As part of SGA’s 75th anniversary year we launched a project to increase the number of Gospel workers being supported. We are thankful to God that through our supporters 25 new missionaries have joined those already receiving financial support. Knowing that such funding is secured, they are free to concentrate on reaching those they live alongside.

This is vitally important, because knowing the local culture and the difficulties people face, it is local Gospel workers who are best placed to share the Good News effectively with those in need of hearing it.

Maxim is one of those who began receiving support from SGA last year. Serving as a pastor-evangelist in Tajikistan, Maxim’s ministry is bearing fruit. He has planted a new church in an otherwise unreached district of his city, where people are hearing the Gospel for the first time, repenting of their sin, and growing in their faith. The number gathering at the church each Sunday has already more than doubled since it opened.

However, as well as leading this new church, Maxim supports the leaders of a church less than an hour’s drive away. New believers are being baptised there too. Among them is Timor who, once firmly opposed to the Christian faith, trusted in Jesus following a particularly difficult time characterised by deprivation, deportation and an unwelcome diagnosis. Now he is embarking on a year of ministry amongst the Pamiri people of Tajikistan. The Pamiri is a people group which Maxim is particularly engaged in reaching and so it is doubly good that Timor will now join him in proclaiming the Gospel from a Hope Centre situated in this beautiful and mountainous region – sometimes known as the ‘Roof of the World’. Natalia is another who has recently been baptised, who, very conscious of what becoming a Christian means in this predominantly Islamic country, made her public declaration of faith despite fearing that her Muslim husband would banish her from the family home. The stories of those whom Maxim has reached with the Gospel are many. There is Oksana who, following a family tragedy, now cares for her seven grandchildren. Lyubov and her daughter-in-law, Irina, who as a result of years of being exposed to communist ideology, live in both material and spiritual poverty. There are also many families who gather in newly created children’s playgrounds built alongside Hope Centres where the Gospel can effectively be shared.

Stories like these explain why SGA continues to support local Gospel workers, within the local church, to reach the local community.