MSP-JFK-SVO-SVX. 15-hour long flight carried me over 10 time zones from Minnesota to Yekaterinburg. Three more hours in the car with Pastor Viktor brought me to the town of Bogdanovich – my first stop on a two-weeks-long tour all over Northern Urals. There were no air conditioner or mosquito nets in their apartment but I was too exhausted and jet-lagged for it to bother me much. Twelve solid hours of sleep and I was ready for my first presentation of FaithSearch Discovery at a Pentecostal Church on the next morning and an informal promo presentation for local pastors and lay leaders around the dinner table in the evening.

On Sunday, back in Yekaterinburg, I presented my seminar back-to-back at two churches and was put on a six-hour-long red-eye bus to the town of Karpinsk. I paid my first visit to their church back in December but they insisted that I come again and present the whole FSDiscovery once more so that they could bring their non-believing friends and family members to see and to hear it this time around. I was happy to oblige.

I was even happier to meet a pastor in Yekaterinburg who share how much his church appreciated the training I did for them a couple of years ago. They have been using our material in various outreach and missions projects all this time and found it especially effective in bringing to faith the most skeptical and stubborn folks – young and old, educated and not.

My next stop, in a town of Novaya Lyalya (“Lyalya” is a native name for a beautiful river, meaning “slow, calm”), allowed me to serve in a very small church community still hurting from their pastor recently and unexpectedly leaving them and having to develop their new leadership and ministry vision for the future. What a special blessing it is indeed to be of encouragement and of help to the people in real need and in a small town hardly ever visited by speakers! I will never forget their shining eyes and their beautiful faces as we studied the Gospel with Evidence together.

Three hours on the bus and I am in Severouralsk (“Northern-Urals”), a coal, gold and ore mining town with a vibrant Evangelical community and an amazing Orthodox Church almost next to each other. I am teaching here for two days which will allow me to try on some new historic and archeological materials I have added to my presentation recently and to invite my audience to discuss what they will have just learned. From experience, I am not expecting many questions on the material itself but mostly – on the practical application of faith in real life matters. Please keep me in your prayers but also pray for these dear people’s real life issues and questions they face every day.

It  has been five days of ministry in Moscow and five in Vladivostok.

Moscow greeted me with one and only day of sunshine but quickly turned rainy and gloomy for the rest of my time there. I was glad my schedule was full and I didn’t have time for sightseeing in those windy and rather chilly days. I presented at a Baptist church, taught at a public school teachers’ conference, spoke on a Christian radio channel, conducted a training at a state university and gave a master class at an Orthodox Church college.

On one of the nights I managed to get a ticket to a very popular drama theater performance. The play turned out to be a harsh and bitter satire on exactly the topic of my ministry in Russia: teaching the course of Intro to the Christian (Orthodox) Culture in public schools. It set to show how the introduction of religion into public schools would inevitably lead to abuse of clergy, to the neglect of hard sciences and to the religions fanaticism. No wonder that many parents in Russia are so opposed to this fairly new curriculum if the media and arts are working so hard to present it in the worst possible light!

An eight-hour-long flight carried me over most of Russia to its Far East. The city of Vladivostok used to be completely closed to foreigners because of the Russian Navy based in its harbor. It is open now. It is also very open for the Gospel! I was presenting today at a Far East Federal University graduate school students and their professors for four hours and many of them came down after the event to shake my hand and to express their excitement! “We were coming here to hear a lecture but experienced so much more than just a lecture! It was a true testimony. Personal. Profound. Memorable”. My other audiences in Vladivostok varied in age and nationality, church tradition and educational level but all of them responded to my greeting “Christ is risen!” with the same enthusiasm: “He is risen indeed!” After that, my job was very simple and easy – to provide them with evidence proving these statement to be valid and true.

I am flying back to Moscow tomorrow morning and then to Kiev, Ukraine, for the last lag of my travel. Please continue praying for the safety of my travel in those areas of political unrest and for my family back in MN, ND and en route to AK.

It  has been five days of ministry in Moscow and five in Vladivostok.

Moscow greeted me with one and only day of sunshine but quickly turned rainy and gloomy for the rest of my time there. I was glad my schedule was full and I didn’t have time for sightseeing in those windy and rather chilly days. I presented at a Baptist church, taught at a public school teachers’ conference, spoke on a Christian radio channel, conducted a training at a state university and gave a master class at an Orthodox Church college.

On one of the nights I managed to get a ticket to a very popular drama theater performance. The play turned out to be a harsh and bitter satire on exactly the topic of my ministry in Russia: teaching the course of Intro to the Christian (Orthodox) Culture in public schools. It set to show how the introduction of religion into public schools would inevitably lead to abuse of clergy, to the neglect of hard sciences and to the religions fanaticism. No wonder that many parents in Russia are so opposed to this fairly new curriculum if the media and arts are working so hard to present it in the worst possible light!

An eight-hour-long flight carried me over most of Russia to its Far East. The city of Vladivostok used to be completely closed to foreigners because of the Russian Navy based in its harbor. It is open now. It is also very open for the Gospel! I was presenting today at a Far East Federal University graduate school students and their professors for four hours and many of them came down after the event to shake my hand and to express their excitement! “We were coming here to hear a lecture but experienced so much more than just a lecture! It was a true testimony. Personal. Profound. Memorable”. My other audiences in Vladivostok varied in age and nationality, church tradition and educational level but all of them responded to my greeting “Christ is risen!” with the same enthusiasm: “He is risen indeed!” After that, my job was very simple and easy – to provide them with evidence proving these statement to be valid and true.

I am flying back to Moscow tomorrow morning and then to Kiev, Ukraine, for the last lag of my travel. Please continue praying for the safety of my travel in those areas of political unrest and for my family back in MN, ND and en route to AK.

Every trip is different and each is different in a different way. This one will be a couple of days shorter than my usual three weeks (last one was three days longer) but it will by far exceed all my other trips by mileage. I just could not resist flying all over to the Russian Far East with the current exchange rate of the Russian ruble being so low and consequently the internal flights being so cheap. I will first spend a few days in Moscow teaching the FaithSearch Discovery in both Christian and secular colleges and speaking in churches during the Bright Week (according to the Russian Orthodox Church Calendar). This special time of the year allows for bringing up the topic of the New Testament story to the classrooms easily and naturally. What exactly happened two thousand year ago and how do we know how exactly it happened? I cannot wait to see the eyes of my event participants beginning to shine with excitement when they hear me confirming with historic accuracy: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

I will then fly over eight time zones to the city of Vladivostok to conduct the FaithSearch Discovery training for local university students and lay leaders in a number of churches. I might not be able to travel that far into the country very often and will try to make the best use of my time on this trip.

My last week will bring me to the country of Ukraine where I will join a group of Americans ministering primarily to and alongside the local Baptist community. I will however do some public school teachers’ training on the side and will also present at an Orthodox Church gathering in Kiev.

I am coveting your prayers for my travel and for my family back in MN, ND and UT. Please especially pray for safety of traveling around the areas of political and military unrest in Ukraine.