It is becoming a good tradition for me to celebrate Pascha in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. Last year, the city was still pretty much covered in snow and I even had a chance to ski here. Today, during the midnight procession around the church I was in short sleeves and a light breeze was not even strong enough to blow off the candles in peoples’ hands. And then, at midnight, a huge crowd shouted at the top of their lungs – “Christ is risen! He is risen 
indeed!” What a scene! The street traffic stopped, the bells ringing, hundreds of people standing with candles in and around the city cathedral their faces shining with joy and crying out endless times: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”
What a great finale for my week of teaching in Krasnoyarsk! Many of these men and women attended my FaithSearch Discovery presentations during that week where we looked at the facts of Christ’s life, death and, yes, resurrection from historical perspective. We studied the manuscript evidence for the validity of the Gospel story and established the historicity of the New Testament narratives. Now, as the Paschal service progressed and these very facts were mentioned in the course of the worship I was catching so many of these people looking at me and at each other (almost winking!): Yes, we know it! Yes, it is true indeed!
Some of them later shared with me the very special experience they had 
celebrating Pascha this year – not as a nice church tradition, not as a merely theological concept, not as a beautiful moral parable but as a fact of history!
I am leaving Krasnoyarsk tomorrow morning for Moscow energized and encouraged by these testimonies.
