Dear friends,

         Hope that you have had a nice summer and that God's Sonshine has been warming your heart and soul. Well, we are rejoicing in the Lord, as we finally have been able to put up the big tent and have meetings. It feels of course like a great victory and I believe you rejoice with us, as we all know the great need for reaching the lost masses in Russia. It is so nice to be able to work like we are used to, the way we know how to work. Now also the brethren of the church here, that has been supporting us in different aspects all this past year and a half, finally they get to see how we really function. For them it was probably difficult to understand why we spend so much time and efforts in making benches, tent poles, etc. But now they are all excited about it and everybody really like the tent. Several of the area come to help us evangelizing. We do the meetings Russian style, where you have two or three people share a shorter message and then pastor or responsible share last. It works pretty good. We got the permission for our first big tent lot here in Koleshovka, a suburb of the city of Azov, only 30 km from Bataisk. The Salvation Army has been active here for about 3 years and are quite excepted among the people. They helped us get the lot and are also helping in the meetings. Koleshovka an excellent place for us to preach. The city grew around a factory that makes baby-food but as so many other industries in Russia, it is now only functioning at a tenth of it's capacity.
         We have a little less than a hundred people attending the meetings every night, among kids, youth and older. We had hoped for more, but we cannot really take care of more, as our team is only 10 people and they all need personal attention. Especially since it's the first time they attend a Christian Evangelical meeting. Other full-time workers here encourages us and explain that it is like this in Russia. If anyone wants to talk about revival in Russia, I guess it is pretty obvious that it hasn't really started yet. Maybe we can compare it with our little garden in Bataisk that had potatoes and vegetables there, we had to do a lot of digging before we could even start to think about sowing anything (the garden was not our main activity, of course, but sometimes we did for fun).
         It is started to get a little cooler, the autumn seems to get close as it is starting to rain and it gets real windy sometimes. We worry about the tent, but it stands almost unmovable, our minds and hearts probably are more troubled as we start praying for God's protection. People come just to look at the tent because it really looks good. However we've run into a small problem because the cords holding it down, by the side poles, are a real temptation for the Russians as you cannot buy such cord here. After two days of campaign, we discovered that 11 cords were missing, and we immediately started to be more on guard, especially right by the end of the meetings, when there is lots of people and our attention is mostly on witnessing. It is uncomfortable to have to have things that other people look at and desire and it is definitely not good to look at our visitors with suspicion, thinking that maybe they will steel. We are here to win precious souls, not to make an earthly kingdom. Praise God, we had enough cord to exchange the ones missing.
         Next month we hope to celebrate the first wedding in our small Russian team. The young couple wanted to get married already a year ago but I asked them to wait until we have the tent up. So now the long awaited day is coming for brother Aleksei and sister Luba, on the 19th of September here in Kuleshovka. We bought them a small camper and Alksei is remodeling it, as the floor was a little worn out, but it has Russian plates already so we don't have to worry about that. The 19th of August, I was surprised to see so many people in the tent; the rumor had went that the wedding was this month.
         Hopefully we will have one more campaign before the winter. The team will be staying in the same house one more winter and sister Dina will be doing PR-work in the area around Rostov to get permission for different lots for next summer. We are planning to visit some churches in Italy, see son is still there. We hope to take him to Germany also, were he can work and de self-sufficient. There is also a possibility of sending a team to Honduras and we would like to just encourage the team leaders in El Salvador and see if we can help in anything.
         You can reach us though E-mail or fax as we go to Rostov once a week to pick them up. Our address on the letterhead can be written in Russian or English and the mail gets to us with no problem (except do not send checks in the mail). May God richly bless you with His love and Holy presence.

Because He lives..
Pedro B. Viaud.