Allpoints proudly support Joan Althaus, who is a full time international missionary in Central Asia.  Joan is sponsored by The Mission Society. 

You can support Joan by making a donation using the button below, then send an email to direct the donation to Joan.  Or you can make a donation using The Mission Society using her mission number 0430.

Message From Joan

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your continued support. I feel your prayers and your kind thoughts, and I use them daily as I work with the people of Central Asia. Your financial support is making possible the fulfillment of God’s work here. Just as Paul’s friends were blessed when they supported him, you are blessed by your support of my ministry. The needs, both spiritual and financial, are great here, but the rewards are also great.

My major ministry continues to be work with the “Ray of Hope” day care for special needs children. Last month, they invited me to join them on a day trip to Astana, the capital of Central Asia. I was a bit concerned because I would be the only non-native Russian speaker. However, the whole trip became an unbelievable blessing. We started about 0830 with 20 children and 12 adults in a bus for the 3 ½ hr ride to Astana. Before we arrived home at 2230, we had toured the aquarium, gone up in the tower that gives a panoramic view of the city, taken a driving tour of the city, toured the Museum of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and eaten dinner in a local restaurant. In all that time, there was no misbehavior, no crying, no hitting, no running, no fighting, no arguing, and no comments about the food. The children, who do have special needs, were perfectly well behaved. In fact, the manager of the restaurant was so impressed with their behavior, she gave everyone free candy and an ice cream cone. The major miracle of the trip occurred when the whole group of 32 jaywalked across a 6 lane street to and from the restaurant. Language was never an issue.

I continue to struggle as team treasurer. The previous treasurer, who returned to the States, had written instructions for the routine operations. However, I am finding that most of the operations are not routine. Any major renovations or repairs of our building are made in the summer, so for the last months, most requests have been for large amounts of money that are needed instantly. I am becoming better at translating the descriptions of expenditures, all of which are written in Russian (often with abbreviations). Money is received or spent as both tenge and dollars. Changing between them is not difficult. However, the value of the dollar as decreased almost 12% since January, so we must be especially careful of all our expenditures.

In my last newsletter, I spoke of believers south of here who are being persecuted. It continues. The church there was closed by the government several months ago. Later, the police repossessed the property, and in the process, severely beat the young man who lived there as caretaker. On Easter Sunday, 160 church members met in a hotel which was owned by a believer. The police raided the service and arrested the pastor. The police are calling in parents, pressuring children to renounce their faith and warning parents they could lose their parental rights if they continue to bring their children to Christianity. Did you think that any of these actions could be possible at your church on Easter Sunday? Would you have attended services if they had been possible?

These things are occurring today in many parts of the world – areas that do not have oil, so are seldom in the news. These people are our brothers and sisters in the family of Christ and they need our continuous prayers for their safety and their will to spread the Good News. Don’t stop praying !!

In the last week, there have been several interesting occurrences in Sergievka, a village about 300 miles north of Karaganda. A daughter church of Church of the Living Vine has been in Sergievka for over 5 years. Recently, a young mother (30-ish), started having cardiac problems. She was hospitalized and received medication. However, after she returned home, she died. One of my friends went up for the funeral along with a Kazakh couple. The Kazakh woman is a missionary who helped start the church and he is a pastor. The woman who died was ethnic Russian, but the Kazakh pastor was asked to preach her funeral. It so happened that the village Akim (Kazakh mayor) attended the funeral. He became very upset because the Kazakh pastor said that Christ was the savior of Kazakh’s and he called in the religious police and the KGB to find out what laws had been broken. Even though the Akim has vowed to force all Christians out of the village, the religious policeman said no laws had been broken and the KGB man said the Christians were good people and should be left alone.

The mother of the woman who died had also died of cardiac problems at an early age. However, the villagers think she died because she was cursed by the three black witches who live in the village. Incidentally, since there are black witches, there also are white witches who do good works.

