The Knotts Family

Below are two videos describing what has been happening in Chernigov. The first is a look at our ministry in the TB hospital and the second a video newsletter.

Check out one of our latest videos we translated by Pastor Mark Driscoll on Heaven and Hell.

Марк Дрисколл :: Рай и ад from In Lumine Media on Vimeo.

Here are some photos from last week as we spent 3 days with the kids in the local TB center.

Glad to announce that we recently sent JSB off to the printers. We hope to have the books in hand by the end of next month.

We had to find a new warehouse for storage and ended up renting a heated 70 square meter facility that has loading docks, forklifts and pallet jacks, is reasonably priced, is clean and dry, and shares it’s roof with an office supply store as well as logistics outfit that can fill large orders for us around the country.

We have already sold nearly half of the entire print run.

A few weeks ago we had some incredible weather and 9 folks from church were baptized. It was a great day with over 60 people together singing, eating barbecued chicken, playing volleyball, and celebrating salvation.

That is a chocolate milk river no one knows about.

Lev enjoyed the water, we couldn’t get him out of it.

Thanks Alyosha for the photos.

Thanks to this post yesterday by DG, I have had quite a few people contact us about some of our publishing projects! Thanks DG!

Check out this video some of our friends from the Halle Project did for us highlighting where we live and the vision of our church.

Hope you enjoy it.

After a prolonged delay in posting I am happy to announce that our latest newsletter is up. Hope you enjoy is.

You can download it here in PDF or view it embedded below.

Below is a two minute look into the conditions of the tuberculosis hospital we are currently working in and trying to improve.

We have 10 windows purchased and ready to be installed in the children’s bedrooms just as winter is setting in but thus far haven’t been able to install them. Unfortunately the workers who install windows are afraid of going to the hospital. They fear TB. Right now their is no work for these guys so it isn’t because they are busy, good money isn’t a good enough reason either.

This illustrates the social phobia of anyone or thing associated with the hospital.

We hope to begin a large scale reconstruction project later this year and should have more video documenting the project in Spring.

Pray we can get these windows installed before the winter ends!

Chernigov State Tuberculosis Hospital from jacob knotts on Vimeo.

The New York Times came out with an article twelve years ago on the growing problem of women from Ukraine being trafficked for the sex industry: CONTRABAND WOMEN — A special report.; Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women

This report details how women end up in the industry, what life is like within the industry, and how the social structures in place keep them powerless in most countries.

Ukraine is one of the worst countries in the world with women and girls being forced into this modern day slavery. With the Euro Cup 2012 quickly approaching, it will most assuredly be getting worse.

Unfortunately, I haven’t personally come across any ministries in Ukraine dealing with this problem. I am sure there are some, but none that I have heard of.

In Chernigov we personally came face to face with human trafficking of a different sort when we had 7 Indians stay in our church and shower in our home after being caught as they were being trafficked from India to Germany for 10,000 euro a person by the Russian Mafia. Chernigov is one of the main routes from Russia to the EU and hundreds of humans are trafficked each month through our city.

It is a serious problem. One that we as Christians must take more seriously.

Below is the funding request I put together for the Jesus Storybook Bible. We are super excited about this project. Our hope is to see this Russian version done by Spring and a Ukrainian version by the end of the year.

PDF JSBB_Project

Anya and I attended The Gospel Coalition’s regional conference hosted by Reality LA last Saturday. Maia and Lev got to spend the day at the Zoo with their aunt and uncle while Anya and I enjoyed a 1.5 day getaway.

We got to connect with some friends at the conference and stay with my cousin Lucas, which was a lot of fun. We ate from a Kogi food truck and drove through Hollywood into Beverly Hills, checked out the Hammer museum in Westwood, and ate a killer cookie-icecream sandwich.

Don Carson is a truly gifted communicator of biblical truth. I highly recommend listening to the recordings on the Gospel and how it works. He unpacked John 3 on the new birth like no one I had ever heard.

Last week Anya and I flew to Minneapolis to attend Desiring God’s 2010 National Conference and network with ministries and individuals to expand our publishing efforts. We connected with Danny Foote and Olya Velichko to represent In Lumine in the International Marketplace, a trade-show like area for international ministries. Ethan and Elysia Larsen, former missionaries in Ukraine and good friends, met us at the airport and found us a place to stay while we were there. We had a great time with them and are thankful for their help. We ended up staying with a couple, Will and Ginney, who belong to a Charismatic Catholic Community who are officially the nicest and most hospitable people I have ever met in my entire life. They welcomed us into their home as complete strangers and waited up until after midnight to offer us french wine and cheese! We had a wonderful time getting to know them. After the conference we went out to lunch with some friends and got to cruse around the lakes of Minneapolis in a covertable VW bug with our friends Mike and Yasya and our host, Will.

While at the conference, we were able to meet hundreds of people and let them know about our ministry in Ukraine. There was a large group of Russians that we quickly became friends with and sold all of our books to at the end of the event.

We were also able to start up a dialogue and what looks like may turn into a partnership with The Resurgence to see more material translated into Russian.

