July 9, 2007

-Traveling with the Sniders-

The last few months have been traveling days for the Sniders. During our spring break in April Gordon and Nancy traveled with the choir directors’ group to Crimea. Crimea is the southernmost state of Ukraine, and is really a peninsular that protrudes out into the Black Sea. It is also the “playground” of Ukraine. It is where everyone dreams of going. And it is always good for faculty members to spend informal time with students. So it was a joy for us to join this group of students and instructors for a four day trip to relax, worship with three different congregations, and share about the work of ZBCS.

May 26 was graduation day – and a special day it was. This was the first group of accredited bachelor’s degrees awarded by ZBCS. For the occasion the college faculty chose to have caps and gowns for the first time. One of these graduates has been installed as a pastor. This is unusual, as most of the time our students need to return home and prove their worth before a position is offered. In this case the pastor of this church emigrated for America, and since this was the home church of our graduate, and he is married, he was installed as pastor.

When you are associated with a Bible college, it seems to mean that you also are connected to a lot of weddings. This is true in Ukraine as well. So early June found us on the train heading for the country of Moldova – located between Ukraine and Romania. Several of our choir students are from Moldova, and one of the brothers was marrying a ZBCS Christian education graduate from 2006. In spite of the fact that the village was small, the church was quite large – at least 500 people in attendance. It was a good time again to share the word of God, and the work of ZBCS. It was also good to hear from the pastor that the church had been praying for someone to train their Sunday school teachers. Lena is trained for that job, so we pray that God will make her ministry in this area fruitful.

The end of June found us retracing our steps, this time by car, to the city of Odessa for a conference concerning an new organization called “Theology On-line.” This is an effort by our accrediting association to create a Russian on-line accredited bachelor’s degree. Since ZBCS is already involved in computer based training, this was an important meeting for us. Gordon was asked to chair the committee that will be looking at educational standards. The project is quite ambitious, but hopefully something constructive will come out of it. We have excellent technical support, but at the moment we are lacking in the area of experience in on-line education. We are working with an organization called Electronic Discipleship Outreach and Training (E-Dot) that does have expertise in this area. Along the way to Odessa we stopped to visit two of the computer centers supervised by ZBCS in cooperation with E-Dot – one in Nicopol and another in Kherson.

A trip that Gordon and Nancy did not take was with a team from ZBCS who journeyed to Kazakstan for the month of July to assist struggling churches there. This is a four day train ride! Please pray for this group as they minister.

August will find us in Amsterdam for the wedding of Annie, a graduate of ZBCS, an interpreter for Gordon’s homiletics classes for several years, and now a student at Tyndale Theology Seminary. Gordon will be walking Annie down the aisle in place of her father who deserted the family when Annie was quite young.

In the midst of all the activity we are praying that God will send us a good group of students for next year. Interviews will begin August 13, so right now we really have no idea what to expect. From a peak in 2002, the enrollment has steadily declined, as more jobs and other educational opportunities become available. Please help us to pray that God will bless us with a good group of trainees for the harvest.

- Gordon and Nancy.