This weekend our global partners at Samara United Methodist Church are celebrating 30 years of being a registered church in Russia. The relationship between HPCUMC and SUMC began in 1996 with our first visit to Samara. I’m excited to be able to share an update from Pastor Natalia about the new ministry initiative “A Place of Kindness” that started this spring. This ministry is a great example about how people can be formed by community as we grow in our faith and relationship with God and each other.
Dear brothers and sisters of Hyde Park Community UMC,
Greetings and Peace to You in the name of Jesus our friend and liberating Lord!
I am writing to tell you about our ministry to the underprivileged people, the ministry that we had planned for some time and told you about. As you know, we have had “Helping Hand” soup kitchen ministry for about 10 years now every Sunday. We cook, hand out hot meals, give people clothes, tableware, toiletry and hygiene items, and cleaning products. Before the pandemic the feeding ministry was accompanied with a sermon. Thus, we had an idea to have separate meetings where we could privately talk to people and have meaningful conversation in church building. We called this ministry “A Place of Kindness”.
Following the events of 24th of February, where we were faced with a military conflict with Ukraine, we felt absolutely desperate. Everything seemed meaningless, we asked ourselves whether it is reasonable to initiate this ministry. However, after some time of planning and praying, a small team started this ministry in March, we handed out invitations indicating the format of the meetings, that is a place to talk, study Bible, sing praise and eat together.
During the first weeks not that many people were coming, but we continued to pray and people started to join and be more active. They were no longer passively listening to the sermon, but participated in discussions, started comparing and applying some ideas to their lives. Sometimes we watched Christian movies and then discussed them, we started to pray together, and people were open to share and talk about their struggles and concerns.
Thanks to your financial help, we were able to cook full meals, to share books about Jesus Christ, and to fulfill some personal needs of the guests. Now we pray and plan to reach more people with this ministry. We thank you for the support of this undertaking, for the money and prayers for us.
God bless!
Pastor Natalia and the team of “A place of kindness”