Done. Three weeks of travel, teaching, preaching, meeting new audiences, and fellowship with old ministry friends and partners in five cities in two countries were very exciting but also very exhausting. Except for the last four days, I slept every other night on the train, and every night on a different bed. Most of my accommodations were very nice – even the monastery cell in Kazan was well heated and came with a USB charger for my phone (somebody left one there). It’s XVII-century, six-foot-thick, brick walls allowed only very limited Internet connection, but made me feel well protected from every kind of enemy forces.

The picture outside my window on the Moscow-Bryansk train is completely black-and-white, with the predominance of white for almost five hours. This is my fourth train on the trip but the first daytime one. Travelling on the overnight trains is more like a space/time-machine: you go to bed in one city and wake up on the next day in the other.

Want to make God laugh? Share with Him your travel plans. So I did, by praying for His blessing on my next trip itinerary to Belarus and Russia (first map). It looked very nice and simple: fly into Helsinki (as I have been doing for some time now); then take a bus to St. Petersburg; and finally take another flight to Minsk.