Russian bravado is legendary. In the toughest of situations, with the worse set of circumstances imaginable, instead of complaining, a Russian will smile ever so slightly and say, “Fsyo norMAHLna” meaning everything is okay or normal. And, indeed, the “heavenly people” (as they sometimes call themselves) do have an extraordinary capacity to suffer. And that is what concerned Apprentice missionary Larry Moon when he told his Ufa brothers in Christ about his intention to accompany the Baptist Association of Bashkortostan on an evangelical expedition to the Khanti-Mansisk Okrug, some 2,000 km to the North West in western Siberia. There was no bravado; there were no fsyo norMAHLnos.  “Oh brother,” they said, “Are you sure? There won’t be any American toilets; there won’t be any Coca-Cola. It will be 50 below up there.” Several of the Russian brothers told him that they weren’t going because they feared for their health. Larry wondered just what he had gotten himself into.

Nonetheless, before sunrise on January the 6^th, he joined nine other adventurers at a local hotel. The men piled into two vehicles stuffed to the gills with equipment and supplies, and emblazoned with the words, “Gospel to the people of Russia.” This trip was to be just one leg of a massive expedition that the Evangelical Union of Christians and Baptists leadership has undertaken to preach the Gospel in every nook and cranny of the Russian land mass. The Russians quickly claimed the seats in the Toyota Land Cruiser and Larry was banished to the Niva. A Niva is a small four wheel drive Russian jeep with the emphasis on the word small. The first time that Larry climbed into the Niva, someone had to help him get his legs in! Nivas are equipped with a heater which Larry found to be adequate, but which his thin blooded Russian brothers berated the entire trip.

After several rounds of photographs and 25 people had each prayed over the men, the expedition was finally on its way, some two hours late, which by Russian standards is making fairly good time. The expedition made its way due east towards the Ural Mountains. The Urals, while by no means lacking in beauty, are hills really, somewhat akin to the Ozark Mountains in eastern Arkansas. The ten brothers from Bashkortostan wound their way past white water mountain streams and hills covered with a mix of fir trees and birch forests headed towards the continental divide, the invisible line between Europe and Asia.  Larry noticed that every once in a while the driver would stop by the side of the road and say that it was time to check the tires. After a number of stops, Larry asked him whether something was wrong with the Niva’s tires. The Russians all laughed and the driver explained that it was a euphemism for a bathroom break. “Oh,” Larry said, “you mean it is time to make the snow yellow?” The brothers guffawed and “making the snow yellow” became a running joke for the remainder of the trip.  If the American was sleeping when the expedition stopped to check the tires, they woke him up with glee, saying, “Brother

Larry, it is time to make the snow yellow!” About four hours into the trip they finally reached the divide where the word “Asia” was affixed to a stone pillar. They had left Europe. They were in Siberia. The massive swath of frozen territory stretching from the Urals to the Pacific has always beckoned the Russian soul. The mere pronunciation of its name conjures up so many images – exile, death, gulags, beauty, wealth, and adventure. Perhaps Zhenya, a pastor from Birsk said it best when his wife called to ask his impressions of Siberia – “Oh dorogaya (sweet heart),” he said, “takaya romantika (What a romance)!”  And the romance was just beginning.

     The expedition pushed on to just outside Chelyabinsk, one of the most polluted cities in the world, before turning north for the long trek to Tyumen’, the capitol of an immense oil and gas region. The men reached Tyumen’ squeezed like a lemon (exhausted), as the Russians say.  They were divided up and sent to the homes of local believers for some rest. Along with Ruviim, the director of missions for the Russian Baptist Union, Larry lodged with the pastor of the church that was supposedly hosting them.  Only from the beginning the pastor let it be known what an inconvenience it was for the team to arrive on Russian Christmas Eve. And he stated again and again his desire that the team leave no later than 3 p.m. on Christmas Day (the 7^th). He asked what Larry was doing in Ufa, and the new missionary told him about his team’s desire to plant apartment/cell churches. The pastor said that such a desire showed an ignorance of Russian culture. “It will never work,” he said, “It would be best if you Americans just provide us with money and get out of our way.” Larry wanted to ask him if he had ever heard of incarnation, but thought better of it. Pastors in the larger Russian churches are often well connected autocrats. It is best just to steer clear of them. And, the next day when the pastor forbade him from traveling to a nearby village for an evangelistic service, Larry was not surprised. The pastor had exercised his imperial pastoral prerogative, letting everyone know who was in charge.

