April 2004. Vladimir, Russian Federation.
If I were writing fiction, I might begin: long ago in a place far, far away.
This story is not fiction, although in writing of our journey to Russia I might easily begin as if it were once upon a time.
As part of the post WWII baby boom in America, I grew up knowing that travel anywhere is likely to be difficult and assuming that travel to certain parts of the world would never be possible. China, shielded behind its "bamboo curtain," was one of these parts of the world.
And Russia -- then the big player within the Soviet Union with its "iron curtain" -- was another.
East was East and West was West (we know this by heart) and never the twain shall meet. The Free World and the Communist World. My generation of Americans grew up thinking it was that simple. And that permanent.
It wasn't and isn't that simple, of course, as our recent trip to Egypt has reminded me. Egypt proved eye-opening and astonishing and wonderful in every way imaginable. We are profoundly grateful to those who sent us and to everyone we met along the way. Being in that far land and experiencing the rigors of travel in and out and within has proven over and over to be incredibly engaging and instructive and rewarding.
The same was true of my trip to Russia during that moment in history when relations between East and West had improved and many things seemed politically possible. On our return home from our recent magical journey in Egypt, I decided to dig out my Russia journal and photographs to see what might be made of them. Although the notebooks have languished in a box for almost 19 year, I had the good sense to have kept a day-by-day account of our 10 days in Vladimir and the surrounding area.
In fact, as this was my first experience with "short term missions," one of the "contributions" I offered our travel group was a short "tutorial" on keeping a journal -- the benefit of which is that I have a lot of written material now to work with.
The trip was masterminded, organized, and in every way made possible by Skip Lord, then Athletic Director at Houghton College (now, University). He had taken athletic teams on short term missions trips to many places to compete with local groups on many occasions. In November 2003 he approached me and others with a proposal: to take two teams to Vladimir to help the local Wesleyan Church engage local men through basketball. The two teams would be a "fathers'" team and a "sons'" team to play a series of games and to give as many basketball clinics as could be arranged locally. Many of us were the fathers of sons now playing basketball in high school.
All of the sons on that team were varsity players who would have just completed a recent season. They were all good players. Many of us fathers had been athletes ourselves in high school or college years and years ago, so we could still imagine getting back "in shape" to take on the Russians.
It seems almost laughable now, nearly twenty years on, that my journey to Russia would be as an athlete -- at the age of 55! -- but there you go. In the years since this true story began to unfold relations between Russia and the US have shifted -- especially in the last year -- from positive and optimistic to mostly negative and mostly pessimistic.
Still, or maybe because of that backdrop, I felt it might be a good time to tell my story. The others who made the trip will have different memories and different accounts of the events and of the people. What follows will reflect how God touched my heart through the people we met, the places we went, and the opportunities that came our way.
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