Before reading the following email from PAMI field director Pastor Chito Mendizabal, let me give you some background of a Russian connection.  A few years ago I hosted a couple Russian brothers (Igor and Vitaliy Petrov) at our house while they were attending an Evagelical Free Church missions conference in Minneapolis, MN.  They were in the U.S. to get training at Trinity, the E. Free Church seminary in Illinois.  They also work towards getting seminary classes translated into Russian on DVDs, which they distribute to pastors throughout Russia as a means of learning by distance.  You can learn more abou this ministry from the following websites:
http://www.russiadistancelearning.com/
www.tvseminary.com
Since most of their DVD seminary classes are in both English and Russian, and since Filipinos know English, I told Igor that our PAMI Bible school (EBI) could try using these DVDs for reference.  I was expecting just a couple samples, but I was surprised to get a big stack of 75 disks in the mail from them early this year.  In turn, I included them in a box we mailed to the Philippines, which arrived at EBI in May.  Praise God that they find them useful, as you can see in the following September 8th email:
Hi Brother Mike. I appreciate much learning the TVSeminary. I’m using now, the Bible Study method and Church Administration. These enhance our materials especially that the approach and contents are very much like EBI’s. If more TVS lessons are available in English, that would be very good. Would you be sending me more? Thank you very much.
By the way, three times we used the Proxima LCD Projector that you’ve sent, twice in our small group leaders’ meeting and once during Compassion re-echo seminar on Health Intervention. Wow, it’s far clearer (highly definition) than the other one. But since bulb light has life duration, then I’m just saving its usage for very important activities.
At this time, I have already seven reports from pastors/churches who received the audio-Bible Bicol. Praise God, that people really appreciate the method of learning by listening. All of our 13 small groups are using the audio Bible. But since we only have 4 units. Others just borrowed especially that Bible study schedules are made from different days of the week. The usual Bible study is to start with worship and prayer, then playing one chapter, or sometimes break into sub paragraphs, then sharing of learnings. It was very encouraging that even new attendees could share what has he hears. The leader would just served as a facilitator. This is very good of going through the Bible, than the topical style of Bible study.
Please pray for God’s covering for us here. There was an outbreak of Dengue even in our province. Many even in our neighbors are positive of Dengue. Two of our Compassion children are in the hospital.
Pastor Virgil of Bulusan PAMI schedules a water Baptism this coming September 18th. They have 8 candidates.
God continue to uphold us by His grace, mercy and lovingkindness.
Love in the Christ,
Pastor Chito