"Daniel! You Need to Get Out of Bed, Son!"
The Sunrise Service was held at 6:25 a.m. below the District Administration Building, locally referred to as "the white house." I have been to many sunrise services in my lifetime of attending church, but I cannot remember another one where we showed up in the dark before the sun had even brightened the horizon. These days, it is more convenient for churches to hold sunrise services at an hour when folks are already up and have pulled themselves "together."
We walked down to the white house in the cold and dark, cutting across empty lots of frozen mud. The prospect of actually seeing the sun seemed remote as the sky was heavily overcast. Forty-five believers formed a circle on grass in front of the white house. There was clear joy on the faces of young believers when they saw each other on that cold, dark morning -- in clear contrast to the sober faces we usually encountered.
We sang some songs using the common musical language of Easter hymns we knew in English and the Russians in Russian, and we heard testimonies. In the middle of our service the clouds on the eastern horizon parted for about 2 minutes and the sun appeared, brilliantly, shooting reds and pink and purple streaks through the dark clouds. As if on cue, when the sun appeared everyone began to shout, "Kristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!" (Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!).
Then the clouds closed up, the service ended, and we walked back to the Mission Center. It was amazing how that brief, brilliant appearance of the sun had lifted all our spirits.
Morning Service. This second week at the Mission Center for church we felt more at home. I followed more of what was going on even without constant translation. Gary King gave a testimony. Ken Blake, the Global Partners missionary in Vladimir, preached on the resurrection. We sang many Easter hymns. I had planned to leave with some of the others when the service ended, but I wound up taking four younger boys back into church. They had attended our 3-on-3 tournament the day before and had come to the Mission Center to find Andy, who was inside chatting.
Dinner at Ken and Marilyn's. Tables had been set up in the Blakes' apartment to feed the hungry Americans and various other protestant missionaries serving in Vladimir. We had a wonderfully abundant Easter meal: chicken, beef, ham, rice, tomatoes, traditional deserts, especially Easter cakes. There were deeply red Easter eggs, dyed with beets in the traditional Russian way.
We left late in the afternoon to hustle back to the hotel to get ready for a late service at the house church we had visited the Sunday before.
Evening Service. A younger missionary couple picked us up for our 25 minute trolley-bus ride and walk to the house church. The week before there were perhaps 8 church folks plus the hosts meeting with us. This week there were easily double that number squeezing into the house.
We had a long discussion about courtship, as the local Russian pastor thought this would be helpful. Gary King shared some Biblical principles. I shared as a father although again I found the experience working with a translator complicated. After our sharing there were some tough and pointed questions that I noted only in that general way. I wish I could remember more particularly what those questions were. Then we ate: a huge Easter "tea" -- lots of cakes, cookies, sliced oranges and bananas -- and many individual conversations. I hope in some small way that we were helpful.
Debriefing. Back at the Blakes, we had our last team time, a debriefing before going home. The Blakes talked us through what adjustments we might experience shifting back to American culture, especially as we would be expected to jump back into activities as if we had never been away. And they gave advice as to what kinds of things we might share with our home churches. Because we had gone to different places to meet with different groups during our days in Vladimir, our individual stories varied considerably.
The Blakes asked us a series of questions I have come to see as standard "exit" questions: "What has been the hardest adjustment?", "The greatest blessing?", "The person I will never forget?" Andrew the woodcarver and our translator was the obvious answer to this one. "What do I wish I had known beforehand?" -- to which I answered, "bring less, wear dark pants not light to conceal the mud." I found nearly everything "Russian" interesting and engaging. If anything, I wanted more of nearly everything. The emotional letdown we had been told to expect after two or three days in this new country had not happened me.
This short missions trip had been such an extraordinary experience for me personally, I was sad to see the time in Vladimir end. My short list of extraordinary moments, if I were forced to be particular, would include singing hymns on the bus on the dark ride back from Kosrov, conversing with Andrew during his tours of the old city, visiting the woodcarver's secluded workshop/sanctuary, our too short visit to the Orthodox cathedral on Palm Sunday, and tonight's session discussing serious questions with the gathering of young Russian believers.
At the head of this list of extraordinary moments would have to be the sudden, brief, brilliant appearance of the sun during our sunrise service and hearing the response of our brothers and sisters, "Kristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!"
No comments:
Post a Comment