My Russia-Ukraine Trip #2

Twenty-four young women and one young man gathered in Birmingham, Alabama. The 25 of us lived in 15 states. We would set out together to distribute thousands of Russian New Testaments in three Soviet cities.

But first, a two-day orientation would complete months of training and give us further insight into the culture of the people among whom we would work.

It was Saturday, August 31, 1991. Just 12 days earlier, a Soviet coup had rocked the world, and then had failed.

World events and personal struggles

As team members met one another, we marveled, “We’re here! And Monday, we fly to Moscow.” Months of international turmoil had threatened to shut down the trip. Personal challenges had loomed large.

Linda was diabetic. The strenuous travel schedule and the uncertainty as to what would be available for meals presented her with very real physical risks.

Dan had long wanted to visit Russia, and had even studied Russian in college. After he was accepted as the only male on the team, his wife Janet learned she was facing surgery. Yet she urged him not to change his plans.

Sheri was reeling from a series of family crises she had not seen coming.

Many of us were leaving young children for those 10 days. Wendy waved good-bye to four boys. My daughters were ages 6 and 3. Karon had no children yet, but she had just found out she was six weeks pregnant.

Donna, my roommate for the trip, had two preschool girls. And she had a personal mission entrusted to her by her critically ill brother. Elijah had sent a Bible and a letter for Donna to give to someone she would meet.

World events and our own struggles had showed us what was crucial:

• To give ourselves permission to feel all that we were feeling, and to take the weight of it all to the Lord.
• To know his voice, to trust his heart, to keep listening to hear what he was asking of each of us.
• By grace, not grit, to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”

A daunting prospect

Even before orientation started, our team leader Andrea announced a new hurdle. Due to “a mix-up,” the trip that was supposed to take us from Birmingham to Pittsburgh to New York to Helsinki to Moscow would now include a fifth stop, in Leningrad. That was a daunting prospect, for several reasons.

First, we had no visas for Leningrad – though we were assured special passes would be provided.

Also, the logistics would be complicated. Instead of checking our bags to Moscow, we would now check them to Leningrad. There, we would retrieve our bags and take them through customs, then load onto buses, ride from the international airport to a nearby national airport, recheck our luggage and wait for our Moscow flight.

And finally, going to Leningrad meant adding another 6 hours to an already lengthy trip. Instead of 17 hours, the journey would take 23.

Flights and more flights

Monday morning, September 2, we arrived at the Birmingham airport.

Hurdles kept coming.

One young woman, Rebecca, had discovered late Sunday night that she had no ticket for one of the five legs of the trip. By phone, she had been told that she would have a seat on that flight. But when she arrived at the airport, she learned she did not.

While airline personnel found Rebecca a seat that did not exist, 10 members of our team accepted a further schedule change. Leaving Pittsburgh, they would take a different flight from the rest of us, making an extra stop in Philadelphia. Those 10 traveled from Philadelphia to New York on a bumpy commuter flight that made several of them airsick.

The other 15 of us had an interesting experience after boarding our plane in Pittsburgh. The jet found its spot in a long line of airplanes taxiing for takeoff. We crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped, down the taxiway.

Then, when we had almost reached takeoff position, our pilot came over the intercom to inform us, “Somebody doesn’t like us. We’ve been pulled from the lineup because of our international connections’ departure times. We’ll be holding here a few more minutes.”

Just seconds later, the pilot came back on the intercom: “Well, somebody does like us! We’re going now!”

We touched down in New York at almost the exact time as the group coming by way of Philadelphia. We all ran through the terminal, boarded a bus to another terminal – and waited in the ticket line there. (All our tickets had to be changed because of the new Leningrad destination.)

We barely made the flight to Helsinki. We might not have made it had we been bumped on the taxiway in Pittsburgh.

We had an uneventful, but sleepless, overnight flight to Helsinki. On board, we met another team of 34 men and women with whom we would partner to distribute Bibles in Moscow, Yalta and Bishkek.

Tuesday morning at the Helsinki airport we hit another snag. The special passes to Leningrad that we’d been promised had not materialized.

Lamont, head of the combined teams, announced he was going downstairs to talk to the “powers that be.” He said, “The worst that could happen is that in Leningrad they would send us back here.”

He was trying to comfort and to remind us to be flexible, but this time something deep inside me said no. I believe it was God’s Spirit saying, “You’ve flexed as far as I want you to flex. Now it’s time to stand.”

Others on our team sensed the same thing. So we stood in a large circle in the Helsinki airport and prayed quietly. We asked God to quash any further delay.

Paperwork and scrambled plans

That same night, we stood in Red Square in the heart of Moscow, watching young Soviet cadets in carefully metered step carry out the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb.

Wednesday through Friday, we were supposed to distribute Russian New Testaments in connection with Moscow’s International Book Fair. Wednesday morning we learned the book fair had been canceled.

