Vladivostok is only (!) nine time zones away from Minnesota — if you travel West. Due to the sanctions, however, there are no flights into Russia from that direction at this point. My route, instead, will cross the eastern half of North America, the Atlantic Ocean, all of Europe, and almost all of Asia. A total of eighteen hours in flight plus seven hours on the bus–with multiple layovers–will bring me to my next destination: the Russian Far East.
I will then teach and preach at local parishes and be a keynote speaker for their week-long Regional Youth Conference. Schools will still be out of session, but teachers will already be coming back for conferences. I will catch four of them (conferences, not teachers) before I leave again, making my way back across two thirds of the globe.
