From Broken Legs to Faith in Christ

July 23, 2010 – Dima, a young apprentice carpenter for a small firm in northwest Russia, slipped off a ladder and was seriously injured, breaking both legs, while assembling a countryside cottage.

His employer turned its back on him and his injury, leaving him without a job to pay his bills.

“Even his common-law wife and his brother could not see the hope of bearing with him along the road to recovery,” says Gary Timmerman, a missionary for Christian Reformed World Missions working in the area.

Dima grew dependant on pain medicine during his recovery, four months of which required him to walk with the help of crutches.

As one way to help, the older brother did call up Good Samaritan Ministries, a rehabilitation program he learned about from a poster he saw hanging on a building wall in his town. The rehab ministry, run by a Baptist organization, provided a second start in life for Dima.

“During eight months there, Dima beat his drug addiction, and found new meaning in life being surrounded by the care of devoted and loving workers” within the rehab facility and nearby Baptist community, Timmerman writes in a newsletter about his and his wife’s ministry.

In June, Dima began a three-month period of adjustment in which he lives away from the rehab center. Able to walk on his own again, he works in a construction job for a Christian who runs a small construction company.

Not long ago, Timmerman and his wife, Galya, met with Dima and others from the rehab program. They spoke of many things, especially of how belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ helped to turn their lives around.

After that, Timmerman and Dima teamed up to engage in some street evangelism. Galya Timmerman taught a young woman missionary some approaches to street-witnessing.

While walking the streets, Timmerman and Dima met a group of young people drinking beer at a bus stop. Watching them reminded Timmerman of the problem of alcoholism – and not just among young people – in that part of the world.

He and Dima decided to talk to them about the miraculous life and death of Jesus as detailed in the New Testament. Initially, the young people weren’t inclined to listen. But then Dima spoke of his own journey with drug addiction and how belief in Jesus and the way to salvation that Christ taught has helped him stay off drugs.

That got their attention, so much so that the young people accepted Dima’s “Choose Life” business card in case they wanted to talk to him more.

Later, they chatted with an older lady, “a lonely pensioner and atheist, who gave us a rigorous exercise in defending our Christian faith. Dima did really well for being a fresh believer, and I had opportunity to ‘boast’ to the listeners about God’s work in this young man,” writes Timmerman.

“This is the kind of role I play – encouraging the local Christian missionaries in their ministry, as much be on the front line as I can be, but never enough,” writes Timmerman.

Providing Christian literature is one of the ways in which Christian Reformed World Missions is assisting ministries such as the one in which Dima has been involved.

A multi-confessional Christian library of over 1,000 titles has been set up in the rented ministry center there, and it attracts many unbelievers who want to know more about the gospel.

Dima and other residents from the rehab center come to the ministry center to witness for the Lord. On Saturdays, missionaries set up tables of Christian books in the town center.

“Hundreds of passersby glance over to the new table, and the Lord directs to them those 'persons of peace' whose hearts are open to God,” writes Timmerman.

Dima and four other “adaptees” live in a church in the community. Dima spent a week in prayer, after which he decided to continue to cling tightly to his new-found faith, keep working for the construction company and devote himself to the community and missionary work that gave him a new life, Timmerman reports. “A new deep fire is burning in a young Russian's heart.”

—Chris Meehan, CRC Communications

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