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Building Churches - Bricks and Mortar, Flesh and Blood
Building Churches - Bricks and Mortar, Flesh and Blood
Meet Vladimir, a student from Siberia studying at Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary (MECS) in Russia.
Vladimir shared his testimony with us, saying that he grew up in a happy family … until tragedy struck. His brother was murdered, then a car struck and killed his mother, and then, his father, who could not cope with the deaths, gave Vladimir up. He went to live with a foster family. The foster father was a drunk and abused Vladimir badly. So, Vladimir fled and began living on the streets, begging for food and sleeping restlessly at night in the brutal Siberian cold, with temperatures reaching -30F. He clung to a heated water pipe in an abandoned building to survive.
Total strangers from a construction site took pity on him and invited him to join their work team. They were building a Protestant church. The crew shared the Gospel with him, and he accepted the Lord. The missionary crew “adopted” him into the church family. There he met his future wife. They got married in 2006 and today have four kids.
Because of this experience, Vladimir felt called to build churches, so he attended school and received his degree in construction. But with his newfound faith, he realized that a church was not just a building but people. So, he enrolled at MECS to pursue a divinity degree. Today, he’s a student and pastors a church he built himself. Vladimir feels called to minister to the Chinese people someday. Vladimir says, “I know that I will build churches in China – both buildings and people!”