    After obed (the largest meal of the day served at 2 p.m.), the Bashkiri team left Tyumen’ for Tobol’sk, another five to six hours to the north. Every so often, the men could see enormous balls of fire above the tree line, denoting, in the darkness, the location of numerous oil refineries in the region. Time and again, Larry, whose official position on the trip was team photographer, was called upon to get a good snap of whatever the brothers found interesting, including those giant “torches” that lit up the night sky. The team reached Tobol’sk at about 10 p.m. There were no Baptists there, but there was an Evangelical church that had been awaiting the expedition’s arrival for nearly two hours. Even though the team was late, their hosts were much more accepting than those in Tyumen’. The expedition was quickly escorted to a long pick nick table, laden with food, adjacent to three other such tables where the excited congregation sat. There was an open mike at the end of the room and the team was soon told that the Tobol’sk brethren eagerly wanted to hear anything that God had placed on their visitors’ hearts. There was an awkward moment of silence as the brothers on the team had not planned to speak in Tobol’sk. Quietly, the senior brothers fanned out and began to plead with those on the team to participate in anyway possible. Larry was asked to sing. Fortunately, he had the Russian words to “What Child is this?” in his notebook. An American singing in Russian on Christmas night in a Siberian city was somewhat of a novelty, and Larry was nervous, but the congregation was more than gracious. And for the next two hours they warmly received every speaker and vocalist with grateful hearts. At midnight, the team was divided up and sent off to various apartments where by tradition, they could not escape drinking tea until 2 A.M. before begging off to bed.

Theygathered at the church at 9 A.M. the next morning for an informal tour of Tobol’sk. The church’s pastor led them to the remains of one of Stalin’s infamous prisons where thousands of Christians, many of them pastors, spent their last days on Earth. The team walked down the frozen corridors of what had to be a hellish place. The hallways were flanked by small iron doors with tiny barred windows. Behind the doors were barren concrete cells replete with barred, open air windows. Those that starvation did not kill, the men were told, the cold did. The morning was bitterly cold – minus 15 degrees F with a stiff wind – and the pastor’s words were not lost on anyone. A few of those on the team wept and the men prayed, thanking God for the courage of their predecessors.
Four hundred meters from the prison there stood a large Orthodox cathedral that was undergoing repair. The pastor told the men that Tobol’sk is an Orthodox stronghold and that everything that his church undertakes is strongly opposed by local priests. The team entered the doors of the opposition’s lair to a lavishly ornate hall lined with icons. The faithful prayed to their favorite saints by lighting incense candles before their images. The brothers asked if they could take photographs, but were denied. And so they fanned out across the hall and quietly prayed that the worshipers there would come to know the Jesus of the Bible as their Savior and Lord. Their prayers were brief, as several of the brothers, repulsed by the idolatry they were witnessing, exited the cathedral. The men walked through the crunchy snow to their vehicles, said their good byes to the pastor, and began an 8 hour, 800 km trip north to the city of Khanti-Mansisk.

     The expedition arrived in Khanti-Mansisk well after dark. It was the evening of the 8^th, but the city was still decked out in its Christmas finery. The team met and prayed with local brothers who would be accompanying them on the expedition – Three Russians, an Uzbek, and a Mansisk brother who looked like an Eskimo, led by the assistant senior pastor for the Khanti-Mansisk Okrug, Sergei Petrovich. At midnight everyone was dispatched to the apartments of various church members where the almost obligatory cup of tea and two hours of conversation awaited them. In the morning, the expedition gathered at the Khanti-Mansisk Baptist Church for worship. Larry had been told that he probably would not get more than one or two chances to preach on the expedition. His job was to document the trip armed with video and digital cameras. And so, when he was asked to preach, thinking that he would not get another chance, he gave it his all, preaching a sermon called “That’s My King” adapted from a sermon by the same name that was delivered by the American pastor, Dr. Lockridge. Sergei Petrovich liked the sermon and Larry would eventually preach it five times in the XMAO (Khanti-Mansisk Autonomous Okrug). 

After obed, and being blessed by local followers of Jesus, the expedition was finally on its way.

