David's ministry of open evangelism in Russia began in 1993/94 in Siberia and in the Far East of Russia. The pastors still say that David's large scale evangelism in the 1990s - visiting hundreds of towns, villages and cities, seeing thousands saved, healed and come into ministry - sparked a revival there. Even on this visit we learned of miracles of healing that happened in those early days which we did not know of!

This was the 15th Baikal Conference, an annual event organised by Singapore businessman and pastor, Wee Tiong Howe, in Ulan Ude in Siberia, near Baikal. David was invited as a daytime speaker and as evangelist in the evening meetings. He was keenly interested to meet again with some of the men he had worked with in the early pioneer days. The pastors thanked Tiong Howe for the years of fellowship provided by his conferences, but they also said, "We have been praying for years for God to send us the anointed man of God to this conference - and David, you are the answer to our prayers."

Today in Russia there is not the same freedom as there was in the 1990s, with pressure coming from the anti-evangelical laws being passed centrally in Moscow and applied with varying degrees of strictness across the 89 regions of Russia. The pastors were hungry for David's teaching on the fire of the Holy Spirit to drive forward the work of God.

From his experience in Eastern Europe under communism, and most recently in Armenia, David encouraged the pastors, leaders and evangelists:

The greater the opposition, the greater the power of God. God is in the business of changing nations - that is what evangelism is about. In the spiritual warfare we have today, God's most powerful weapon is evangelism. We must live as Jesus lived - He lived as an evangelist - we must bring the lost into the Kingdom!

God works according to a plan, a strategy. Genesis 45:7 shows us that God sent Joseph into Eygpt as a pioneer, an 'evangelist', to 'save the people by a great deliverance'. For this we must have the fire of God and we must not let this fire go out; we must become a power and an influence in the world; we have a tremendous responsibility to change the world - but we need the power of God! There is no power in earth or in hell that can close the door to evangelism! But we've got to get the fire and the power and the passion and the emotion of God! The dynamic evangelism of the Son of God so stirred the nation in which He lived 2000 years ago, that to stop Him they cried out 'Crucify Him!' We have to touch nations today with the demonstration of the power of God - it's not just the preaching. We need a new fire and a new vision - Proverbs 29:18 - to get up and do it!

The Good Shepherd looks for the one sheep which is lost, not the ninety nine safe inside the fold. The mission of Christ, the whole purpose of the church is evangelism, to search for the lost and bring them into the Kingdom. Jesus said: The Kingdom of God is not full! Go out into the streets and compel them to come in!

People responded to the Gospel every night and many were healed. One woman gave an outstanding testimony: she had attended one of David's meetings in 2001, with crippling headaches and a blood clot on the brain from a head injury 20 years before - she had to take pain killers every hour - but after prayer, she was perfectly healed!