Russia

About a year after I graduated from college, Andy & I (who were not yet married) had the privilege of being part of a short-term missions team to Irkutsk, Siberia.  It was 1992, just one year after communism officially ended in Russia.  I had seen pictures on the news of people in Russia waiting in terribly long lines for bread.  For more than 70 years the people had been taught that there is no God and instead to trust in their government.  But their government had failed them.  Now Russians were looking elsewhere for hope.

I remember our first day in Russia, riding a bus through Moscow and being struck by the hopelessness I saw on people's faces.  I remember our second day in Irkutsk, one of my translators said to me, "I envy you, because of your faith, because you have hope."  We were each paired with a couple translators, and most of us became close friends with our translators that summer.  We spent lots of time with them and got to know each other well.  They heard over and over the good news that there is a God who loves us, our sin has separated us from God, but God sent Jesus to die for our sins, so that everyone who trusts in Him will be forgiven, become a child of God, and have eternal life with Him.  We grew to love our translators dearly.  I was deeply blessed by time with my translator Tanya and a couple 17-year-old girls who asked to meet with me daily to study the Bible together.  By the end of the summer most of our translators, along with my special 17-year-old friends, expressed that they had decided to trust in and follow Jesus, and they had hope!

One day that summer a visiting Christian professor came to Irkutsk to give a lecture.  We all went, along with many from the city.  I sat by an elderly woman named Vera (which means "faith") and struck up a conversation with her.  She was eager to hear what this professor had to say.  When I asked her if she had a Bible, she said, "Oh no, I could never afford a Bible!"  (Times were very hard economically.)  I gave her a Russian Bible, and she held her new treasure with such amazement and gratefulness!  She responded, "Now I KNOW God wants me to be his daughter!", and she held the Bible to her heart for the next 90 minutes during the lecture.  It's as if she instinctively recognized the surpassing worth of God's Word.  Psalm 19 tells it well: "The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart...They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb." (Psalm 19:8,10)

God put the people of Russia deep on my heart.  I loved being with them!  I made many special friends there who will always hold a very special place in my heart.