Lamont told us, “I’ve already been talking with some of the Russian church leaders. God is going to provide us other opportunities to distribute those Bibles.”

That morning we visited the largest Baptist church in Moscow, where we had a short service with a few of the Russian believers. Then, we were supposed to load 14,000 New Testaments into our two tour buses, head out to two different places, and begin distributing the Bibles.

Instead, we stood inside the church and talked for what seemed like hours. We later learned the paperwork for releasing the Bibles had taken much longer than expected.

By the time we got the Testaments loaded, it was almost lunchtime. Although a prepared meal was waiting for us at the hotel, our tour guides took each bus to a different souvenir shop and let us all out. Along the way, they named all the tourist attractions we would visit over the next two days.

It was now Wednesday noon. We had begun our trip early Monday morning. We still had 14,000 Bibles to distribute in Moscow before Friday, when part of our team would fly to Bishkek (then Frunze) in Kyrgyzstan, and the rest of us would fly to Yalta in the Ukraine. We had not yet begun what we had set out to do, and the tour guides’ plans didn’t seem to leave any time to do it.

I heard Lamont telling one of the guides, “These people are not ordinary tourists. They haven’t come here to see the sights. They have come here to minister to the Russian people. You must let us set the schedule.”

On the bus again, traveling back to the Cosmos Hotel for lunch, I prayed, “Lord of breakthrough, loose us to do what we have come here to do!”

The thanks we got

That afternoon, September 4, half of the members of the combined teams set out to take compassion, smiles and New Testaments to people in a psychiatric hospital and an alcohol rehabilitation center.

The rest of us set out for Red Square. In the shadow of beautiful St. Basil’s Cathedral, perhaps the most well-known of all Moscow landmarks, we held an evangelistic service. Afterward, we handed out hundreds of New Testaments to people who seemed thrilled to receive them.

Later that afternoon we went to Arbat Street, a pedestrian street where artists and craftsmen display and sell their work. Again, we placed Bibles in hundreds of outstretched hands.

Michael, a young artist, grabbed the New Testament I handed him. In broken English he exclaimed, “I am a believer. But no Bible. I pray for a Bible. But no money. Now I have a Bible!” Then, he kissed me four time on the cheeks.

Between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday night, we handed out all 14,000 Bibles in half a dozen street locations and three institutions in Moscow. Everywhere people flocked to get what we offered.

To have a copy of the Scriptures, drivers jumped out of cars at red lights, sophisticated businessmen made pedestrian U-turns, people in lab coats left their posts in a medical building.

Some who received Bibles kissed them or clutched them to their chests. Some kissed the hands or cheeks of the givers. Others asked team members to sign their New Testaments. Over and over they expressed their thanks: “Spacibo. Spacibo. Spacibo.”

To this day, in my mind’s eye, I can still see one red-haired woman who stood in the street, opened her Bible and read.

As I handed out each Testament, I tried to make eye contact with the person receiving it and to say, “Iisus Khristos lyubit tebya.” Jesus Christ loves you. Time after time, I watched somber eyes melt into soft hope.

The Lord Broke Through

During the volatile months before our trip – and during the intense days when we struggled to reach another hemisphere and to connect with the people we were sent to serve – it seemed we would never get there.

Centuries ago, a young man named David struggled far longer to get where God had said. Anointed to be Israel’s next king, David spent 15-20 years tending sheep, then serving King Saul, then fleeing and hiding from Saul’s murderous intent. After Saul died, David became king over two of Israel’s tribes, but 10 tribes rejected him for seven more years.

At long last, David was crowned king over all Israel. Immediately, an enemy nation named Philistia sent an army to find David and stop his reign before it got started.

That’s when God told David it was time to stand. And David did. He faced the Philistines and defeated them. And after that battle, David testified:

I watched the Lord break through my enemies like a mighty flood. (2 Sam. 5:20 CEV)

When we know what our Lord wants from us, but the hindrances will not quit, here is the counsel of Ephesians 6:

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (vv. 10-12)

Thirty years ago, I learned what it means – and what it can look like – to move with God and to stand in God when all hell fights against it.

Recalling that trip now, I testify, to myself and to you: The Lord Broke Through.

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This story of this extraordinary trip is adapted from my book, When Walls Come Tumbling Down (New Hope, © 1994).

There’s more to this story

• #1 An August coup and a promise of breakthrough: My story – The dramatic world events that led up to my making this trip.
• #3 Extraordinary! Russia, Ukraine, breakthrough, God – Where I was and what I saw the Lord do when the Soviet Congress was dismantling the Soviet Union.
• #4 From the Black Sea to Red Square – The song that touched my heart then, and still does today.

My extraordinary trip to India and Sri Lanka

• Celebrity culture in the church – where I least expected to find it.
• The Lord who breaks open the way – when it utterly stunned me to see it.