The Family of God – A Journey to Kyrgyzstan

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“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). It is wonderful to know that as children of the Most High from all over the world, we belong to His great family. Through the love in Christ, we may extend a hand to one another—both spiritually and materially. Together with some brothers from the congregation in Cloppenburg, we therefore embarked on a journey to Kyrgyzstan to visit our brothers and sisters there and to support them spiritually and financially.

destination

Our journey began on March 4, 2022. I was delighted to spend ten days in the company of my brothers Viktor Folz, Waldemar Maier, Nikolai Wall, Viktor Witt, and Jakob Wassiljew. Our goal was, among other things, to teach the congregations on topics such as church work, church tools, church evangelism, and family. We experienced that these teachings were not only a blessing to the local members but also to us. Through preaching and simple fellowship, we were also able to encourage and edify one another.

Another goal was to provide financial support to churches in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, as well as to the pastors and missionaries who devotedly travel long distances to minister to these congregations. Some churches have rehabilitation centers where people can experience liberation from their addictions and begin a new life with Jesus Christ.

Community visits

The teachings took place in the Bishkek congregation, where we always felt the hospitality of our brothers and sisters. We also visited congregations such as Karabalta, Sokuluk, Belovodsk, Grigorievka, and Tokmak, where we ministered with God's Word.

The youth meeting of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan took place in Tokmak on March 8, 2022.

During this special service, we witnessed the work of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of the service, the congregation was shown a vision of white doves, as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, settling upon the young people in the hall. Following this, the responsible brothers decided to hold a special service concurrently with the youth meeting. Many young people repented, and ten were baptized with the Holy Spirit. All glory belongs to God!

The congregations and church services in Kyrgyzstan are very similar to ours. However, the country is 87% Muslim. In the 1990s, there wasn't a single club or community center in the city of Karabalta where the Gospel wasn't preached, Bishop Vladimir Matveyev told us. This changed, however, starting in 2000. The regulations gradually became stricter, so that nowadays one is only allowed to preach the Gospel in one's own church building.

Asking someone if they want to convert can be considered an offense and prosecuted as a crime. Therefore, the Christians in Kyrgyzstan proclaim the Gospel in a different way. They do this by providing people with material or practical support in Jesus' name. When people show interest and curiosity because of the help they receive from the church, the Christians invite them to church services where they can hear the Gospel.

A moving testimony

In a community in Kyrgyzstan, I met a brother who then shared his testimony with me: The brother's name was Ruslan (name changed), and he was a true Kyrgyz. Ruslan's parents were devoted to Islam, but also to shamanism. When Ruslan was 13 years old, he first heard about the God of the Bible. His older brother had once returned home from a sanatorium with a Christian magazine. When Ruslan then went to school, which at that time had been founded by Muslims to impart Islamic teachings to the students, he studied the Quran extensively, as did many others in his country. At 17, he was invited to a religious service one day. He accepted the invitation and was fascinated by the earnestness with which the brothers and sisters prayed. A call to repentance was made, and Ruslan did so.

From that day on, he regularly attended church, read the Bible, and was baptized shortly afterward. He had no idea then what problems his parents would cause him. These began after his baptism. His mother once tried to attack and kill the church's pastor with a knife. She searched the house for Bibles or other Christian magazines to burn.

Once, Ruslan borrowed a Bible from another brother to read and forgot it under his pillow. His mother found it and burned it. Another time, his mother came to the church building to smash the windows and harm the brothers who were gathered there. The brothers hid Ruslan in a room to protect him from his mother. When she entered the church building, she suddenly forgot all about what she had intended to do. Later, the mother told her son that she had tried to destroy everything from the outside, but had failed. She concluded that the building was bewitched.

When Ruslan was baptized with the Holy Spirit, his drunken father tried to kill him with a knife. When he failed, he beat him and threw him out of the house.

For the Kyrgyz, being a Christian is a disgrace, and that is precisely why the parents tried everything to forcibly change their son's mind and deny his faith in Jesus.

After some time, Ruslan also developed kidney disease and had to be hospitalized. Tired of the constant attacks from his parents and the discrimination from his classmates at college, he decided there, after three years as a Christian, to stop attending church for the time being. He lived a secular life until he was hospitalized again with the same illness and Brother David Peters visited him. He didn't reproach him for leaving the church, but invited him to prayer and encouraged him to return. "He's a wonderful person," Ruslan said as he told me how Brother David taught him Christian ethics and supported him in prayer early in the morning. By God's grace, Ruslan was welcomed back into the church.

A year later, he married a Kyrgyz woman named Dinara (name changed). Since Ruslan was the youngest in the family, Kyrgyz custom dictated that he take care of his parents. Therefore, he and his wife moved back in with his parents. Amidst these difficult circumstances, Dinara gave birth to their first child.

Some time later, Ruslan's niece became interested in the Christian faith. Dinara gave her a Christian tract. She read it until she fell asleep late that evening. When the women in the house found the booklet with the sleeping niece, they began to beat and choke Dinara. She managed to escape with her baby in her arms. Ruslan and Dinara decided to move elsewhere to avoid such hostility. But finally, after many years of estrangement, they re-established contact with the parents and hoped to be a beacon of hope for them, so that they too might one day come to the truth. Despite negative prognoses from various doctors, the couple now has four children.

When I heard this testimony, I was once again amazed to see how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of Christians worldwide, regardless of background or upbringing. When we knelt with the brothers and sisters from Kyrgyzstan, as children of the Most High, and prayed to our Father in Heaven, it was the high point of this journey for me personally. For Jesus said in his high priestly prayer: “And I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23). Through this unity as God’s great family, Jesus wants to build His church. Yes, the family of God in unity with our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ—that is the strength in these difficult times.

We thank the Lord for his protection and the many blessed hours on our journey.

Vitali Müller,
Municipality of Cloppenburg

 

More information about the project and the opportunity to donate:

https://cdh-stephanus.org/kirgisistan/