My Russia-Ukraine Trip #4

The first time – and maybe the only time – I heard the song on the radio, I was driving. As Scott Wesley Brown sang the second verse, I started to cry.

Looking back 30 years later, I suspect the song got airtime when it did because of that second verse, which began, “From the Black Sea to Red Square …”

The Soviet Coup of 1991 had played out just days before – from Yalta on the Black Sea, where Soviet President Gorbachev had been detained; to Moscow’s Red Square, where tanks had deployed. The coup had failed three days after it started.

When I heard the song, I was just days from standing in those very places.  

With 58 others, I would travel to the Soviet Union as part of a huge effort to distribute thousands of Bibles. We would spend three days in Moscow. Then, we would divide into two teams to journey on to other parts of the USSR. One team would fly to Bishkek, in the Asian republic of Kyrgystan. The rest of us would travel to Yalta, in the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine.

In all three places, we would help get boxloads of Bibles into the hands of local pastors, who could then oversee their distribution. And we would personally hand out thousands of Bibles to people eager to get them.

Three days after arriving in Yalta, the two teams would make the journey back to Moscow, before flying home.

So I was about to travel from Red Square to the Black Sea and back again when I heard these lyrics coming from my car radio:

From the Black Sea to Red Square
Eesus is His name …
In any language He is Lord
And worthy of our praise …

And already, I was crying.

Today, March 1, 2022, I’m listening again, and crying again, as I pray fervently for the peoples of Ukraine and their leaders, and for the peoples of Russia.

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More about my extraordinary trip to Russia and Ukraine

• #1 An August coup and a promise of breakthrough: My story – When the 1991 Soviet coup happened, and then unraveled, I knew with every fiber of my being: Almighty God had opened a door that no one could shut.
• #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.

The story of 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.