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 – 5^th Grade through 10^th 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!

After two extra-long layovers in JFK and SVO, and red-eye flight to KIV, I was met and greeted by my good friends and ministry partners in Moldova – Roman and Emily with their two most wonderful kids! What a joy to spend time in sharing and prayer! What a joy and a privilege to teach in the city library for an open audience – both believers and non-believers from the area. Partnership across the denominational and ethnic borders – with Russian and Romanian Orthodox churches – enabled us to reach out to a wider spectrum of the population in the city of Orhei.

On my first day of ministry in Chisinau the Lord blessed me with a three teaching/preaching/sharing opportunities almost back-to-back. First, after the morning Liturgy and with absolutely no warning, I was called up front “to give a word” on the Gospel reading of the day. Luckily, it was the story of Thomas the Doubter and I felt totally prepared to do that – I often use it as an intro to the FaithSearch Discovery presentation. It also worked as a teaser for my presentation at a Youth Church that night and half a dozen people from my morning “event” joined it along with their kids and friends. A less formal event around the table for yet another audience filled the day time. Sundays often end up to be the busiest days of the week.

It is both exciting and challenging to visit Moldova again – the same place I taught twice in the years past. The good part is that they still remember our ministry and want to have a new generation of the University Divitia Gratiae (previously known as Chisinau Christian University) to be trained in presenting the Gospel With Evidence to All Peoples Everywhere. Their program is specifically focused in preparing missionaries from Central Asian to do evangelism in predominantly Muslim countries. I still remember how happy their students to add the historic and archeological evidence for the Gospel to their missionary toolboxes. On the other hand, the expectations are now much higher as the school has now collected some feedback from the field and knows what actually does and what does not work in real life. I am looking forward to both teach and to be taught by my students and colleagues. This time in Moldova, I will also be working alongside my new ministry partners from the Orthodox church community as well as American missionaries. What a wonderful mix of experiences, backgrounds and perspectives! A more practical reason why I am going to Moldova now is that the first ten days of May are usually hard to fill in Russia as most of the country is celebrating (many – in a very “Russian” way) the “mayskie” holidays – a stretch of non-stop festivities staring on May 1^st (“Labor Day”) and usually ending around May 9^th (“V-Day”).

My Russian half of the trip will bring me to Moscow and Vladimir presenting at churches, parishes, colleges and conferences of, again, a full spectrum of denominations – Baptists, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Adventists as well as secular audiences. Some of these are completely new settings and venues for me that came up in the last moment. I received my most recent invitation while changing planes in JFK but how could I refuse even if it means further tightening of my travel and lodging schedule?!

Home, sweet home! I have just landed in Minnesota and my head is still spinning after 12 hours in the air and 9 time zones difference. At least, I did not have to adjust to the weather – it is almost identical to that of Moscow. I also had a special mid-air treat – bumping into missionary partners from Bryansk who were also returning to the states on Aeroflot. Small world. Great God!

Back in and around Moscow, my week was tightly packed with teaching at churches, public schools and universities in proportion of 1:2:3. It is not that difficult for me to book as many events as I can physically do having developed so many friendships and long term partnerships in those organizations and institutions in the area. It also helps that more that 14% (20 million) of the whole population of Russia (146 million) that spreads out for 11 time zones resides in this one city and its suburbs. There are new audiences waiting for me on every subway stop and on every commuter train (elektrichka) station. It was great to be able to sleep on the same pillow for that whole last week after covering hundreds of kilometers on buses, trains and airplanes from where I started three weeks ago and changing my lodging accommodations almost every day!

I started in Kolomna with teaching a class on the “Historic Validity of the Bible” to a classroom of fourth-graders. They’ve been studying the course using my textbook and were just excited to meet the author as I was to teach from it. Their teachers were sitting on the back row and making notes for the discussion that followed. In fact, many of their questions were answered by the FaithSearch Discovery presentation I offered them first and the conversation quickly turned from teaching methods and techniques to the most fundamental issues of life and faith. While speaking at the parents’ conference at the end of day I had these teachers’ full support and understanding of why it is so important to teach the basics of Christian faith to their youth in school.

On three separate occasions, I had a chance to give first run of my new presentation “Intro to Communication” based on my Master’s course taken at Bethel University. I built in some FaithSearch Discovery material into it but presented historical and archeological evidence of the Bible in the context of the communication process. We also discussed such topics as “How to present the message just as effectively as Jesus did?”, “How do we know that the message is valid and is not ‘lost in translation’?’ and many others. I tried it on different audiences and got very good and productive feedback for further improvement of the presentation.

Two lectures in my Alma Mater (Moscow State Pedagogical University) that they broadcasted to their distance-education audiences and recorded for a more detailed discussion in seminars also strengthened my relationships with academia and opened the door to other student audiences all over the country. I am looking forward to teaching the Word of God to future teachers and researchers on my next trips to Russia and other Russian-speaking countries. I already started planning my next trip in May that will, God willing, include Moldova and, of course, Moscow.

I am already half-way through the trip and the Lord graciously keeps me safe, strong and healthy. I keep moving upstream the Volga River having started from its delta in Astrakhan where my suitcase (with all my cables and other computer accessories) caught up with me after spending an extra night somewhere between JFK and Sheremetyevo. Praise the Lord, Pastor Benjamin had extra cables to connect my notebook, projector and sound system and I was able start my first FaithSearch Discovery presentation on time – three hours after I landed on Russian soil. Almost fourteen hours of sleep and very nice airplane meals on three flights from Minnesota to Astrakhan gave me plenty of energy for the presentation and the Q&A session that night. Two young skeptics were following me all the way to the pastor’s car as I was answering their question and providing them with references for their subsequent research in the matter of faith. God bless their hearts!

My next morning started with a joyful nose of the worship service at the Pentecostal church that supplied me with enough power for a teaching event after the service and for a great walking tour around this historic city. A mixture of Muslim and Christian motifs in its past and present has given this whole area of Sothern Russia a very special look and flavor.

Four hours on a minivan across the endless steppe that vividly reminded me of my trips across the plains of North Dakota brought me to the capital of Kalmyk Republic – the city of Elista. It would have been a typical and most boring Soviet-times provincial town if not for a huge golden Buddhist temple – hurul – the largest in all Europe, in its very center. Kalmykia does not have much to offer economically and is trying to build its path to prosperity by attracting pilgrims and tourists from all over the globe to this “world wonder”. That, of course, created quite a stir in local churches and even in secular communities such as schools, colleges and universities. My presentation on the historic foundation of Christian faith including some comparison references to other religions were met with great interest and appreciation. I must go there again sometime soon to reach out to even wider audience as their church and education leaders have tasted our material and saw the impact it is having on the event participants.

I stuck my whole last week with Volgograd’s Evangelical churches: teaching a course on Apologetics at their Missions School, preaching at their communities and presenting at Volgograd teachers’ conferences. It was so great not having to hop on another bus or train or van or plane at the end of every other day! Teaching at the International Church attended mostly by exchange students from Africa was surely the highlight of that whole time in Volgograd – FaithSearch International has now extended its mission to yet another continent!

I have already seen Volga River fully covered by ice at its mouth and I have seen it freely flowing less than a mile downstream from Volgograd hydroelectric station and am seeing it again today frozen over in Saratov. I have just spent most of the day with a group of Baptist leaders training them to present the FaithSearch Discovery in their churches. I will spend the whole day tomorrow with public school teachers and Orthodox Catechism trainers before catching a red-eye flight up north. Good-bye, Volga! Hello, Moscow River! Ӏ