Karelia was cold.
I am glad Fr. Stanislav packed my four days there so tightly with events. I didn’t have much time be outside and exposed to the elements. We were, however, doing quick rounds to and around the old monasteries and churches on our path. In one convent, two hours to the west of Petrozavodsk, we actually stayed for a night and taught classes there for its nuns and novices. All summer long they are super busy receiving thousands of pilgrims, visitors, and tourists. Only in the winter does their prayer and labor-intensive schedule allow for (still rather intensive) classroom time. My “Historic Foundations of Faith” course was very fittingly augmented by Fr. Stanislav’s class on the “History of Christian Church Sects and Schisms.”
There was no phone or Internet connection in that remote corner of the country, which served everybody very well. There were no calls, E-mails, or other distractions from what all of us were there for – teaching, sharing, and praying.
Back in Petrozavodsk, I met with the same groups of technical college students to whom I was first introduced last November. This time, they were a little braver and peppered me with their questions on all sorts of topics: “How did faith change your life? How are the US Christians different from Russian ones? What does it take to enter an American university? Why are there so many different churches in the world?” What a blessing it was to have a ministry friend, Fr. Stanislav, next to me to offer them the best possible answer!
Two days before and three days after Karelia were spent in and around Moscow, teaching mostly in local churches and seminaries. Delivering two papers at Christian conferences also gave me a chance to connect with many new potential ministry partners from all over the country. Their interest in learning how to present the Gospel with historical evidence to secular audiences at public schools, colleges, and universities opens more and more doors for my future ministry in their localities and communities. I might, however, have to consider limiting my travel across the country to the destinations that I can reach by train. Some aviation safety experts are telling me that due to the ongoing war sanctions, flights within the country are becoming less and less reliable. Well, there are still plenty of the Russian territory that I can cover by overnight trains from Moscow or St. Petersburg.
My favorite audience – students and teachers
My second time at the Golytsino Christian Gimnazia (secondary school) only an hour away from Mocow, for example, gave me a chance to answer lots of the students’ questions that they were too shy to ask at our first session last year. Many of them already did some reading on the topic and, apparently, had some discussions with their teachers, parents and friends on the matters of “rational faith”. I was truly impressed by how seriously and personally they take it in their very young age!
I actually flew to Volgograd on a perfectly functional A320 earlier this week, to teach a five-day intensive (six academic hours per day) course on “Christian Apologetics” at the Nizhnevolzhsky (Downstream-Volga) Regional Baptist School of Missions. Most of these young men and women are already doing or preparing themselves for the ministry at what they call “post-war” or “new” territories that are only a couple hundred kilometers from Volgograd. They are or will be serving communities plagued with lots of grief, anger, hatred, and despair. To be honest, I am the one who is learning here – how to present my rational, scientific, and “left-brain” material with compassion, empathy, and in a very emotionally charged environment.
A learning moment – how to present the Gospel near the war-zone
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