ie:missional teaching. glocalizing. living. serving. repenting. incarnating. loving. repeating.

After lunch and goodbyes to Kari and the kids, we went back for our final meeting before leaving T–a. This meeting was actually with the owner of the apartment where we crashed. A lady who, in a show of Christian hospitality moved out to give us full run of the place; a lady who had been influential in more than 75% of her church coming to faith in Christ; a lady who is passionate over the spiritual condition of her people; a lady who has, alone, translated almost all the New Tribes chronological stories into T—n; a lady who was personally, directly responsible for Jim and Kari being in T–a when they were praying about a people farther west; a lady, in short, who speaks softly and calmly, but commands attention when she does so.

We listened to and filmed our interview/discussion as she considered how our projects might benefit the T—n people. She believes that the oral storying that has been proposed can be of tremendous value as the accounts of God’s word are paired with events from T—n history. This would help overcome the perception that Christianity is a Russian religion and that one must abandon all of T—n culture in order to be a Christian. This basic misunderstanding has hindered the spread of the gospel among this people.

After concluding in prayer, it was off to the airport to catch our return flight, which was on Air Novosibirsk rather than Air T–a. I guess they are code-sharing partners. A twin-engine turbo-prop, three of our team sat right between the propellers and are still recovering from temporary deafness. In the “Thanking God for small blessings” department, the cargo was actually in the cargo hold while both take-off and landing were great in spite of some pretty bald tires. Upon arrival, we were again collected by our host M family, then joined with a second family (another M is transit), and all the kids for dinner in a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath apartment which was, at that moment, holding 16 people with the international travel luggage of 11 of us. A wee bit crowded it was, but it was also good to meet new friends and re-connect with old ones. Thankfully, sleep was rapidly approaching.

Friday and Saturday were uneventful other than the excruciating process of attempting to get registered with the local government. If you’ve never had that pleasure, choose the root canal option instead. Sunday was a better day.

Choosing an option for church on Sunday morning was easy as we traveled to Akadem Gorodok, the home of several universities and one seminary. During the Cold War years, this was a center of training for the scientists of the USSR and is still considered a vital place of education. We worshiped with a church meeting on the seminary campus. They are multi-cultural with South Koreans, Russians and at least one German and one American in the services. Our entire team spoke during the Sunday School hour and was very well received. At least I think we were.

It is soon to be the home of a church start from English language classes. While there, we met with an American M who has moved there to teach English and help with the church start. He is a 55 year old single guy who speaks little Russian so far, but has followed God to that end of the earth with the prayer of seeing some of the intelligentsia come to faith in Christ. Please pray for Alvin in this effort. Learning English (as the international language) is a hugely important thing in countries around the world and as such has proven an effective tool of ministry opportunity.

This is the end of the narrative. In the next day or two, I will post a couple of emails that we received from Jim of things that happened after we left. God is working and the Kingdom is on the move.