Archives for 2013

Only five destinations on my map this time, but some of them are six times zones apart! In fact I will be closer to Minnesota by going East than West! Oh, I wish they could schedule their teachers’ conferences and trainings with at least some consideration of my travel preferences…

But who is complaining!? A am truly looking forward to meeting with teachers and university students in Yakutia–sixteen time zones away from Minnesota! I cannot wait to hear their questions about Christ, about faith, and about the meaning of life! It am sure they will be different in the permafrost lands of Yakutsk than in the vineyards of Krasnodar, in the polar nights of Karelia or in the urban conveniences of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Please pray for my travel, connections, accommodation and, most importantly, for the Holy Spirit to prepare my audiences’ hearts to hear the Gospel with Evidence! Please also keep my family back in MN in your thoughts and prayers.

For some reason, I thought my summer trip would be a little more relaxed and not as densely packed as my usual ones during the academic year. After all, there are no class schedules to fit in, and no teachers’ conferences to get to on time. It almost sounded like a vacation: youth camp in Izhevsk; church camp in Yekaterinburg; Sunday School teachers’ training in Kazan.

From experience I also knew that about 10% of those will be cancelled at the last moment for some completely unpredictable reason—like a pastor’s vacation, a state holiday, or some other annual event nobody thought of before. Each trip schedule is  a l w a y s  tentative and is subject to change and adjustment, right up to the last moment. I constantly have to keep confirming each event up to the very day, even (especially?) when it was scheduled to happen six months before.

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My train is heading North-East, full of happy people, returning from their vacations in the Sothern parts of Russia. They must have gotten used to hotter days and nobody minds the heat and lack of air conditioning in the compartments. Well, it will only be one short night. It will actually be even shorter due to the one hour time zone difference between Izhevsk and Yekaterinburg.

Back in Izhevsk I spent two days in the youth camp of about 120 youth and young adults sleeping in a tent and teaching under a tent (made of a parachute with slight modifications). My worries about being able to keeping their attention for two days of two-hour presentations turned out to be completely unsubstantiated. Both sessions were received very well and were followed by dozens of questions and comments showing how interested and how engaged they were all the time. [Read more…]