June 2000, Ukraine
“The Lord also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble; And those who know Your Name will put their trust in You, for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You” - Ps. 9:9-10
Russia! We arrived in Moscow in the early morning hours and were picked up by some Russian Christians. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would be in Russia. But God had brought us here to meet and treat more of His persecuted children and we were glad to do so.
It was June of 2000 and not very warm yet. We stayed in a home by ourselves and a Russian woman came in to cook for us. We were pretty tired from our fourteen-hour train adventure and we were looking forward to some rest. It was not to be. We asked about a tour of Moscow and were told that we would have to go right then if we were to go as, the other days were scheduled for clinic. This is what Patrick had wanted to see –Moscow, Red Square, St. Basils’ Cathedral, with its famous domes, the Kremlin most of all. It was now or never. So off we went with a Russian Christian as our guide. He took us on a six-hour walking tour of the city but could not speak any English. He described everything in Russian and we nodded and smiled politely and didn’t understand a word. Most of the buildings we saw were impressive but we had no idea what their significance was. Red Square was very interesting with Lenin’s tomb as the focal point. His body was encased in clear glass and we couldn’t help thinking of how he was largely responsible for bringing atheism to Russia. He is probably regretting that now. There were vendors in Red Square too selling everything from Russian fur hats to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky matryoshka dolls (nesting dolls). That was an embarrassment. Exhausted, we arrived back our little house in time for a massive meal of greasy cabbage and ravioli-like dumplings in a greasy tomato sauce. We were served huge platefuls and we had been warned not to leave food on our plates as it would be insulting. So we struggled to eat it all, only to have our cook replace our empty plates with ones just as full as the first ones. It became a social faux pas nightmare as we couldn’t possibly eat all the food and were getting more nauseated by the minute. At one point, our cook began to cry and said “You hate my cooking!” We tried hard to explain that Americans don’t eat such big meals but she wasn’t buying it. We felt terrible because we knew that those who were providing this food probably didn’t have much and were lavishing it on us. Finally, we gave up and went to bed. It was a Saturday night and Jack was speaking in church the next day. Unfortunately, he was up sick a good part of the night.
We enjoyed the Russian Christians, just not the food. There was a pot luck dinner after church with similar food unfortunately. We especially remember a dish of broccoli and cauliflower cooked the point of it being mush and served cold. Ugh!
We began our clinic with a bang the next day, literally. It was necessary for us to use the inverter again for power and the car of a teen in the church was going to be used for its battery. The battery was so corroded that it was hard to tell which terminal was which but the teen assured us that he knew. He connected the clamps to the terminals and promptly blew the main fuse on the inverter. We were finished before we even got started. Some Christian men went into Moscow to look for a new fuse and six hours later they were back with the exact same one. We wondered if the Lord had put it there just for us.
As we treated the precious brethren in Russia and heard the tales of them meeting in the forest in the dead of winter to worship the Lord, terrified of being seen and arrested, we knew we had no idea what suffering for the faith was. We had seen the devotion of the Ukrainian Christians as well as they came to the charred church we had worked in and stood under tarps since the roof was gone or stood outside in the rain for the two-hour service. Now the Russian Christians described those difficult years and how now that persecution had officially ended, the church was actually weaker as a result. While they were going through persecution they were so cut off from the rest of the world that they thought all Christians suffered as they did for their faith. They didn’t think they were anyone special in what they were suffering. They had no idea how much they were prayed for and looked up to by those of us in the West.
The clinic days were long and tiring and there was a “presence” that we had never experienced before. It is hard to describe but just a pressure and a feeling of foreboding and difficulty. We have since experienced it many times in other countries where the powers of darkness have had free rein for a long time. Everything we tried to do was difficult. There was a sense of opposition that was tangible. We struggled with the work in many ways even though our equipment was working fine with the inverter. There were almost constant interruptions and irritations that rubbed on our nerves. People did things that made it all harder. Someone sent the teen (with his car) on an errand to another city which kept us from working that day since we needed to attach our inverter to his car battery. Another day, a woman patient came into the treatment room and burst into tears. After getting her to sit in the dental chair, she began hyperventilating and dry heaving at the thought of how she was going to suffer. She needed four teeth extracted due to serious infections! A young American woman was translating for us but after seeing this woman’s extreme fear refused to translate anymore, saying she would not be part of us causing this woman to have a heart attack! Somehow we were able to calm the patient down, anesthetize her and remove two teeth. Seeing that it didn’t hurt, she wanted the other two out! We told her to come back the next day which she did. He initial fear was due to all that she had suffered in the past through painful treatment by local dentists.
Patrick, who had been working as our sterilization technician, noticed that the lights on the sterilizer had gone out, indicating that our electricity was no longer on. We were in the middle of doing a filling and electricity was essential to complete the procedure. Patrick went outside to check on the inverter and he found the teen who was loaning his car had decided to take the engine apart while it was sitting there, forgetting that we needed his charged battery for our equipment to run! Eventually we were able to complete the treatment on this patient and our ministry was now coming to an end.
We knew we might have a lot of trouble and lots of explaining to do when we tried to leave Russia with our deficient documents. This was before email or cell phones so we had no way of communicating with the believers back home to ask for prayer. We could only pray ourselves for the Lord to help us. Expecting the worst, we were surprised to find that things suddenly became very easy when it was time for us to leave. No one questioned our paperwork and lack of stamps. We just got on our plane. We knew we had done what little we could to encourage and help our brethren in Eastern Europe and now we were thankful to be heading home. It was a challenging trip but we had learned a lot about what real faith looks like and how much the Lord loves his children. We had experienced God’s faithfulness on a daily basis and in ways we could hardly believe. He made a way, when there seemed to be no possible way for us to do what we had come to do. What a mighty God we serve!