In three days approximately 30,000 attended the services in the Sports Palace, Tbilisi, Georgia. Before these meetings there were only 2000 evangelicals in the capital Tbilisi, and another 2000 scattered across the country. These services - and the events surrouding it - lifted a repressed minority group of Christians into a group to be respected within the nation with thousands of converts and the Government passing a decree to protect them! Pastors came from Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and even Spain to witness the event.

It all began on the Thursday, when the National TV invited David on the morning news programme to discuss the new film which a Georgian TV director had made about his Bible smuggling and the repression Christians experienced under the Soviets. - As recently as the early 1990s, there was still only a limited supply of Bibles in the Georgian language. When the organising pastor converted in 1979, the only access to the scriptures was hand-written or smuggled Bibles. We were shown hand-written Bibles and hymn books that were written by a Georgian pastor imprisoned for his faith.

On the Friday night despite the torrential downpour of rain and the streets being blocked with buses, cars and people, so that even we had difficulty in reaching the arena, the place was packed with over 10,000 people! All the major Georgian TV channels filmed the Friday service for their news bulletins.

By the Saturday morning, the President of Georgia had summoned the Parliament to an extra-ordinary meeting - to pass a decree that all Christian minorities must have complete freedom and protection.

On the final night, the Georgian churches had prepared a dramatic presentation celebrating their culture and history. Thousands of people from over 500 territories and regions around the world watched these meetings online!

Georgia is in the Caucasus region of Europe. Situated at the juncture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia - to the north is Russia, to the south Turkey and Armenia. It has a population of approximately 4.5 million. At the beginning of the 19th century, Georgia was annexed by the Russian Empire. After a brief period of independence following the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia was again captured by the Russian Red Army in 1921 before being incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922. (Stalin was born in Georgia.) It regained its independence in 1991. Following the Rose Revolution in November 2003, new democratic reforms were introduced. In 2008 Russia attacked Georgia over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - these regions are now disputed and are under Russian 'occupation'.