Siberia, Anyone?

Preacher:
Date: October 26, 2016

Bible Text: 1 Corinthians 16:9 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | A great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. 1 Corinthians 16:9

Siberia, anyone? Chances are, at least in the dead of winter, there are few who would sign on. Siberia conjures an image of people dressed from head to toe in furs, looking more like someone in a deep freeze than ordinary folks who walk the streets of Manila, Houston, or elsewhere. In fact, Siberian winter temperatures hover around -30 to -50 below in Yakutsk, where one of my heroes has lived for many years.

From the Russian city of Vladivostok, a three-hour flight north and east takes you to Yakutsk, landing on the only air field in the world built on permafrost—ground that stays frozen throughout the entire year. You can visit the permafrost museum here and see the tusks of mastodons—older than written history, for sure. Snow in January can reach as deep as five feet, and, believe it or not, the white stuff may even come floating to earth in freak storms in August.

When I visited this exotic place, I met Yuri Morokhovets, superintendent of the area missionary churches, and asked him, “Do you see the same interest in spiritual things today as was seen immediately following the collapse of communism?’ “Nyet!” he responded saying that the initial curiosity about the God who had been denied by an official policy of atheism for some 73 years has subsided; however, there is still a void in the lives of people that can only be satisfied by a relationship with God.

Behind almost every Christian leader in Russia is a story of God’s redeeming grace. Yuri, for example, was a hard-drinking, carousing truck driver whose mother never ceased to pray for him. When he roused from a drunken stupor, having collapsed on the floor, thinking he was dying, he cried out to God to save him, and his mother’s prayers were answered. Following three years at the former Donetsk Christian University in Ukraine, he headed to Vladivostok, where the Russian submarine fleet had been headquartered, with $50 USD in his pocket and a sack of potatoes that he had brought with him. Now decades later he has given birth to an unknown number of registered churches and Bible study groups which, he trusts, will grow into churches.

Another hero of mine is a school teacher turned pastor, who having seen a Bible for the first time in his life in a market, borrowed the book, took it home and read all night. Returning the Bible the next morning, he inquired as to where he could learn more about this book and this God who sent His son to show us life. He quit his job as a school teacher, took his wife and three kids, and rode across Russia on a train for seven days and nights to a Christian school Guidelines has been involved in. Three years later, having graduated with a certificate in Bible, he came back to his former village and planted a church.

I think, too, of the former dentist who gave up a flourishing practice and comfortable life to take a post graduate degree in Bible, then bring his family from Ukraine to Siberia, to spend the next 17 years in this punishing climate, helping plant a church and give birth to a Bible school and seminary training pastors and Christian leaders.

Wang Ming Dao, a Chinese pastor who was imprisoned by the Communists for 22 years, used to say that the hard path is usually the path God would have us walk. Most of the Russian pastors I know believe that. They are as tough as the winters that freeze Siberia. They just don’t know that things can’t happen, and with God’s help, they make them happen. God give us more made of that tough stuff that doesn’t give up or quit easily.

Resource reading: Acts 13