Good News (and some not so good news) from Russia!
Do you remember the jokes a few years ago about good news and bad news? I like the one where a pilot comes on the intercom and says, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, we have been hijacked. The good news is he wants to go to Disney World!”
The good news is really good. Galina is learning to drive. The saga of her driving started way back when Mike McClain took her over to the Kroger parking lot in College Hill and tried to help her learn the intricacies of driving in America. Mike has amazing patience, but teaching an adult woman from Moscow how to drive took as much as he could spare.
Galina got the basics but returned home before getting mastery of the automobile. Now she has found a professional driver to teach her how to drive on the mean streets of Moscow, a city of 14 million where she will be among the very few who have had any lesson except, "Drive like a bat out of ____”. I am more scared in a car in Moscow than in Los Angeles.
Do you see the deeper meaning of Galina’s driving lessons? Our appeal for funds to get the ministry a used car was successful.
The generous gifts of our wonderful supporters reached the amount necessary to get a used VW which will hold up on the Russian roads and Russian winters.
Spacibo! (thank you) Galina and her growing team of leaders are ecstatic and are looking forward to minister more effectively. Pray for their safety on the roads.
I will miss standing by the side of the six lane roads in a freezing cold Moscow winter with my thumb out hoping and praying for some kind, caring, safe driving sober soul to stop and take us to the next ministry appointment. That approach certainly improved my prayer life but I can use some lowered excitement on the mission field.
Not So Good News
Now a word about the difficulty of ministry in Russia. The team had to take down the web page because it is still not totally safe to minister openly. A web page makes them vulnerable. The nation has not recovered from 70 years of Socialism and the government violently opposes western missionaries. Some strangers were sniffing around the web and asking too many personal questions, so they decided to close it for awhile. Pray it will soon be safe enough to open it again.