OMSK, RUSSIA (October 12, 2012) – Leonid Regheta, an Evangelical Covenant Church missionary, says a homeless couple are his new “spiritual heroes.”
The couple, Igor and Svetlana, led him to re-evaluate his “spiritual and emotional attitude toward neighbors.” They also have encouraged him in his ministry – click here to learn more about him and his work.
So what has so inspired Regheta? The couple had lived to get married and then invited a special group of guests.
There had been the night Svetlana got drunk and fell out a four-floor window. There was the day that Igor, addled by drugs, got into a car accident that forced doctors to amputate one of his legs.
After their accidents, they each gave their lives to Christ. Igor is now an evangelist and Svetlana works in a soup kitchen ministering to the homeless.
When the two planned their recent wedding, their guest list was filled with the names of their homeless friends. “The entire fellowship hall was filled with the most fragrant aroma of God’s children partaking in the celebration.”
Dennis Malyutin of the Nehemiah Church in Omsk, Siberia, said, “No one has even objected to having so many new and different people at our church’s celebration!”
Even more inspiring than the story of Igor and Svetlana, Regheta says, is that other stories similar to theirs are repeated over and over as evangelical churches minister to people in drug-rehabilitation programs.
“God is doing great miracles delivering people from evil, setting them free from bondages of drugs, alcohol and other chemical dependencies,” says Regheta, who has ministered in some of the centers. “About 85 percent of the people coming to Christ in Russian evangelical churches are those who go through church-run drug rehabilitation programs.”
