Mission Partners

Sam Beeton

Until recently, Violette and Sam Beeton were working with USPG, the Anglican mission agency, near Antananarivo in Madagascar.

Violette was teaching sewing and computing. She also ran the local community centre which holds lessons in music and judo and is used for weddings and conferences. It is hoped that the community centre will continue to grow to be a valuable source of income for the cash strapped Anglican church.

Sam taught New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew, English, and Church History. English is important for churches in the Anglican Communion as well as being an international language. Greek and Hebrew help the students understand the real meaning behind the words in the Bible and one of Sam’s old students is working on a new translation of the Malagasy Bible with the Bible Society. In Church History, they examined the history of the Church in Europe and Africa and more specifically on the history of the Church in Madagascar, which overcame many trials and tribulations to become almost the majority religion there.

The primary school on campus serves the local community. There is a doctor’s surgery, which treats patients, gives medicine and once a week runs classes about health and family planning which are open to all. Thanks to those of you who gave to the project and through the generous wedding donation of the Loxtons, over £2000 was raised.

Sam and Violette are now living in town and working in the diocese of Fianarantsoa. They are hoping that USPG will continue to support their work there.

Alison Kolosova’s work in Russia

Alison Kolosova has been serving the Lord in Russia since 1992. From 1992-94 she was part of a Campus Crusade for Christ team working among university students in Moscow. After a year back in the UK during which she was received into the Orthodox Church she returned to Russia in January 1996 and moved to live in Cheboksary, the capital of the Chuvash Republic, which is about 450 miles east of Moscow on the Volga river.

The Chuvash are a Turkic people and related to their Tatar neighbours but, unlike the Tatars, were baptized in large numbers into the Orthodox Church in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until the late 19th century many of the Chuvash were practising the ‘Old Chuvash Faith’, a variety of Turkic shamanism influenced by Zoroastrianism. Today the vast majority of the Chuvash are Orthodox Christians and church services take place in the Chuvash language throughout the republic. In 2010 the Chuvash became only the second people (alongside the Russians themselves!) in the Russian Federation to have the entire Bible in their mother tongue.

After her arrival in Cheboksary Alison worked as an English teacher in a Russian secondary school whilst getting to know people in the local church and getting involved in a parish Sunday school and in the diocesan prison ministry. During this time she was also studying by correspondence for a Degree in Theology at the St Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris.

In 1997 she moved to the town of Alatyr in the south of the Chuvash Republic where she continued to teach in school and organized Bible studies for teachers. She became increasingly involved in adult and children’s education at the parish level. Since 2005 she has been working in the Parish of the Iveron Icon of the Virgin Mary which is located in the centre of Alatyr, a town of about 40,000 people. She is the Choir Director which means she both leads the choir during worship services and teaches church singing to both adults and children. As most of the Orthodox liturgy is sung, teaching singing involves helping people to understand the Scriptures and liturgical texts which are full of the Gospel and teaching about the Christian life.

Many young people have come to sing and in the process have become faithful believers in Christ. Two of the young women from the choir are now studying on a diocesan nursing programme which gives a state-recognised medical training as well as pastoral and theological training. One young man is now training in seminary to become a priest.

Alison also teaches music in the children’s Sunday school which has regularly put on plays and concerts within the parish and in the town. The parish organizes a children’s camp every summer during the month of June and she very much enjoys singing and making music with the children who come.

She has set up an Adult Sunday School in the parish to help give basic teaching in the Christian faith to many people who come to church but know little about their faith. She has taught courses on the Church’s annual liturgical cycle, on the Gospels, on the Old Testament and on the history of the church. In recent years, as this Sunday school has developed to include people from other parishes in the town, priests from other parishes help with the teaching whilst Alison continues as overall organizer.

In 2006 she set up an Adult Sunday School in a women’s prison near the town. The women study for a Certificate in Theology jointly organized by the Orthodox Church and the University of Ryazan. One of the women stayed in the parish after release from the prison, and since September 2010 has been running the course for the women at the prison whilst Alison continues to teach.

During 2009 a church was built at the prison and in April 2010 it was consecrated. Since then there have been regular services at the church and Alison has been going to help sing the services and to teach the women themselves to sing.

In November 2009 Alison married Vladimir Kolosov, whom she met as they performed together in concerts and sang together in choirs. Vladimir is a musician and school music teacher. He plays all kind of instruments ranging from the balalaika, accordeon and guitar to the piano and violin. Vladimir sings regularly in the choir at the Church of the Iveron Icon and has helped with music at the prison and on the children’s camp. During the time he is not singing or playing a musical instrument (which is rare!) he is a very keen beekeeper and gardener and works for the town’s Water Board.

During the time Alison is not singing or teaching others to sing (which is also rare!) she is gathering material for a part-time PhD she is working on under supervision from the Orthodox theologian Fr Andrew Louth of Durham University. She is studying the influence of Nikolai Ilminsky on the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church. Nikolai Ilminsky was a professor of Oriental Languages at Kazan University who spearheaded a movement in the late 19th century to evangelise the non-Russian peoples of Russia through the development of schools and literacy using the mother tongue. He inspired the Chuvash Ivan Yakovlev to set up the first school in which teaching took place in Chuvash. This school later developed into a teacher training college where the first generations of Chuvash teachers and priests were trained and where the New Testament was translated into Chuvash and published in 1910 with the help of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Ilminsky’s ideas had a huge impact on the evangelization of the native peoples throughout Russia, Siberia and the Caucasus and also inspired foreign missions in Japan and America.

Alison Ruth, March '11