LOVE IN ANY LANGUAGE
07 Dec 2007

Pensacola, Florida is not only the home of naval aviation, which has been struck by five or more hurricanes inside little more than a year; the panhandle city is also home to a mission minded people known as Hillcrest Baptist Church. The Florida church takes very seriously Christ’s declaration that His people will be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth. Veterans of English language evangelism efforts in Belarus and other far flung locations, this time the Hillcresters set their sights on Ufa, Russia.

The Pensacola church sent ten of its finest, led by Mel and Mary Lou Gentry, former missionaries to Indonesia whose family runs the Gator Land tourist attraction. Besides the Gentrys, the team consisted of Cheryl (a medical technologist), Nancy (a 4^th grade teacher), Yvonne (a retired southern bell), Kevin (an engineer) and his wife Emily, Theresa, Barbara, and Victor (the church’s pastor of evangelism and missions). The Christian emissaries were hooked up with Team Ufa by mission mobilizer extraordinaire, Bob Hartman, a Baptist minister and Christian apologetic hailing from a suburb of Nashville who has set up scores of similar mission trips.

 The mission seemed simple enough – to authentically convey the Gospel of Christ through relationships built over a week long English School. But, before that could ever be done, a considerable amount of ground work had to be done. Aided by Stas, the pastor of the Ufa Bible Church, Strategy Coordinator, Chris Carr, mounted an advertising campaign that included buses, trams, and fliers covering most of the city. Interested parties were instructed to call a number and set up a time for an interview to determine their language level. Five Russian Sisters in Christ (and friends) manned phones in shifts, eight hours a day for three consecutive weeks. The phone calls came slowly at first, but by the beginning of the second week, the phone seemed to ring almost incessantly; and our Russian friends had little time to do anything but answer one phone call after another.

People have to eat, so the culinary art of apprentice missionary, Josie Moon,was employed to feed lunch to those talking with potential students. The Russian students manning the phones said that although they were not paid for their time, Josie’s cooking alone was adequate compensation. A few of them commented on how they now understood why Larry, well, looks a little bit different than his wedding pictureJ. Josie prepared, delivered, and cleaned up after lunch for a period of 15 days. She then prepared welcome bags for the arrival of the ten member Pensacola team replete with her famous cinnamon rolls. Then on three separate occasions during the English School, Josie prepared and brought a scrumptious dessert for our visiting English teachers. Her servant’s heart and kitchen mastery were appreciated by all.

In the weeks before the English School, over 400 people called indicating that they would attend an interview at the House of Prayer the Saturday before the School was to begin. In the end, only approximately 225 actually did so. The Carrs and the Moons did the lion’s share of the interviewing. Two days later, on a chilly but sunny day in September, the six day English School finally began, with three sessions per day and five language levels per sessions. Sessions lasted two and half hours a piece with a 15 minute large group activity at the beginning and end of each session. “Alligator” Mel led the large group activities, but called upon “Song meister” Kevin to led the students in songs such as “God is so Good,” “Row, row, row your Boat,” and ever the crowd pleaser, “The Hokey Pokey.”  The two men traded a series of ribs and their back and forth comic relief banter usually had the normally serious Russians smiling if not out and out laughing. After the large group time, the students broke into several different classes. Although only a few of the visiting Floridians were actually professional English teachers, the Russians were quite impressed with the quality of the instruction. Our visitors were fairly well prepared and organized. Several of the students said that they wished that English would be taught in a similar fashion at their universities and colleges.

The classes were in a word – fun. Larry spent most of his time in beginning classes led by the dynamic duo of Theresa and Cheryl, where he would help out when students occasionally didn’t understand something in English. The Pensacola teachers would walk around the room drilling students, asking them what they were wearing or what they wanted to order from a menu. One would think that the nuts and bolts of slowly learning a language would be quite boring, but to our surprise, there was never a dull moment. Theresa would have students growling like a dog in order to produce the “ur” sound, or some student would answer a question such as “What did you do last night?” with a little more detail than was required. And the time passed all too quickly for every one involved. It seemed that when a session was over, no one was ready to leave.

On Wednesday evening, as Larry was preparing to go, a middle-aged woman approached him and said that she had read the Gospel from a Bible that someone had given her. Because of what she read, she was now seeking to get her daughter involved in Sunday school. She wanted to know if the House of Prayer had such a program.

At the end of each of the Thursday sessions, the Sunshine State visitors began to tell the students about their “heart friend” Jesus. Hereuntofore, they had not done so. They had simply taught English. In the class that Larry was in, Theresa spoke about how she came to faith in Christ and then won an alcoholic husband to the Lord through her changed life. Cheryl shared the basic Gospel story using the Evangecube. In other rooms, other people on the Florida team told similar stories about how faith in Christ had changed their lives and how Jesus was now their closest friend.

 Larry was eventually called upon to tell about his salvation experience four times over a three day span – Once in Theresa and Cheryl’s beginning class, once in Emily’s advanced intermediate class, and twice in Yvonne’s intermediate class. The witness of the American Christians was natural and merely flowed out of who they were. Moreover, it was never more than the last 10 to 15 minutes of the scheduled class time. Still, we inevitably lost nearly a quarter of our total student population during the last three days – the days on which a witness was given. Still, no one who was involved can think of much we would have done differently.

As Christians we are unapologetically Christ-centered. And that is the way that it should be. We are not ashamed of our Lord. Jesus Himself said that He would be a stumbling block to many. If people demand a secular world and get upset whenever the spiritual is broached, then the problem lies within them, not within us.

 It is a tragedy when Christians whether in Russia or the U.S. muzzle their convictions in an attempt to appease the secular world and not rock the boat. Some even try to justify no witness or a curtailed witness with Scripture. It’s a far cry from Peter and John getting 39 lashes for preaching Christ after they were warned not to. Thank God that the believers on the Pensacola team were not silent about their heart friend. Thank God that they gave a verbal witness, not an over the top witness, but a matter of fact accounting of what God did through Jesus in their lives.

On the final evening that the Floridians were with us, they held a ceremony to formally conclude the English School. About 150 students showed up. A great many students brought their teachers gifts of appreciation, some of which represented (for a Russian) a considerable financial outlay. There were hugs and kisses, the exchange of e-mail addresses, a few tears, and camera flashes going off every where. For our visitors, it was a bitter sweet moment. The teachers then stood on the platform and took turns calling out the names of those who attended their classes. Each student was given a certificate of completion to remember their brief six days under the tutelage of the native English language bearers. And each student paused on stage for a photograph with their teacher, proudly displaying their certificate. One student of Barbara’s actually sang her a folk song in her native Bashkir tongue before the entire assembled crowd.

This week, Team Ufa is sending some of our Russian Sisters in Christ to begin the process of follow-up.

One doesn’t live and work in Russia without a constant battle with cynicism. Part of us would simply like to rejoice over 65 souls saved without asking the hard questions like did those who indicated that they had accepted Jesus as their heart friend really understand what that means, or where they simply giving nod to the non-committal form of cultural Christianity that already exists here? But then again, there is part of us that realizes that if only 5 of the 65 actually become active members of a church and are baptized as new believers, then the English School was a resounding success. That is ministry in Russia. In fact, even if only one soul was actually saved, it would all be worth it. Our thanks to Chris’ boss (Andy Leininger), Bob Hartman, the Pensacola English teachers, and the good people at Hillcrest Baptist Church for allowing God to work in you and through you.

 Like the Russian students, we’d like you to come back. We’ll work with you any time God sends you our way.  You came to speak English, but ended up speaking God’s language – love.