Some other ministries we enjoyed learning about and talked about or hope to work with in the future include:

The Elisha Foundation: Ministering to families of people with special needs

See Jesus: Interactive Bible Studies on Jesus, Prayer, and Small Group Leader Training

The Story: A Gospel Presentation

And as always, it was a pleasure to visit with our friends at Desiring God International Outreach, who invited us to the event and are our biggest advocates.

The teaching was powerful, especially a gripping message by Francis Chan on loving your neighbor. I really enjoyed listening to Al Mohler unwrap the effect of origonal sin on our thinking and how to avoid the natural mind in the mirror while engaging it in the marketplace. I also enjoyed listening to Rick Warren for the first time teach, it was a little pragmatic, something I am not used to, but at the same time very practical and helpful. And Piper was dead on with his usual clairity and conviction as he expounded the dangers of thinking wrongly and necessity of thinking hard in order to love God.

Below are some photos from the event:

We recently secured rights to translate and publish The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones into Russian. I have been reading this bible to Maia for quite a while now and absolutely love it. It is by far the most spiritually rich children’s bible I have come across. We recently purchased The Big Picture Story Bible and I find myself wanting to pick up the old one constantly. For crying out loud, it’s ranking on Amazon is 4.5 of 5 stars after 193 reviews, that is impressive.

For our publishing ministry, this is an exciting new project, one that I think we be very significant for the life and health of the next generation of the Russian speaking church.

Not only is it the most  exciting, but definitely the most expensive project we have undertaken. We need to raise over $16,000 to translate and publish it.

We are also praying and considering partnering together with other ministries who work with at risk kids throughout Ukraine to translate and publish a very large run of bibles in Ukrainian and provide them for cost. One large complaint from those who primarily work with kids is the lack of good children’s bibles.

Please pray for funds to come together and consider joining us in this project. You can email me with any further questions. Below are some blurbs and descriptions of the book. You can download a sample PDF here to get a feel for the book if you haven’t seen it.

“I would urge not just families with young children to get this book, but every Christian” — Dr Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC, Feb 2007

“It has turned out to be what all of us in the store suspected when we first saw it: the kind of children’s Bible storybook for which many, many thoughtful Christian parents have been waiting.” — WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BOOKSTORE

The Jesus Storybook Bible is unlike any other storybook. True, that’s to be expected when you combine the mesmerizing illustrations of Jago and the award-winning writing of Sally Lloyd-Jones, a Brit with an uncanny knack for storytelling. Not only is each story as vividly illustrated as it is portrayed, but also each tale is telling one Big Story–the Story of Jesus. Even the Old Testament stories of `The young hero and the horrible giant’ and `Daniel and the scary sleepover’ come full circle to Jesus, the greatest Hero, King, Lover and Rescuer the world has ever known. — More to Life Magazine,

Product Description
“The Jesus Storybook Bible” tells the story beneath all the stories in the Bible. At the center of the story is a baby, the child upon whom everything will depend. Every story whispers his name. From Noah to Moses to the great King David – every story points to him. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle – the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together. From the Old Testament through the New Testament, as the story unfolds, children will pick up the clues and piece together the puzzle. A Bible like no other, “The Jesus Storybook Bible” invites children to join in the greatest of all adventures, to discover for themselves that Jesus is at the center of God’s great story of salvation – and at the center of their story too.

Just got a copy of this book and am going to start reading it this week. This video about the message of the book is very impressive, check it out.

We just found out that our re-print order for Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology is ready to be shipped to Ukraine from St. Petersburg. The only thing is, most shipping companies are having a hard time shipping between the two countries right now. We have a whole pallet of books that we need to get here asap, almost half have been sold.

Please pray that we can find reliable shipping soon.

Thanks.

The church that sent a team here a few weeks ago, Fellowship in the Pass, collected some money through their Vacation Bible School program and we will be purchasing and installing three new windows in the kids’ ward of the TB hospital.

Below Bogdan is measuring out the windows to be replaced. He manages a window company in the city and sells the windows at cost so we can get more done. He is also a believer that goes to our church, does sound for our Sunday services, and leads the youth group.

This little guy is Egor, he is an orphan, 5 years old, and has Down Syndrome as well as tuberculosis. He pretty much stays in this crib all the time. They don’t take him outside and he can’t walk.

If you are interested in helping out with a window, they cost roughly 250$ installed with a new windowsill. Go here to donate online (tax deductible). Make sure to include that it is for windows in the TB hospital in Chernigov.

Last Sunday we headed down to the Desna river and baptized Egor. It has been great to see how much he has changed over the last year. I don’t think anyone in our church comes remotely close to reading as much scripture as he does. He calls everyday with questions about how to apply what he is reading to his work.

Not to mention, he is quite the character, his personality is 100% мужик (Russian guy).

He is also our new librarian in church, I figured if he read the most, let’s get him manning the books.

Below is our latest Newsletter. Hope you enjoy the new format, now you don’t need to download it to view it. Make sure to chose full screen or you will have trouble reading the text.

Thanks,

Today I received Randy Alcorn’s Heaven from the designer. It needs to be corrected and within a few weeks it should be ready to go to print. We don’t have funds to print it as of yet but hopefully they will come in soon.

This book weighs in at 350 pages in Russian. Hopefully Alcorn’s popularity in the Russian market with his novels will help with demand.