Willi Daiker teaching seminars in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Here is a short report about the my trip.

Beginning of April I taught the first seminar in Almaty. At this first seminar we did not have so many participants, I guess the local preparation should have been better, but we still had some key leaders at the seminar and that opened an important door. On Sunday I visited and preached in several churches, it was especially encouraging to be in a Kazakh church. As you know, I grew up in Kazakhstan but at that time there were no Kazakh churches and almost no Kazakh believers. It was a very good experience, they showed great interest in the seminar.

Later I went to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The preparation here was much better. I taught the seminar on two evenings and we had 120 participants! They were very interested and some came from quite a long distance. The seminar started on Sunday evening, but before that I had to preach in two churches!

This was Sunday morning in a Kyrgyz church, great experience!

I even took a picture with the worship group, see below:

During the morning service suddenly a policemen came into the church and sat down during my preaching. I did not know that, the pastor told me later. A couple of years ago new religious laws were passed in Kazakhstan and in Kyrgyzstan as well, so it was actually illegal for me to preach and to teach a seminar without special permission. The pastor was a little worried, but he is a brave man. So far nothing happened, the funny thing is that the policeman later has sent a message to the pastor saying that he liked the service. 🙂

As already mentioned, the seminar was very well attended.

After the seminar in Bishkek I returned to Almaty and met with the leaders of the Alliance, which represents the churches in all the Stans. They invited me back in June to their conference, which is taking place only once in four years. To this conference pastors will come from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, Tatarstan, Turkmenistan, China, Mongolia, Karakalpakstan, 
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan), so it is great opportunity and privilege. In most of these countries Christians are being persecuted, so this conference is not being publicised of course. I agreed to come June 11-16 and will teach the seminar in the mornings during three days. 

So it was a great time, thank you for your prayers!