I am back in Minnesota already and I am very sorry for not keeping up with my travel blog while traveling across Russia. My teaching and travel schedule was so intense that every minute of not teaching or traveling was immediately claimed by my poor body – it needed certain time per day of rest and sleep to recharge for the next event.
A red-eye flight brought me from Moldova to Russia on V-Day and I started in Moscow by attending a huge All-Russian Evangelical Church Conference – a great opportunity for PR and networking. It was fun to meet old friends from near and far of the country and to be introduced and recommended to others for future ministry. I almost ran out of fliers and business cards – great problem to have!
My new presentation on Communication (The Task of Mission and the Art of Communication) for lay and clergy missionaries went much better than it did last time in February – thanks for great feedback and help from my audiences back then. I am receiving more and more requests for this topic from Bible Colleges and teachers’ organizations. I will however continue to teach FaithSearch Discovery most of my time in Russia. Three presentations in the city of Vladimir clearly showed that even regular church goers need to hear it and to see it – for many in my audiences the archeological and paleographical (manuscript) evidence for the validity of the New Testament story was absolutely new and very encouraging for their faith. Fr. Anthony from the city of Tver put me on his video-blog broadcast and in the course of the first week it has already been seen by over 13,000 viewers!
Back in Moscow, I was treated by a smaller but absolutely delightful audience – schoolchildren at a private secondary school. The main challenge (and the most fun) for me was to make my class interesting for all ages at once – 5th Grade through 10th Grade in the same room – and I think it actually worked! Everybody was excited to dig into ancient bones and old parchments to find out how they all work to prove the credibility of the Bible. After the class the dean of the school kindly explained me why they kept the classroom door open all the time – teachers from the whole school (herself included) were listening in from the hallway.
A couple of days to recover from the trip and – dive right into preparations for the next one in late July!
