The first three days in Moscow, followed by five days in Siberia, were very intense! I cannot believe I am only one third of the way through my trip. Hopefully, my next four days back in Moscow will give me some rest – there I will have “only” one presentation per day and no more rides of 300 km on beaten-up, local Siberian roads.

I did my first FaithSearch Discovery event on the evening of my arrival in Moscow in the open audience setting of a very popular presentation hall in the center of the city. The room was packed beyond capacity and the Q&A session lasted almost as long as the presentation itself. The adrenalin rush from presenting straight off the airplane after 13 hours in the air helps to deal with the jet lag and tunes me up for the whole trip.

The following weekend was packed with presentations and travel outside of Moscow. As I learned a little later, it also kept me out of trouble in the city where riot police were catching random pedestrians during the protest demonstrations and marches on Saturday. I prefer traveling at will in Siberia.

And I did. Each day they took me to a different town or a youth camp to present for a variety of audiences: young and old; farmers and city intelligentsia; clergy and professionals. Those villages and small towns are rarely visited by speakers from outside the region, let alone somebody from a different continent. The reception was always very warm and people were very open to receiving the Gospel with Evidence, as well as sharing their questions and life worries.

The trouble is that in Siberia they don’t count distance in kilometers but in hundreds of kilometers, and their roads – outside of a few state highways – do not allow for any reading or sleeping. On most trips, I usually rest during travel – here I have to rest from it.

Schools and universities are only open for ministry during the school year. Churches and prisons – all year around. I will also be teaching in family camps, church leadership trainings, and Sunday school classes for a variety of socio-economic and age groups. My next trip will start tomorrow and I am looking forward to these exciting teaching opportunities in/around Moscow; the Omsk Oblast (region) in Western Siberia; and in the Republic of Moldova (including Transdnestria).

I will piggyback a short family vacation in Austria at the end of these three weeks of ministry. Your prayers will be greatly appreciated.

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?!