Also in Sergievka, a woman living in a village about 60 miles from Sergievka recently contacted local Christians. She had had a satellite dish installed and over time had watched Christian TV programs and became a believer. She sent away for a Bible and started reading it. However, she ran into a problem. The Bible says believers should tithe, but since she was the only believer in her village, how was she going to tithe? Incidentally, she is a pensioner or a retired person and her income is very small. (No, I don’t know how she got the satellite dish.) Somehow, she connected with the church in Sergievka and plans are being developed so she can tithe. How far would you go to return to God what is His portion???

GOD IS SO GOOD !!!!

Last month, a group and team members and nationals visited the site of the gulag which is the origin of Karaganda. A gulag is a prison/concentration camp created by Stalin in the 1920’s. The Gulag Archipelago was the name of the system of several hundred camps located throughout Russia. It is also the name of the book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn which describes the system. The Karaganda camp, also known as “the Karlag” (Karaganda Lager or Camp) was started in the 1920’s and existed until 1953. It became the second largest of the camps and the people who are preserving it think at least one and one/half million people died there and the number is probably closer to two million. All that remains of the camp are some administration buildings and a small cemetery that represents all the unknown dead. In the front of the administration building, a prisoner orchestra played daily to drown out the screams of the prisoners who were being tortured in the basement. The cemetery is actually a small part of the children’s cemetery which stretched to the far horizon. Ultimately, the camp covered a territory as large as France and there were camps for men, for women, and for children. It is estimated that almost all the people in Karaganda over 40 years old had a family member in the camp. Most died there. Some of us prayed at the cemetery for the souls of all the people whom only God can identify.

On a much more mundane level, the weather has been very unusual this summer. At the end of June, we had several days of 90 degree temperatures. However, all of July was cool and rainy with few days reaching 80 and many days only in the 70’s. The good part of this is that the steppe is still green and gardens are producing bountifully. The fall and the winter will be their usual adventures.

As the summer ends, please pray for all our people who are traveling, going on or returning from vacations, coming to Kazakhstan to teach or to start a ministry, or visiting in country.

Continue to pray for all our soldiers who are in harm’s way, and for all people affected by warfare or terrorism.

And especially pray for all Muslims, whether terrorist or pacifist, who have no hope unless they come to believe Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. Their god does not love them and he is not honest in his dealings with them.

Doing His Work – together,

Joan

September Newsletter

It hasn’t been long since my last newsletter. However, September is the start of the Fall season and many things must occur before Winter. The major occurrence is turning on the heat in the city, on or about 15 October – regardless of the weather. Before this happens, many water pipes always must be repaired. Our heat is delivered by the city as hot water which is piped into each apartment and business building. Individual houses are heated with coal stoves.

That’s the good news. Meantime, there are frequent water outages from September into November for pipes that are known to be bad and others that burst when the water is turned on. In addition to that, many new buildings are going up and getting water to them often affects the neighboring area.

Surprisingly, some of the changes have been announced. For instance, water in the whole city, 500,000 people, would be out 12-13 September. It wasn’t. However, it was out for most of the city 19-23 September – without notification. Not having water is inconvenient, but not serious. Everyone stores water for drinking/cooking and also for toilets/ hygiene.

Not having electricity is not as much fun. No cooking, no evening reading, no warm water for baths, limited computer work and no Internet. There was no electricity 19-21 September during the day. And there are other outages scheduled within the next month.

Since the primary qualification for anyone on our team is “flexibility”, these times are just opportunities for sharing and “team building’. The morning conversation over coffee is not about the stock market or baseball, but what is out at your house??

If your life is feeling dull or unexciting, maybe God wants you to go to Central Asia or some other equally exciting part of the world. Have you asked Him?

In the midst of all this, school started. It begins on 1 September, regardless of the day of the week, with a ceremony called First Bell. All the children dress up and the teachers welcome the new and returning students. Our Christian school continues to give the children a strong basis in honesty, morality and ethics.

