Email Update

This is our email update, that I thought I'd post here too for those of you who might not be signed up for my emails...
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Greetings Friends and Family!

We finally have some return plans, and while they could change they should have us back in Alaska the evening of October 2nd. We are talking about travel plans and have now firmed up our Michigan trip dates. We will be arriving in Michigan the evening of December 10th and staying through the 14th of January. Let us know soon if you think you might have a church, or group of interested friends to hear about our ministry!

Another update is that in the coming months we will be making a concerted effort to improve our communication with you. That should mean more newsletters, blog posts, etc. I hope to have a newsletter ready to mail out/post online by the time we return to Alaska! (A little hard to mail from here!)

Vicka continues her ladies outreaches and plans, on the 20th, to host a ladies "tea party". She also hopes to encourage the ladies to invite there un-churched friends. She appreciates your prayers for this outreach. I have continued my Sunday preaching and Wednesday night Bible study. If you take a look at our blog, you will see a couple of pictures of when we drove the church out to the Tundra for an open air service. We used that mini-bus I was working on a couple of months ago to get everyone out there. Of course, as is the way with Russian vehicles, I am again working on it this week! :-)

As I shared when we were preparing to come to Provideniya, one of our main goals was to encourage and counsel the church members with regards to the conflict that had been going on. Our talks with most seemed to go very well. I've been encouraging them to love, forgive, and forget the past offenses. Unfortunately, when I talked with the brother who left the church, I didn't feel much hope for his return. While he would recognize his faults, the faults and hurts from others were just too much for him to get over. Last week he was giving me a hand working on that "mini-bus", and when we were finished we sat down for tea. In our talking, we suddenly found ourselves talking about the church. Long story short, instead of focusing on the wrongs done to him and looking at forgiveness of those faults as "theory" rather than "practical", this time he responded differently. Instead of dismissing truths as too difficult for real life, he recognized them as what we need to strive towards. Simply put, he said "give it some more time and I think all will work out".

While this isn't quite the radical transformation I had hoped for when I first came, it was still a huge encouragement to me to see some baby steps made. Thank you for your continued prayer for him and the church!

That's about all for now. I have one more big announcement, but that merits its own email! :-)

Stay tuned! Thank you all for your prayers and support.

In Christ,

GJ & Vicka Mangione
SOAR International Ministries
-Provideniya, Russia-http://gjandvicka.blogspot.com <http://gjandvicka.blogspot.com/>