Irina Babushkina invites you to her fourth summer conference “The Healing Power of Laughter” to be held May 1-6 at a retreat center near Nizhniy Novgorod. She is actively seeking guest speakers.

This dynamic study group leader was one of the fourteen students in Rev. Ron Rude ’s second practitioner class in Votkinsk. She moved from there when her husband was offered a job managing a deluxe hotel in Nizhny Novgorod , one of the largest cities in Russia .

Irina has a very active SOM study group. One hundred twenty students have finished SOM courses and 12 are now in practitioner training. Their group has recently launched their new Russian language website. In May 2004, a videographer saw an ad about Irina’s first SOM summer conference and was inspired to do a documentary on SOM in Russia as part of his work exploring spirituality in Russia . For the 20-minute video, he filmed the conference and SOM classes and interviewed the American and Russian conference presenters.

Irina has published four articles in local newspapers and has established a children’s program which she has been invited to take into the schools. Three young people from Rev. Barbara Leger’s center in Cherkasy , Ukraine will be helping Irina to set up the “Laws of Life” essay contest and begin a youth program.

January 5-7 they had a seminar on “The Relationship between a Man and a Woman” which culminated with a celebration dinner on Russian Christmas (January 7).

Irina will be the editor of the new Russian SOM magazine, a joint project of all the Russian study groups. She would also like to make another film and start a radio program. This busy leader is interested in having guest teacher’s to help her with classes.