A Children's Christmas Festival in -44 degrees!

After studying at the OM Russia Discipleship Centre last year, Pasha married Natasha and together they moved to the village of Cheremnoe in order to start a church. They live there in the small church building, but at the moment there are no church members.

Already when they moved there in the autumn, Pasha and Natasha were thinking about how to reach the children in the village, and they decided to organise a Christmas festival. At that time they didn’t know how to find a team of people to help them, where the finances would come from, or even where in the town they could hold this Christmas festival. They started praying about this idea, and also asked other churches in the area to pray too.

OM Russia agreed to help sponsor the event and Pasha and Natasha went ahead in faith and organised the Christmas festival on 7th January, which is Orthodox Christmas and a public holiday in Russia. But, it seemed right until the last minute, that the festival might not actually take place.

At first, the mayor refused to let them use the town hall, but then the Director of the school agreed to let them use the school on the condition that they wouldn’t invite the children to join their ‘sect’. They had also invited a team of helpers to come from the city of Novosibirsk (5 hours drive away) but it remained unclear until the very last day exactly who would come and if anyone would come at all.

The day before the festival the temperature outside was - 44 degrees Celsius, and the driver refused to drive the team of helpers from Novosibirsk unless the temperature was warmer than 30 degrees. They prayed for warmer weather, but God didn’t answer that prayer, at least not in the way they had asked. In the end, despite the freezing temperatures, and many people advising them not to risk going, 9 helpers from different churches in Novosibirsk set off to come to Cheremnoe. Of course, predictably, the car broke down on the way, and the team got very cold as the driver tried to fix the car. Pasha and Natasha started to wonder if the team should go any further – wouldn’t it be better for them to go home?

After many stops and starts, eventually the car and the team arrived in the nearby town, and left the car in a local garage. Pasha picked up the team in a taxi and took them on to Cheremnoe.

But, would the children come out in such cold weather? Would their parents let them come? And, having spent precious resources getting the team to Cheremnoe, how disappointing would it be for them if no children turned up? Had they really gone to this effort all for nothing?

Half an hour before the programme was due to start, miraculously children and their parents started to turn up. They arrived from both near and far, and in the end there were 31 children and a selection of parents, grandparents and teachers too. The programme went well, and Biblical truths were presented by the team dressed up as characters from a well-known Russian TV show. For three hours the children were singing, playing games and doing crafts, and of course in the end they were very excited to receive Christmas presents.

This was the first time such an event had been held in this village, and definitely not the last. Despite freezing temperatures, hearts were warmed by the Christmas story among the children and adults in the small Siberian village of Cheremnoe.