some idea of why Katherine was so perplexed not to see our car in the parking lot. WELCOME TO OUR WORLD.

Why don’t you take time to encourage yourself today by reading Hebrews chapter 11. Keep in mind the words written there are not mere stories, but amazing, real-life accounts of men and women just like all of us who trusted God and took Him at His Word. God revealed Himself to these Heroes of Faith as the God who keeps covenant and delights to show mercy. We are so thankful He has not changed and He will keep His every promise to those who walk before Him with all their hearts.

We also want to thank you for your faithfulness to pray for us and for your continued sacrificial giving. “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (II Corinthians 9:8). And if there is any way we can pray for you, please contact us. We will stand with you in faith trusting in the God who keeps covenant and shows mercy to a thousand generations.

His love and ours,
Bob and Katherine Dickerson