More activities also begin at Appletree House. This is our ministry to children at risk. They are not exactly homeless – they have a bed in a house. However, they do not have people who love them, take care of them, and keep them safe. This program started in 2000 as a feeding program. School officials notified us of children who were malnourished. It has been a common thought that any child was probably two years older than he looked, due to generally poor nutrition. So those who were identified as malnourished had serious problems. We fed them a hot lunch, with some meat, a salad, and a vitamin and a piece of fruit when we had them. The program had to move out of the pediatric hospital where it was started after we tried to include Bible stories.

We now have our own house. We feed two groups a hot lunch each day and provide a safe place for them to play, read, draw or paint, dance, and generally be kids. There are Sunday School type activities and Bible stories. We have a full time psychologist on staff to help with personal or social issues. Many of the children come from homes with a single parent and an environment of drugs and/or alcohol or abuse. We have girls who originally were from unwed mothers and they are now unwed mothers bringing their own children to our safe place.

We have an exciting opportunity to improve this program by networking with others who have similar and related programs. In November, a seminar, “The ‘Comission for Children at Risk” will be presented in Moscow. It will include sessions on ministry/drop-in centers and mentoring, family centers and foster care programs, independent living centers and technical schools. Svetlana, the director of Appletree, will be attending with me and she is excited beyond words for the opportunity to spend time with her peers. In order for this to happen, we each need to raise $800. This includes transportation, meals and housing for the five day seminar. If you are willing to help with this, please send your contribution to: “The Mission Society”, PO Box 922637, Norcross, GA 30010-2637 and put “Althaus support, Children’s ministries” on the “TO” line.

In addition to all this excitement, on 18 September, we had our first snow flurries – a small reminder of the months to come. Then on the 19th, an even bigger surprise. The government decided that all foreigners had to go to their country of citizenship to get new visas. This means that one family on our team had to leave before 1 October, another person before 1 November, and I must leave before 10 November. We don’t think this is a new law. However, laws here can be enacted but not enforced until someone wants to. It is also possible that if enough people complain, the law will no longer be enforced. In the meantime, I will be arriving in Atlanta on 9 October for several weeks of mailing my passport back and forth for both the Kazakh visa and a Russian visa for the Moscow trip.

In the last several months, many of the major streets in town have been repaved. This is often done annually, but this year the process has improved so that the pavement may last through the winter. Many towns in the States spend large amounts of money building “speed bumps”. Nature here provides us with “speed dips” otherwise known as potholes. They both slow traffic. The new roads, with new lane stripes are providing many instant drag strips. The lane lines are OK if convenient, but if there is space and three cars want to turn left simultaneously, go for it. Previously, there have been frequent “fender bender” accidents, but since speeds have increased, more serious 2-3 car accidents are occurring. This is one more reason why team members who own a car, also have a native driver who understands the complexities of this experience.

In the future activities category, all the people from Norcross who are living in Asia will be meeting in Beijing, China, next March. It should be an exciting time to meet new friends, learn about the needs and experiences of other teams, and experience spiritual growth and renewal. The cost for this will be $1000 for plane tickets and $200 for room and board.

In the midst of all this change, please pray for:

• Good weather while our utilities are being prepared/repaired for winter
• Safe travel for members of our team who are coming from or going to the States
• Spiritual support for people in stressful situations or going to stressful places
• Financial aid to advance ministries that will help the people of Central Asia and all of Asia
• Improved health for several of our teammates struggling with colds and the flu
• Safety for anyone who has to drive or walk in Karaganda.

Continue to pray for God’s work that is being done in this and many other parts of the world. Despite ongoing efforts, the Kazakhs are termed an unreached people group with 1/10th of 1% of the population professing Christianity.

That’s about enough excitement for one month. I would be very happy to show my home to you if you want to share this unique experience.

Doing His Work – together

Joan Althaus

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