Underground University Russia enables the church in Russia and the former Soviet Union to prepare for martyrdom and persecution amidst escalating legal restrictions. Such preparation must focus on helping the church here to remain one body with the faithful church around the world today and throughout history.

Nearly 50 Russian speaking pastors and church leaders gathered together at an undisclosed training center for our first Russian language training event of the year. Nearly all of participants had experienced persecution as a result of their faithful witness and a number of them had even experienced persecution within recent years. Several of the participants shared about the difficulty of helping their family and church members heal from the trauma of persecution.

Additionally, several of the attendees are involved in evangelism and discipleship in some Muslim contexts. Christian persecution and Muslim extremism are on the increase in some countries where the Russian language is used.

VOM’s training focuses on enabling the church to prepare for martyrdom and persecution amidst escalating legal restrictions. The training also focuses on helping the church to remain one body with the faithful church around the world today and throughout history.

Below is some feedback we received from training attendees after the training was finished.

1  Peace and blessings to you!
I want to express my deep gratitude from my wife and I for these amazing 3 days. The testimonies of the life of Christians who live with love, risking their own lives, have greatly inspired us to serve and not give up despite the difficulties that we experience. Many ministers who experience persecution are traumatized, and we learned a lot from Dr. Foley’s lecture on how to overcome and heal these traumas, how to help ministers get through this, strengthening themselves in the ministry.

2  Beloved of the Lord, the servants of God,
I thank God for your work. Your teaching has brought encouragement and comfort to my heart. The Lord strengthened me even more through your testimonies. I will try to apply your teaching in my life and in my family. I hope that God will give me another meeting with you to rejoice in God, because we remain faithful to God in the midst of difficulties, suffering in the place where God wished to use us.

3  Thank you very much for your hard work!
This is a very important message for us and an encouragement. Throughout time, God has spoken to us. How important it is to develop complete dependence on Christ, and not on the visible, material things. Yesterday we had house worship with my daughter, today she herself is asking to have family   worship again! Also, the theology of the cross is very close to me, we were able to strengthen our convictions.

4  I thank God that He brought you so that Christians would hear about what martyrdom is, for they are afraid to speak about Christ, not only so that no one knows that they are Christians, but also so as not to endure suffering, because they think they have suffered so much.

5  Thank you for your precious time and important life topics. Thanks to God for your sacrifice, the time spent together, which are very relevant now and help to rethink and reconsider many things in life. These days we have received a lot of inspiration and strengthening. We bless your entire team for service and further development.

6  Thank you very much for this great time. God healed my heart through this training, and I renewed my decision to be a witness and share the good news despite the difficulties. A gospel followed by persecution. This is a challenge for me. And I will also try to spend every day for 10 minutes a service with my family.

• Pray for the attendees at our recent UU Russia training. We had 50 pastors and church leaders attending, many of whom were still dealing with trauma related to the persecution they received.
• Please pray for the “faithful witness” ministry that we support in the LPR/DPR regions of Ukraine. Despite the devastation and dangerous conditions, our partners are still active in doing ministry in these regions. Pray for their continued faithfulness despite the persecution and danger.