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The Value of Sponsoring Leaders

The Value of Sponsoring Leaders

The availability of faithful Gospel workers is essential for the task of advancing world mission. SGA’s mission strategy involves supporting national believers who are willing and ready to serve the Lord.

With your partnership, SGA supports two hundred missionary families witnessing in the heartlands of Orthodox Eastern Europe, Islam-dominated Central Asia, and in the deep spiritual darkness of Far East Russia.

Many forsake the comforts of a home church and a good quality of life, to go to those in difficult areas who need to hear the Good News.

One couple who made that choice are Valery and Valentina Sidorenko. Immediately after their wedding thirty-six years ago they moved from the warm Black Sea region to Yakutia, East Russia, the coldest territory in the world.   

Many advised them not to go but Valery and Valentina had settled this issue with the Lord before they got married. They are the first to bring the Gospel to this region, and as a result the first Sakha or ‘Yakut’ people came to faith in 1991.

Those first three believers became zealous evangelists, and today there are over eight hundred believers, many of them going out to evangelize and witness to people who are hearing the Gospel for the first time.

Valery has been described as a ‘patriarchal figure’ for Gospel advancement in Yakutia.  He has an indomitable spirit which shines through his reports:

‘The frost has engulfed Yakutsk since early December. The average temperature here is minus 45. Today we had minus 56. The fog hangs in the city day and night. People are tired of it all, but what can we do?…  As we say, “It’s wonderful Yakutian weather, so it cannot be a reason to stop ministries!”’

Valery and Valentina are included in SGA’s Leadership Support programme, so your prayerful and financial investment in the lives of such missionaries plays a vital part in planting Gospel churches in unreached places across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Far East Russia. 

Praise God for 200 missionary families supported by SGA. Pray that they will be used by God to advance the Gospel.

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