"LAND OF ICE" DOESN'T COOL FIRE OF THE GOSPEL...

YOUNG CHRISTIANS IN the remote easternmost part of the country are enduring extreme conditions to help spread the gospel in the once-impenetrable "land of fire and ice".

Some 50 students from across the isolated Kamchatka region have traveled to Petropavlosk to take part in the first Discipleship Training School to be run in the area by Youth With A Mission to equip them for church and missionary service.

Nationwide fuel shortages have left the area - nine time zones east of Moscow - with power for heat and light only a few hours each day. Food is also in short supply, and the number of fatal accidents and suicides are reported to have increased dramatically in recent weeks.

"It's almost unbelievable what they are enduring," said Al Akimoff, director of YWAM's Slavic Ministries, which is running the training school. "They are having to survive on very little food, without power most of the time. Some of them have to walk several miles every day to get to class."

Until a few years ago there were few if any known Christians in the frozen peninsula which, as home to major Soviet military bases, was closed to outsiders. But since the fall of Communism missionaries have been able to visit the area - which gets its nickname from its sub-zero temperatures and range of active volcanoes - and YWAM has played a part in helping start 13 churches.

"There is a desperate need for leadership," Akimoff. "Most of the Christians have been converted in only the last four or five years. But they are very committed." One of the students from a distant community walked 12 hours to reach a plane that could fly him to Petropavlosk. Two other sailed across rough seas for two days.

Slavic Ministries have sent two shipments of food and clothing from their headquarters in Salem, Oregon. The supplies will be distributed among and by local churches, to needy people in the community.

"It's hard to imagine what people have to live with. They are tough, as the Russian people generally are," said Akimoff. "But this is really one of the tough missionary fields."

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