My wife and I have two precious daughters, the oldest is already attending college.  In 2004, God gave me a promise that we would also have a son.  By the grace of our loving God, in March 2019, He gave us that precious gift  – our long awaited son Ansar came to this world! We are so grateful to the Lord.

For a number of years, our Kazakh Fellowship was under the umbrella of the Word of Life’s Russian speaking church. In the Fall of 2019, I was being led by the Spirit of God to step out and enter into a new phase of ministry.  Some of the Kazakh and Russian fellows joined me and a new Christian Kazakh Fellowship was founded.  That was a historical moment for us all.  Prior to this, the vision I carried in my heart to see Kazakh people being saved and discipled through their own language and culture seemed to be “dead”.  But that was not in God’s plan.  In His time, He resurrects His own plans and purposes.

My story of stepping out of the denominational boat and walking by faith on top of the water may sound very encouraging to some of you, but it is not without a cost to self.

During the last seven years I had been in a desperate situation in my ministry and I was ready to quit. It was like, you don’t see anything ahead of you; nothing was happening in ministry; nobody was getting saved, healed and delivered; the church members were occupied with and distracted by the worries of this world.   It was so discouraging and demotivating! But there was one thing I wasn’t ready to quit: Praying and having devotional time with the Lord.

Here in Kazakhstan we have great steppes, which are expansive mountain plateaus with valleys in between. During the summer season I used to go up to a nearby steppe.  There I would seek the Lord and  pray while fasting. Sometimes I would be praying for 3-6 hours, desperately asking God to show me the way.  One day, while I was praying as usual and seeking His face, the Holy Spirit told me clearly: “You are so impatient, wait on my time”.

A few times I felt the Lord speak to me about moving out of the local church where I was assistant Pastor and leader of the Kazakh fellowship, and gradually I began to be confident in my heart it was from Him.  A couple of months later I met a Korean minister at a Pastor’s retreat in Almaty. She was prophesying to me that change was coming and that I would see the power of God be manifest.  I received it by faith and returned to my city. Two months after this prophesy, during another leadership gathering I met other anointed ministers from the U.S.A. and the U.K. They prayed for me and I was told that something was about to happen and I would see the Power of God in the ministry I had been doing.

The next day as I was praying in my prayer room in the church, suddenly a strong presence of God came upon me.  I was wrapped in His love and found myself lying on the floor, crying out and experiencing His love. I was crying for more two hours and couldn’t even get back up on my feet.  After that experience, something started happening. The manifest presence of the Lord began to be visible in our Kazakh ministry.  Salvation and hunger for the Word of God took place; people were  physically healed from diseases and freed from demonic bondage.

TESTIMONIES FROM PEOPLE

Below are three praise reports from our ministry, but there are many more.

My assistance’s wife had been diagnosed with spinal cancer.  She underwent surgery and chemo therapy, but it didn’t help much. The doctors didn’t give her any hope of recovery. We kept praying and interceding—and the Lord healed her!  After her healing, she went back to the doctor and ask to be tested, and the medical professionals confirmed she was totally  healed. She is doing great and is now serving the Lord with us!

An older man who is the brother of one of our sisters in the church had developed gangrene in his right leg from the knee to the toe.  He had been told by  his doctor that his leg needed to be amputated, otherwise he would die. His sister asked us to visit him and pray for him, but we were not able to get there, so we prayed over a piece of cloth and sent it with her to do what the disciples did in the Book of Acts.  She placed the cloth on his leg and prayed. Two weeks later we received a message that this old man’s leg was healed, the gangrene was gone and he had turned his heart to Christ. He had heard about Jesus many times before, but had refused the Gospel.  When the miracle happened, he could resist no longer.

Recently, a young Kazakh man attended our home group.  He had an infection in his inner ear, and the pus was seeping into his brain. Every morning when he woke up the pain caused him to take strong pain pills. When we prayed for him he felt heat radiating in his inner ear and into his brain, and suddenly pus began flowing out of his ear.  That night he slept very well, and when he woke up the pain was gone.  He needed no more pain pills!  After one month he visited his doctor who told him he did not need any surgery because the infection was gone and his ear was perfectly okay. He was deeply impacted by the Power of God, and although he did not repent right away, this miracle made him think seriously about who Isa (Jesus) really is. He is in the process of coming to know Jesus Christ.

THE VISION OF THE NEW CHURCH

As mentioned above, in October 2019, by the grace of God we planted a new Kazakh church and  ministry which we believe will reach people throughout Kazakhstan and beyond its borders.

• Our vision and passion is to preach the Gospel and raise up a new generation of Jesus’ disciples who will go out and spread the Kingdom of God in our nation.
• Our strategy is to partner and align with other Kazakh churches, home churches or fellowships for the sake of the Gospel.
• We gather regularly with our Kazakh believers for teaching, encouragement, prayer and fellowship and building networks with other Kazakh pastors. In January we had a great fellowship meeting in Nursultan (former Astana).
• We pursue the goal to spread the Kingdom of God, not denominations or church franchises, but cultivate God’s Kingdom culture so that our nation would be transformed from the inside–out by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Truth of the Word of God.
• We believe this cannot be accomplished without the manifestation of God’s power by the Holy Spirit.

FROM R.K.’S CORNER

The timing of the Lord never ceases to amaze me: In 2003, John Macintosh, a Canadian missionary who at the time was serving in Russia with the ministry Athletes in Action visited us in our home in Florida.  He told us about Yermek Balykbekov, a young Kazakh he had met in Moscow who had four years prior come to faith in Jesus.  He had forsaken a potentially lucrative future in Martial Arts to follow God’s call to return to his homeland and reach his people for Jesus Christ. We were moved by the obedience and faith of this young man, and decided to get on the ground floor with him by sponsoring him and his new ministry.

Tomorrow, 17 years later, just at the time we are publishing this fresh update on Yermek and his life and ministry, John Mackintosh “happens” to be in South Florida and will again be visiting our home… for the second time!

Thanks to our faithful partners’ donations and prayers, we have been able for almost two decades to walk alongside Yermek in helping support his life and ministry.  To learn more about him and follow his and his fellowship’s journey of faith, please copy and paste the three links below:

https://www.bridgeinternational.org/pdf/october2011.pdf

https://www.bridgeinternational.org/2014/07/

https://www.bridgeinternational.org/2017/07/

Please mark your donations  8342 Kazakh Workers 2

P.S. Due to security reasons, we have blocked some of the believers’ faces.