Christmas News...

[CarlaSun@aol.com]

Dear prayer partners,

I know that these updates have not been coming very regularly lately.  Life 
seems to be keeping us running.  Just this month Chuck and I were able to 
travel to the town of Ulyanovsk.  This is a about 600 miles East of Moscow, 
over on the Volga river.  A group of people from Ulyanovsk contacted us about 
becoming a part of the Church of the Nazarene.  We had a great time visiting 
with these people, having a Bible study with them and Chuck leading them in 
communion.  They've been meeting together for nearly 3 years, studying the 
Word together.  However, they have the desire to be a part of a larger church 
organization.  When Chuck asked them each individually if they wanted to join 
the church, they responded that they did.  They've been studying the manual 
and what we believe.  They are working on their official registration as a 
Nazarene Church in their town.

After visiting with them we went to Armenia to meet with Karen, the young man 
that wants to help us begin our work there.  He is a wonderful Christian who 
is very dedicated to trying to begin our work there.  While things are better 
in Armenia than they were a number of years ago, they are still difficult.  
Almost no one in the country has heat, and they've lived this way for nearly 
10 years.  They also only have running water for a couple of hours each day 
and there is never any hot water.  At night the city of Yerevan is full of 
smoke as people use wood-burning stoves to heat their apartments.  The 
botanical gardens of Yerevan used to have 3000 trees and we were told that 
there are now only 500 as people have cut them down to heat their apartments. 
 We met with a group of people that live in a hostel.  They started a church 
in their hostel a couple of years ago.  We worshiped with this group of 60 
people in a cold, dimly lit hallway.  It didn't seem to bother them -- they 
were just praising the Lord.  Karen helped this group begin -- and is now 
helping us.  He will be moving to the town of Gumri (near the epicenter of 
the 1988 earthquake) to begin the work.  Please keep him in your prayers.

In a little under an hour we will be leaving for Kyiv where we will celebrate 
the New Year with our Christmas brothers and sisters there.  We are looking 
forward to that time.

Please keep our churches in your prayers.  The holidays here last until 
January 7.  Many of our churches have not yet celebrated Christmas.

Thanks so much for your prayer support.

Chuck and Carla Sunberg