Of more value than gold!

Three young people travelled north through the Russian Taiga to the gold-mining town of North Yeniseysk, watching out of their car windows for bears and wolves along the way. They were Marina, Mitya and Anatoli, students of the OM Discipleship Centre in Novosibirsk, sent out on a two-week outreach, to put into practise some of what they had learnt over the last five months. 

 

The team had prepared four different lectures on the dangers of glue sniffing, drugs, smoking and sex before marriage. It’s shocking to hear that in some places, up to 30% of Russia’s youth are on drugs, and 7 out of 10 of the population smoke with children starting as early as seven years of age.

The team had been invited to North Yeniseysk, a small town of 10'000 people, to give these lectures to the young people and teenagers there. The first lecture on glue-sniffing was received enthusiastically by a group of guys and girls in an evening school, almost all of whom admitted that they had experimented with glue-sniffing several times in their young lives before. One boy shared openly his experiences of sniffing petrol and paint, and the high it had given him, and resolved not to do this anymore.

At the beginning of each lecture, the youth were laughing and making fun, but Marina noticed that during the lectures, the expressions in their eyes changed, and they started to listen attentively and ask serious questions. The teachers commented afterwards that the lectures were informative and interesting, and said that no-one else had spoken to these young people about these issues before.

Almost everybody in North Yeniseysk is involved in the gold-mining industry. May these young people realise that their lives are more precious to God than any amount of gold.

OM’s role in the Church is to mobilise people to share the knowledge of Jesus and His love with every generation in every nation. OM pioneers and leads initiatives to redeem lives, rebuild communities and restore hope in over 110 countries.