My Russia-Ukraine Trip #1

August 19, 1991, my clock-radio roused me at 6:00 a.m. as usual. But instead of hearing music, I caught the end of a news bulletin.

“The Jews will probably leave in large numbers, now that Gorbachev is no longer in power,” the announcer said.

My stomach did a flip. Leave where? I thought. What’s going on?

I knew the mood in the Soviet Union was volatile. President Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to give the 15 republics of the USSR some freedoms while still holding the reins. Several republics were demanding more independence than Gorbachev was offering. I feared one or more of them had revolted.

Two weeks from that day, I was scheduled to leave for a trip to the Soviet cities of Moscow, Yalta and Bishkek with a team of young women. We planned to distribute 70,000 Russian New Testaments.

Music began to play on the radio. I jumped out of bed, ran to the den, turned on the TV and flipped the channel to CNN. My heart sank. On the screen, I saw Moscow’s streets – with tanks rolling down them.

I was watching the coup that dismantled the Soviet Union.

“Want to go to Russia?”

A dear long-distance friend named Monica walked up to me at a conference in August 1990. Smiling, she said hi, and we made small talk. Then, out of nowhere, she asked, “Want to go to Russia?”

Even a month earlier, I probably would have turned her down flat. But God had been working in very specific ways to prepare my heart for an invitation I had no idea was coming.

When my friend popped the question, my insides did a flip. “This is it,” God seemed to say. “This is your trip.”

“Yes!” I told my friend.

A primary place of unrest

Originally, the trip was slated for August 1991. Details were scant. I knew only that a group of young women would travel to Moscow to distribute Bibles.

Even after my instant “yes,” I prayed long and hard before sending in my application. The Lord was patient with my hesitation, and in time he gave me confirmation. He pointed me to Revelation 3:7-8. And he spoke those verses personally to me.

He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this:

“Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut.”

On the application, I had to tell why I wanted to go to Moscow. My answer began, “I want to go because I’m afraid to go.” I believed God was asking me to walk through fear, thus entering into a new dimension in my relationship with him. By doing at his request what I was terrified of doing, I would be saying in unmistakable terms, “Lord Jesus, I love you.”

If, on the other hand, I gave in to the fear, I felt I would become a slave to it. Both my spiritual growth and my relationship with my Lord would suffer.

I was still waiting to hear whether I’d been accepted for the Moscow trip – which had by then been moved to early September 1991 – when the Persian Gulf War broke out. In February, I received a letter from one of the trip leaders. It began:

“So much has happened in the world since I last wrote to you in January. These changes have slowed the process for nearly anyone planning to travel beyond our nation. And Russia has become a primary place of unrest.”

My stomach knotted as I continued to read. Fear rolled over me in waves.

The letter outlined in detail the risks, the high costs and the expected hardships of the proposed trip. Enclosed was a pink card I was to fill out and return. The card simply asked that I check one of the following:

• Please keep my application active for the Moscow Bible Project.
• Please remove my application from the active list for the Moscow Bible Project.

I carried that card around for 10 days before I sent it in, with choice #1 checked.

A state of emergency

Six weeks after it began, the Persian Gulf War ended. In March, I was accepted for the trip. I spent the spring and summer preparing.

Then, on Monday, August 19, I awoke to the news of the Soviet coup.

Sunday evening, President Gorbachev had been “detained” while vacationing in Yalta. Hard-line Communist party leaders announced that he was ill, placed the nation in a “state of emergency” and declared themselves in charge.

Learning of the coup at dawn on Monday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin made his way to the Russian parliament building in downtown Moscow. In remarkable displays of courage, he declared to the press, the people, the coup leaders and the military that the coup was “madness.” He urged the people to stand with him against it.

Citizens began to respond. For the next two days, they poured into Moscow’s streets. Surrounding the Russian White House, they built barricades to try to protect Yeltsin. Meeting incoming tanks and military units, they urged soldiers not to fight against their own people.

That Monday morning, the situation looked worse than bleak. I watched, unbelieving, as coverage continued and “experts” debated the outcome.

“Coups can fail,” said some, including President George H.W. Bush.

“Remember Tiananmen Square,” others argued. “If the military decides to get tough, the people are doomed.”

“You won’t be able to go now, will you?”

For two days, I was numb. All the last-minute preparations I’d been rushing to make came to a halt. I completed other duties as required, but spent as much time as I could in front of the TV, watching the events in Moscow unfold.

People who knew about my upcoming trip asked, “You won’t be able to go now, will you?”

“It doesn’t look like it,” I answered.

My team’s mission was part of a large interdenominational effort sponsored in part by the International Bible Society and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. The goal was to provide 4 million Russian New Testaments to people who, for decades, had had almost no access to Scripture. Other Christian organizations were also trying to work quickly to get Bibles to the Soviet Union’s 290 million people while the doors were still open.

If hard-line Communism now ruled again, all those efforts would abruptly end. And the freedoms the Soviet people had tasted so briefly would be brutally withdrawn.

I prayed fervently for the Soviet peoples. And also, I told God how bewildered I felt about our trip plans. “Father,” I said, “you used Revelation 3:8 to call me to make this trip. I heard you in my spirit telling me, ‘Behold I have put before you an open door which no one can shut.’

“Yet now the door appears closed, and there doesn’t seem to be any way it can open again in time for us to leave for Moscow in two weeks. The plans have to be made or canceled now. Father, you know that.

“So I remind you of the promise you gave me. I don’t know what it means in this situation, but I still believe it is your word to me.”

In my newspaper column that week, I wrote, “I don’t plan to beat down any doors. Or even to push hard against those I find closed. But what God opens, I will walk through.”

Tuesday, the tension built to a climax. That night before going to bed, I watched the news, only to learn: The first shots had been fired; three young men had been killed.

What God opens

Wednesday morning, August 21, I awoke to find the coup unraveling. Coup leaders were trying to flee the country. On orders from the Defense Ministry, all troops were clearing out of Moscow. Rumor had it that Gorbachev was back in power and would soon return to Moscow.

All morning, I listened to news of the rapidly failing coup. All morning, I cried. Later reports credited Yeltsin, the Russian people and the incompetency of the coup leaders with the coup’s failure. I knew those were important factors.

And this I knew with every fiber of my being: Almighty God had opened a door that no one could shut.

By noon, I received word, “The trip is on.” Many of my friends and family members were skeptical about our going, with conditions in the Soviet Union still so unsettled.

But I had seen the Lord of Breakthrough splinter a door of bronze. The force of his blow had sent shock waves ricocheting around the world. It would shatter the government of the world’s largest nation, and change the lives of 290 million people overnight.

Nothing short of total incapacity could have stopped me from making that trip.

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The story of this extraordinary trip is adapted from my book, When Walls Come Tumbling Down (New Hope, © 1994).

Image by Almog from Wikimedia Commons

There’s more to this story

• #2 When getting there is the battle – We knew where God wanted us, but the hindrances just kept coming. Then, the breakthroughs began.
• #3 Extraordinary! Russia, Ukraine, breakthrough, God – Where I was and what I saw the Lord do when the Soviet Congress was dismantling the Soviet Union.
• #4 From the Black Sea to Red Square – The song that touched my heart then, and still does today.

My extraordinary trip to India and Sri Lanka

• Celebrity culture in the church – where I least expected to find it.
• The Lord who breaks open the way – when it utterly stunned me to see it.