On Sunday mornings I worship with a local fellowship of believers: Grace Church. Worshipping with Grace has been a bit different than what I was used to in the U.S. One obvious difference is the language. Straining to understand sermons or trying to piece together a word here or there takes a lot of energy, and for a service that usually lasts more than two hours, sometimes it’s just hard to concentrate.

But it’s exciting to worship with the believers at Grace.

For the past month the head pastor has taken time out of the beginning of each service to ask accountability questions of the church. The questions aren’t a surprise; they refer to a challenge or teaching from the previous week. Have you intentionally spent more time reading the Bible? What did that look like? How has God spoken to you? Do you have a list of unbelievers for whom you pray each day? Are you praying that God will arrange meeting s for you with the unbelievers in your life?

Wow. The pastor is asking the believers to be accountable to God’s word. It’s not a time to shame or condemn, but a time to share testimonies of how God works in the lives of those who obey his word. It’s exciting to listen to local believers share how God is speaking to them or using them to be a witness. How would your life as a follower of Christ change if your brothers and sisters asked you, “What has God commanded you to do?” and, “Did you do it?”

God has given believers a great gift: accountability in the fellowship of the body of Christ. How much truer will worship be among those who know their God is alive because they work with him in obedience to his word?

Shawn B. 

I have now been in the beautiful city of Ufa for 6 weeks and 2 days. It is a weird feeling being gone this long in a completely different country.  On average, it takes 21 days to condition an action into becoming a habit; however, it takes approximately 6 months of not doing something habitually to break the said habit. The point being that I am beginning to feel at home through the conditioning of “doing” some of the same things every day, for example: coming back to the same apartment, going to the same university, going to coffee shops, grocery shopping, etc. 

Yet, there are things that will take quite a bit longer to get used to “not doing”, for example: not hearing English as the main language, not driving a car and instead taking a bus, the change in my pocket is not necessarily like change back home, when someone answers the phone they may use three different words for “hello” in procession before they begin a conversation, etc.  Some things are just different and may stay that way for a long time.

However, there are things that are not different. Just over a week ago, America celebrated Thanksgiving. My family gathered together this day, without me, and did their normal routine of giving thanks to God, eating wonderful food, and blessing the conversation with joy and thanksgiving.  

Some of the Americans I have met here, all decided to do the very same thing.  We all gathered together on that day and pursued a normal routine of giving thanks to God, eating wonderful food, and being blessed by the fact that whether we were back in the states or here in Ufa or in any other part of the world we still give thanks to the One who deserves it all.

Kevin S.