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Street Kids Ministry index:
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Listen to Marina in her own words.
MP3 audio 1.5mB Editor's note: The audio file was recorded while we were traveling from an orphanage in Dutuli, Bashkortostan in September 2007. Marina was our translator. The reports about the Street Kids Ministry are all written by Marina with only minor editing on our part. |
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A Jewish girl’s way to a passionate evangelist ... God used several weeks in rain, the lack of money and despair to persuade the stubborn Russian-Jewish 21 years old Marina to climb in the car of “frightening” Finnish Christians and that way to find the way to learn to know Him. Today Marina herself is like a firework lighted by the Christ when she witnesses and evangelizes both street children and narkomans. Ufa is a city in the Bashkirian
republic in Russia near the Ural mountains with 1.4
Muddy field slaves ... “But we were bitterly cheated”, tells Marina Shulman who belongs to the little Jewish minority in Ufa. “Even though we worked 10 hours long days, there were days when we didn’t earn even that 12 euros that we had to pay for food and a bed in a barrack. And upon all this it was raining and raining. We were desperate and telephoned home and to our friends and asked for help but they all thought that we complained for nothing.” After a months work the girls decided to use their day off and make a journey to Jyväskylä. At first they walked 7 kilometers to Suonenjoki and then they stood by the road to Jyväskylä and lifted up their thumbs. Only a few cars passed them and didn’t stop to pick up them. And it started to rain again. The girls went under a tree and Marina remembered that she had in her pocket a Jewish prayer for travellers. It was in Hebrew and Marina had to concentrate to understand the text. In the prayer they begged: "God, send good people to our way”, Marina tells. “Immediately when I stopped to pray, the rain ended. We lifted up our thumbs again and right after that a dwelling car (asunto auto) stopped beside us. We couldn’t believe our eyes – dwelling cars don’t stop! But the door of this car opened and glad voices asked us to climb in the car.” Help, Christians! ... There were lot of smiling people in the car who presented themselves: “Hello, we are Christians and we are on our way to a spiritual meeting.” Marina got terrified and wanted instantly to jump out of the car. Everything she had been told about Christians was negative. A Jew was absolutely not allowed to read the New Testament; she was not allowed to go near a church and not have anything to do with Christians. “I had always thought
that Christians are either liars or badly mistaken”, Marina says. “And now
I was in the same car with them and my only reaction
The Finnish travellers told that they used to visit regularly Russian prison and evangelize there. “Because I had, too, visited prisons in three years time, we had a common topic to discuss”, Marina tells. The girls told also about the strawberry farm and their situation there. Instead of pity the Finns started to call in order to find a new job for them. When they came to Jyväskylä, they changed telephone numbers. In spite of that Marina did not believe that it would lead to something. Birthday surprise ... Her astonishment was big when the Finns drove to the farm three days later, on Marina’s birthday. They picked up the girls and took them to their home, where they instead of a barrack could sleep in a cosy room with soft beds. “I cried that night because I was so happy”, Marina remembers. “It felt unbelievable that someone cared this much about us.” Even though Marina had already in the beginning told her hosts that she is a Jew and that she will refuse from all kind of evangelization, her friend was interested to hear of God. And because the friend didn’t speak anything but Russian, Marina who could English had to be the interpreter. “So I didn’t only have to listen the gospel but even speak it loud with my own mouth”, Marina tells. The girls stayed two weeks in this Finnish home and made some window cleaning and other things to their neighbours and friends so that they could have enough money for the journey home. During these weeks they heard daily about the God who loves us so much that He offered His only son to save us from our sins. “It touched my heart”, admits Marina. Secret reading ... After returning home to Ufa Marina wanted to know the truth. At the first time in her life she opened the New Testament and read it so that her family didn’t see. “I thought that I will read it and testify that this is not true”, confesses Marina. “But instead of that I saw that Jesus Christ really is the Messiah, he is the son of God. Everything I read fit in the Old Testament prophecies.” Little by
little Marina got courage enough to go into a protestant congregation.
When she came to the church they was a meeting for young people and she
saw in everybody’s faces the same joy the Finns had and that had impressed
her so much. “It was a real joy you could see, nothing a man can make up
himself. I wanted so much to know from where they did get that joy.” Marina continued to read the New Testament and understood that Jesus was even her Saviour and Messiah. So one day she just bowed to her knees outside her home door and prayed from the bottom of her heart that Jesus would forgive her sins and take her as His own. “By that time I didn’t know anything about baptism in the Holy Spirit but it was just what happened to me. I was thirsty about the word of God. In half a year I read through the whole Bible.” Agony about souls ... God led strong believers and evangelists to Marina, even Russian and from foreign countries, and she learned a lot from them. “I started to think about all people around me. I walked on the streets, looked at them and just cried for all them who were going to the hell. I begged Jesus for help and asked what I could do.” God led Marina in contact with a group that made Friday for Christ -type outreaches on the streets. A man gave Marina a book called “One Thing That You Cannot Do In Heaven” and told her that this book would change Marina’s life. “I read it all the evening and through the night – I just couldn’t stop. I realized that evangelization is the most important thing we can do here on the earth. It is the only thing that matters even after a thousand years. In the heaven are no sinners that we can evangelize!” After that Marina has known what to do. She evangelizes in her home city and in the Muslim villages near Ufa. She evangelizes in St Petersburg as a translator for an American team, in universities, at the campus area, on the streets. And last spring when she was in Finland she evangelized in Friday for Christ -outreaches, in Kallvik, on OW House. And during her 52 hours journey by train from St Petersburg home to Ufa. For me Marina is a very living witness about that “…if their (= the Jews) fall is riches for the world, how much more their fullness – it is life from the dead.” (Rom. 11:12, 15).
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million
inhabitants, most of them Muslims. In summer 2005
was
to run away and fast. Luckily my wise friend told me to be quiet and sit
down to my place.”