Three facts:

1) Most young people worldwide prefer to learn online;

2) 285 million people speak Russian and about NINE million of them are believers;

3) There are no missionary-training videos available online in Russian.

That’s why we are producing videos in Russian. But we had a cultural problem. We couldn’t get people to watch these videos until we CONTEXTUALIZED them. In other words, we needed to adapt the way we communicated our message so it would fit the Slavic culture.
That’s why we made the following adjustments:

1. Our audience needs to identify with a Slavic-looking speaker, not me.
2. The video has to be in their heart language, and not just sub-titles.
3. The music needs to be Russian, Christian and youthful.
4. We need to feature local examples so that missions doesn’t look foreign.
5. We use the traditional Russian Bible that everyone is familiar with.
6. The style of prayer must to look normal to our audience’s culture.
7. Even baptism needs to have a distinct Slavic Christian look.

Hundreds of young people have enthusiastically watched the videos we’ve already produced in Russian and they are repeatedly requesting more.

Your are probably asking, “What are these videos about?” There are two general topics: Biblical Basis for missions and Cross-cultural Ministry Skills.We want to educate and inspire Russian-speaking young people to serve the LORD as cross-cultural ministers of the Gospel. These videos will help accomplish the GREAT COMMISSION that Jesus gave to us.

We are extremely grateful to the LORD for providing us with a video studio. And we thank you for praying for and giving toward this project.

I have three prayer requests for you.
1. I’m asking you to PRAY for the completion of our video production team so we can quickly produce these new videos.
2. And PRAY with us as we strive to complete the goal of producing 50 missionary-training videos in Russian over the next three years.