     The brothers decided that three days in the Pohanka (the Niva) was enough for Larry and gave him a spot in the front seat of the Toyota, which was plusher than any vehicle that he had ever seen in Russia. Sergei Petrovich and his men rode in an old Russian military van and assumed the role of the lead vehicle. The Toyota was second and the Pohanka brought up the rear. Each vehicle was equipped with a walkie talkie, and, as Larry was soon to find out, for good reason. A half hour outside Khanti-Mansisk the expedition left the road. “Second, this is first,” the walkie talkie in the Toyota sang out. “Go ahead first.” “Brother Larry, for the next several days you will be traveling on zemniki. A zemnik is a road across a frozen lake, river, or swamp that exists only in the winter. In the summer, the places that you will be visiting are isolated and accessible only by boat.” As Larry was soon to find out, even in the winter time, a zemnik is a road in name only. About every thirty seconds, Sergei Petrovich’s voice crackled over the walkie, “Yamo (hole), Brothers!”… “Uneven road, Brothers!”… “Incline, Brothers!” And Sergei was not one given to exaggeration. If he said there was a hole, then one could expect a crater. The zemniki were so rough that everyone was on the verge of losing their cookies. Finally, after three hours on a miniature roller coaster through some incredibly beautiful taiga (forests), the team arrived under the cover of darkness in the small village of Repolovo.

    There was no church in Repolovo. But, conveniently, the only known evangelical Christian in the village was the director of the cultural hall. Understand, outside Russia’s big cities, if anything happens at all, it happens at the local hall of culture. That is the way the Soviets wanted it. All the better to indoctrinate you, my dear. But now, halls that were once used to proclaim the glories of the socialist state are sometimes used to proclaim the glory of Almighty God. Half the brothers fanned out across the town with invitations to a “Christmas Evening,” while the others prepared the sound equipment at the cultural hall.  By 6:30 in the evening, about 20 of the village’s residents had assembled in the hall. For the next two hours they listened attentively to songs, poems, and sermons that spoke of God’s love. Some of the town’s people said that they had never heard anything like what their visitors were sharing with them, and asked if the men could return sometime and speak about these matters again. Sergei Petrovich said that he was all too happy to oblige. Praising God for His power, the expedition rolled on.

     Four hours and some 120 km of zemniki later, they arrived in the village of Gornopravdinsk. It was midnight and everyone was tired. There were no Baptists in Gornopravdinsk, but there was a small evangelical church and Sergei Petrovich had arranged room and board for the team in the home of a parachurch worker… At least, he thought that he had arranged it. The man in question could not remember their conversation. The brothers were led to a room with practically nothing in it but a bare floor, while Sergei and the parachurch brother adjourned to another room to talk things out. “What happens now?” Larry queried. “They negotiate,” one of the brothers answered. “Once again we won’t get to bed until 2 A.M.,” Larry sighed. “They are taking care of it; it won’t take that long,” the brother shot back. Two hours later, at exactly 2 A.M., the door to the room flung open, startling some of the brothers who were cat napping on the floor. An agreement had been reached. Larry smiled and a few of the brothers rolled their eyes in disgust. The host found out Larry was an American and led him to another room where there were two single beds. Larry was tired and wasn’t thinking; for it was at this point that he made a cultural mistake. The Russians have a very collective mentality. Collective suffering is at the very core of their world view. The brothers slept on the floor the two nights the expedition was in Gornopravdinsk, while Larry slept in a bed. It was a lumpy, uncomfortable, creaky bed that squealed every time Larry made a move, but it was a bed nonetheless. In the brothers’ minds, it might as well have been the Ritz Hotel, and it took Larry many days just to partially recover from his fopa. In the morning, the brothers began to knock on the doors of apartments in the the soviet style apartment blocks that are a feature of all but the smallest villages in Russia. They invited residents to an evening of songs and poems presented by a visiting group from Bashkortostan. The festivities were held in a small, wooden church which could seat approximately 30 souls. In Mother Russia, we average about one participant for every 100 invitations given out. And true to form, the visiting team invited 3,000 people, and 30 showed up. The 30 unbelievers seemed to truly enjoy the visiting group’s program, even though it focused upon sin, repentance, forgiveness, and new life in Christ. But the most memorable moment in Gornopravdinsk came once all the non-Christian guests had departed. The church’s 15 members arrived about 9 p.m. for a second program. Larry preached and as he spoke, many of the babushkas began to cry. The longer he preached, the louder they sobbed. “We are grateful that you gave up so much to come and tell us about the greatness of our king Jesus,” one of them explained. The Bashkiri men and the thankful grandmothers fellowshipped until nearly mid-night. The old saints simply did not want to let their visitors go. A rough translation of the town’s name would be “mountain truth.” And the team was truly thankful to be able to speak the truth in this village nestled in the hills overlooking the Irtish’ (river). The next morning, the evangelistic expedition, now 16 men strong, moved on. Yet another five hours of zemniki lay ahead.

Go to Part 2