REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

Updated Friday, May 19, 2000

NEWS FROM ESTONIA

Dear friends and family,

Late breaking news from the Baltics.

* Three "buried" in Jesus name, the Saturday before Easter. What a wonderful day for a burial.

* We have 100 chairs, but we ran out of seating on Easter Sunday, both in the adult auditorium and in the Sunday School classes. This has happened two other times in the past three months.

* Special visitors bless the Bentleys: Our daughter and son-in-law, Kristy and Steve Hoover, brought their new baby, Emily for grandma and grandpa to enjoy. (She's a charmer.) Accompanying them was our oldest granddaughter, Natalie Nordstrom. They blessed us with wonderful music (in English and Russian), anointed testimonies, and with their ministry to the children in our schools and churches. What a special joy it was for us!

Prayer requests:

* Still no electricity at the Bible College and church. We found out that you can have revival sans electricity. The weather has turned warmer, but lights, microphones, and piano are still needed.

* We have a large variety of mismatched chairs and not enough at that. We need 150 new chairs for the House of God.

Thanks for your love, your prayers, and your finances given toward this great missions project.

With love,
The Bentleys

Dear Friends and Family,

Blessings to you from the Far Side.

     We had a wonderful week-end in the Lord. We conducted a well-publicized Youth Service on Saturday. At least 140 people of all ages were jammed into our auditorium. Many people were standing due to lack of chairs. Once again, no electricity--therefore, no microphones, no piano, no heat, no lights, no overhead projector, just Jesus. We had a wonderful time in the Lord.

     It also turned cold here again this week. We wore winter coats all week-end and of course there was no heat in the building. The Russian people handle major problems like this with much more grace than we Americans. Continue to pray for an electric miracle and that God will touch the hearts of someone involved in this bureaucratic nightmare. We are anxious to begin building renovations to make a larger auditorium that will seat 200; however, all building progress has been put on hold until we have the needed electricity. We are trusting God's timing in all of this.

     We will return to America for a summer of fund-raising. We are operating on a very small budget, so this is of great importance to the work of God here.

     Bro. and Sis. Latta will be serving as our replacements while we are gone. We are grateful.

     God bless you as you support the Church of God Worldwide.

With love,
The Bentleys

Blessings to you from Tallinn, Estonia.

     We are writing to you in appreciation for the many prayers and letters of encouragement we have received especially in the last two months. As most of you know, we have been involved in a rather complicated process of applying for a visa to remain in this country for an extended period of time.

     After several months of filing papers, receiving rejections, refilling, more rejections, and much confusion, God has intervened.

     Last month we offered our services to an American born Estonian businessman that we have been able to make friends with. He is now producing a beautiful quarterly magazine called the Global Estonian that is being distributed throughout Europe and is also reaching into America. The magazine was excellent, but needed a good deal of work in the editing department. He gladly accepted our help and we worked together on the project. Our main purpose in this project, was to open doors into the Estonian community and be able to meet some of the people who make this country operate.

     When this gentleman heard we were going to have to leave the country, he went to work on our problem for us. Due to our work on the Global Estonian, the immigration department agreed to give us a work permit and a residence permit. Our lawyer called today and said she has the visa in hand and we can pick it up tomorrow.

     We have no idea why this process has been so complicated for us. As you may remember, we had to leave the country last year because of a denial on our visa application. We suspect that the fact that we moved here after living in Moscow for 2 years may be the source of our problem. Estonia was the first country to declare herself independent of the Soviet Union and lives in great fear of her powerful neighbor, Russia. We believe our comings and goings have been watched very carefully by the government here.

     While all this difficult process has been going on, we have been busy with the work of the Lord. We have successfully purchased the building that houses a church and future Bible College and are in the process of making repairs on the building. Bro. Bentley is also serving as pastor of this church and is training two young men to assist him in this ministry. Sis. Bentley continues her daily teaching of the young people in the schools and conducts weekly Bible Studies with the teachers. We recently baptized another school teacher in the city of Sillamae.

     This has been a month when we have been blessed with an abundance of mail expressing love and concern for the Bentleys. May God bless you for your love for us and your compassion for the people of this much oppressed land. To God be the glory, great things he hath done!

In Christ,

The Bentleys

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