Back in Action - July 2007

Greetings from Southern California,

We are so thankful for your prayers and encouragement. Due to our nomadic lifestyle these days we have not been able to get out an email update until now.

We praise the Lord for again extending His healing hand through skilled surgeons! Mark walked out of the hospital the day after back surgery on July 10 (for herniated disc). Best of all the intense pain which he had in his leg for several months prior is 95 % gone. He still needs to avoid ‘B.L.T.’ - bending, lifting, and twisting - which means that Dayna is getting ‘buff’ arms from carrying our luggage! Pray for her back now!

It has been a blessing to catch up with family, friends, and supporting churches here. It has been a strong encouragement to meet those who have so faithfully kept us before the Lord. As you can see from our schedule below, we will be traveling quite a bit in the month ahead. We appreciate your continued prayers for recuperation, safety, and most of all that we would be a blessing to those who have so blessed us.

This week we shared in Mark’s hometown of La Canada, California. The local paper ran the article below -

Kazakhstan missionary Mark Blair to speak at La Canada Presbyterian Church
A life-changing experience at a Crescenta-Canada Family YMCA camp set Mark Blair on a journey halfway around the world, from Catalina Island to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.
Blair, a 1973 graduate of Crescenta Valley High School, is a Christian missionary in Kazakhstan with wife Dayna. He will talk of his work Sunday morning (July 29) while preaching the sermon at all three of La Canada Presbyterian Church’s worship services -- 7:55, 9:25 and 10:55. The church supports the ministry work of the two.
Blair says his spiritual journey began when he was in high school and attended a summer camp on Catalina Island. “It was through the YMCA camp when I heard the Gospel at Camp Fox that I became a Christian,” he said.
After attending Glendale College, he got a degree from Covenant College in Tennessee and began a life of missionary service, working in Uganda, serving as a church pastor in Hawaii, and then, in 1998, moving on to Kazakhstan.
It was an obscure posting -- until Hollywood trained one of its spotlights on the country last year. “When we meet people, often the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, yes, I know about Kazakhstan from the Borat movie,’ “ Blair said. “It’s an entry point for conversation, I guess. It kind of put the place on the map.”
Blair and Dayna had been crisscrossing that map for years before then. He trains and equips national church leaders, and is pastor at the International Christian Fellowship in Almaty. She teaches at Tien Shan School.
It can be challenging work. “Kazakhstan is a very secular place,” Blair said. “It’s Islamic, but not devoutly Muslim -- more secular Muslim. It has a history of 70 years of Soviet atheism. Most people really don’t think much about God and don’t have any religious practices, so initially they don’t seem very interested in spiritual things, but at the same time they’re searching for something deeper in their lives.
“Right now there’s something of an economic boom with the oil and a lot of money coming in. So there’s a lot of materialism. It’s not long before people realize that that doesn’t give them a lot of deep satisfaction, so it opens up a spiritual search.”
La Canada Presbyterian Church is at 626 Foothill Blvd. For information, visit www.lacanadapc.org.

July 29 La Canada Presbyterian Church
August 5 Meadowlark Community Church, San Marcos, CA
August 7 - Begin drive from Southern California back up to Eugene, Oregon
August 17 - Fly from Portland, OR to Philadelphia, PA
August 19 - Grace Bible Fellowship Church, Harrisburg, PA
August 26 - Maple Glen Bible Fellowship Church (near Philadelphia, PA)
August 27 - Fly Philadelphia back to Oregon
August 31 - Fly Portland, OR to Hilo, Hawaii
September 2 - Hilo Missionary Church, Hilo, HI
September 9 - Waimea Assemby of God, Kamuela, HI
September 16 and 23 - Puna Congregational Christian Church, Keaau, HI
Open for other meetings in Hawaii
December 2 - Fly Honolulu to Portland, OR
December 8 - Nathan Blair weds Heather Madison in Eugene, OR
January 10, 2008 - Fly Portland, OR to Beijing - en route to Kazakhstan

Yours in His Living Hope,
Mark and Dayna Blair
Our Mobile
541 - 743 - 6837

Our Mission
Pioneers - 10123 William Carey Drive - Orlando, FL 32832 - USA
http://www.pioneers.org/

Our Ministries
International Christian Fellowship http://www.icf.nursat.kz/
Tien Shan School tienshan@pactec.kz

Our Mailing Address
Blair - 190 Ululani Street - Hilo, Hawaii 96720