Today, my wife Kristen and I are in Moscow. I am writing this from the first McDonalds that ever opened here in Russia back in the early 90?s. It has free Wi-Fi and better food than the States, so we are hanging out here for a while with my friend Alisher and getting some work done on the internet.

We left the U.S. over a week ago and stayed in Moscow for a day before catching a 6-hour flight to the Siberian city of Chita just north of Mongolia and China. Our purpose for going was to speak at a Million Leader?s Mandate leadership conference initiated by John Maxwell?s EQUIP organization. We have spoken at these conferences before, but this was the first time Kristen and I have been to this location. So we arrived in Chita on Thursday for the Friday and Saturday conference, which gave us some time to acclimate to yet another major time change and to get to know the other speaker at the conference, David Ford, a business man from the States whom I had never met.

David turned out to be a great guy and we really had a good time teaching together at the conference. We ended the first day by personally praying with each leader for the gifts and purpose on their lives (which took a while considering there were several hundred leaders in attendance). It was a wonderful time of prayer and I was happy to have a new ministry team-mate in David.

On the second day of the conference, I spoke about the reason for raising leaders up (which I will write about in a future entry on this blog). I talked about the recent past of the persecuted church in Russia and what that may mean for their future. David finished the day and the conference with a powerful lesson on facing your giant that evoked quite a positive response from the various leaders in attendance.

Sunday, David visited one of the village churches to encourage and fellowship with them. I spoke at the host church which averages about 1000 people, and we saw five people make decisions to follow Christ.

Monday we flew back to Moscow where we will be for another day still, when we will hop a train for our base city here in Russia, Syktyvkar. Yesterday, we interviewed a new interpreter and are happy to announce that the newest member of the treeoflife team is a young lady named Alyona. She will handle some administration duties for us as well as day-to-day verbal and written translation work.

All in all it has been a very productive week: new relationships started, leaders equipped, new followers of Jesus, and most importantly God was glorified.