A letter from Gary Payton in the United States (regional liaison for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia and Poland)

Dear Friends in Christ,

The pinks of a gentle, cold dawn tinted the snowy slopes of Mount Ararat. Across the just-waking city of Yerevan, the majesty of this biblical mountain grew ever larger as morning sun glinted off the sides of the 16,854-foot peak. And, in the Book it is written, “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4).

Armenia: a land-locked nation of 3 million in the southern Caucasus, a former Republic of the Soviet Union and the first nation to adopt Christianity in the year 301.

Armenians: an ancient people who over the millennia have survived the onslaughts of invasion, conquest, natural disasters and genocide at the hands of an imperial power.

Read more about Gary Payton's visit to Armenia...