Weeks “2” and “3” of ESL Camp classes allowed me to get to know my campers better and to help them open up to discussing some meaningful questions of life: Where did we all come from? What is the purpose of life? What or Who is the highest authority in moral and ethical matters? etc. One of the days, I had two almost identical conversations of the matter of faith in God with, first, a school staff member and, later, with an architect/designer of an Islamic Center.
[Read more…]2023 June-July: Turkey, Uzbekistan
Two weeks into the trip. I passed the training and team-building events and activities in Istanbul, and then a couple of days of adjustment in Tashkent. The first week of actually teaching English to a group of sixteen seventh- and eighth-graders in a private school for three hours every morning, plus three more hours of games and interaction in the afternoon went very well.
[Read more…]2023 June-July: Turkey and Uzbekistan
This upcoming trip will be different in a number of ways. First of all, I’ve only been home for a week since the previous one. My head is still slightly spinning after three weeks of travel and teaching across nearly half of Russia. Secondly, I am not traveling alone but with a team of Americans whom I will meet for the first time tomorrow morning at the airport. And thirdly, I will not be going to Russia, but to Uzbekistan where, I was told, most of the people still speak Russian, but the country is very different in its history, culture, and background from where I usually teach. The whole trip will be about trusting God for opening doors of opportunity for teaching and sharing my life, about partnering with others who are serving the people there, and about learning from them.
[Read more…]2023 May Trip to Russia: Samara, Moscow, Novokuznetsk, Bryansk
I had only four days in the Samara Region, but each of them was special and beyond everybody’s wildest expectations. In two state technical colleges where I was invited to teach a class on the Historic Foundations of Christian Faith, the audience halls were packed as the organizers had made it available to the entire student body. In the evening, the Neftyannik “culture palace” was again filled to the brim when I presented the Intro to Christian Pedagogy for teachers and parents of the oil producing town of about five thousand people.
[Read more…]May 2023: Nizhniy Novgorod, Kolomna, Samara, Moscow, Novokuznetsk, and Bryansk
I started week one of my time in Nizhniy Novgorod by teaching a class for the entire student body of the local Orthodox Seminary. As it is often the case, most of the seminarians took it first as just one more of their Apologetics courses. They occupied the back of the large auditorium, and it took some time for them to realize what they were about to see and to hear: a completely new way of presenting the Gospel from strictly rational and historic perspective. A group of lay church leaders and catechism teachers were also invited to the event. They took the front rows and immediately engaged in the ad hoc Q&A sessions which were conveniently provided by the computer freezing after a dozen slides. (The hosts had insisted on using their system for the presentation.)
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