My Russia-Ukraine Trip #3

I stood on a cardboard box in front of people I did not know. They spoke a language different from mine. We were a world apart in terms of both geography and culture.

That day I stood among them, but could not claim to be one of them. I had no credentials. I had not experienced what they had. I could not even make myself understood without an interpreter.

They had no reason to stop and listen to me … except for the ache in their hearts and the hunger in their eyes.

An extraordinary day in Moscow

It was Thursday, September 5, 1991. Two weeks earlier, a coup had erupted in the heart of the USSR. Now I stood in Red Square for the third time in three days, with a team of young women I had known less than a week.

Loaded with as many Russian New Testaments as we could carry, we had trudged to a spot near Lenin’s tomb. While soldiers watched and people who were crossing the square gathered, we sang in English, “I Love to Tell the Story” and “Victory in Jesus.”

The crowd continued to grow as Kathy from Wyoming stepped up onto a box of Bibles and brought greetings. Then it was my turn. I stood, scanning the faces of the men, women and young people who faced me.

“What do I say, Lord?” I had asked, as I had prepared my talk. I’d been told to make it short and easy to translate. Could any words bridge the gap between me and those who would hear? “How do I express your heart, Lord? What in the world do I say?”

Taking a deep breath, I began. After each sentence, I paused as our tour guide, Alla, translated. Alla was a Russian Jew.

As she and I spoke on one side of the Kremlin wall, a large red sign on the other side of the wall announced: Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies.

Extraordinary, indeed. The Soviet Congress was meeting to dismantle the Soviet Union. And we were there.

My testimony on Red Square

The God we serve is Creator of heaven and earth. He is true. He is almighty. The Bible reveals him.

An open door

A year ago, God called me to spend whatever it cost to travel from the United States to your country. He did not speak out loud to me. As I read the Bible, he spoke to me. The Bible says, “Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut.”

This year, on August 19, it seemed that door had swung firmly shut. Hard-line Communist leaders had toppled your government. Tanks rolled through Moscow’s streets.

But God had promised. He is true. He is almighty. And on August 21, he opened the door again.

God has opened the way for us to be here. But much more importantly, he has opened the way for all people to have what we otherwise could not have: God himself living in us.

God in us

When the one true God comes to live inside a person, the person knows true freedom. That person knows true abundance. That person knows new life that never ends.

Yet, how can this happen? How can God live within people? God is holy. He is utterly pure. He cannot enter a place made impure by even one wrong thought or word or deed, and every one of us says and thinks and does many wrong things.

Two thousand years ago, God made a way where there was none. He sent his Son Jesus to earth. The Bible says, “in Jesus, all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.” Jesus lived a perfectly pure life. Then, he died on a cross in our behalf.

Three days after dying, Jesus rose again. He had opened the door that could not be opened – the door from death to life.

In dying, he took every speck of our ugliness on himself. Now, in exchange, he offers us his life and purity.

Jesus Christ is the way. He is the open door. Because of him, God can now live within you and me.

But God will not force himself on anyone. Though he can shatter any door, there is one door he will not open. That is the door to your heart. The Bible says:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him, and will dine with him, and he with me.”

The Bibles we held

Our team leader Andrea sang, “Jesus Loves Me.” People cried. Lisa, the one team member who spoke fluent Russian, gave her testimony. The crowd listened intently.

Then Andrea announced that we had New Testaments for everyone who wanted one.

One person moved; then another. Then the whole crowd pressed forward, engulfing those of us who stood ready to hand out the Bibles we held.

An extraordinary flight out of Moscow

It was Friday, September 6. About half our Moscow team members had left earlier in the day to fly to Bishkek (then called Frunze) in Kyrgyzstan.

The rest of us were to travel to Yalta in the Ukraine. To get there, we had to fly from Moscow to Simferopol in the heart of the Crimean Peninsula, then travel two hours by bus through the Crimean Mountains.

But first, we had to get on the plane in Moscow.

Hampered by heavy traffic, we arrived at the airport less than an hour before our scheduled departure time. We hurried to the gate and then stood in an already full waiting area while Alla checked us in. After our turn came to file through the security check, we were shuttled out to the tarmac.

There, a group of people stood outside the Aeroflot jet that we were supposed to board. An angry young man had planted himself halfway up the steps to the plane. He shouted up at two female flight attendants. The other people stood almost like statues at the foot of the stairs.

We didn’t know it then, but they had been booked on a different flight to Simferopol. It had been cancelled, and they had been promised our seats.

For 30 minutes, the young man, and Alla, and the two flight attendants debated who should get the last seats on that monstrous jet, while all the rest of us stood in a misty rain and knifelike wind, without speaking or moving.

Finally, a uniformed woman arrived who had authority to decide. We were given the go-ahead to board. The young man, the family with two small children, the babushka and her granddaughter and all the rest were escorted back to the terminal.

What happened next

I sat in a window seat with two empty seats beside it. A team member named Gayle sat beside me.

There he was

Then a young man sat down in the aisle seat next to her.

Gayle and I looked at him in surprise. Our team members were supposedly the last to board. Yet there he was.

Looking back all these years later, I’m still amazed. We almost did not get on the flight – and only God knows how that young man got there.

Gayle and I smiled in his direction, talked briefly with each other and then looked for something to do to occupy the two-and-a-half hour flight time. I pulled out my Bible. But then I sat, thinking about the people who had not gotten on that plane and all the others who would still be living in the conditions we had witnessed long after we had gone home. Gayle opened her travel journal and began to write.

“This might help,” the young man said to Gayle, and indicated the tray attached to the seat in front of her. For the second time, we looked at him in surprise. He spoke English!

Turns out he was a doctor from Africa with a wife and baby, and he was doing advanced studies in Simferopol.

I’m ready now

He told us his name was Muhamed. “Are you, then, of the Muslim faith?” I asked.

“My parents are Muslim,” he said. “But I cannot embrace any faith that teaches polygamy. I am a victim of polygamy. My father had four wives.”

He asked if the book lying in my lap was a Bible. I said yes. Then I asked, “Would you be interested in learning a bit about the Christian faith?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Gayle prayed as I explained who Jesus was, why he had come to earth, how he had died and risen again, and what he offers all who entrust their lives to him. Muhamed seemed especially moved when I told him Jesus could make him new from the inside.

“If you hold resentment toward your father because of his polygamy, your heart is in chains,” I said. “Jesus can set you free from those chains.”

I explained how to receive Jesus as Lord. We discussed it for a while. After we both fell silent, I heard myself ask gently, “Do you want to receive Christ now?”

Quietly but firmly, Muhamed said, “Yes.”

“I don’t want to rush you,” I said. “Do you want to think about this further or to ask me any more questions?”

He paused just briefly. “No. I’m ready now.”

And there, in an aisle seat on a packed Aeroflot jumbo jet, he confessed Jesus Christ as Lord.

A most extraordinary God

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you will eat with me. (Rev. 3:20 NCV)

I am the Door; anyone who enters through Me will be saved [and will live forever], and will go in and out [freely], and find pasture (spiritual security). (John 10:9 AMP)

Thirty years later, I’m still in awe over the weightiness and the wonder of those two days in September.

I’m still pondering the way God juxtaposed the seen and the unseen, the fleeting and the lasting, world events and individual people’s lives. I’m awed at the ways he works.

Praise the Lord, all you who fear him! … For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy. He has not turned his back on them, but has listened to their cries for help.

The poor will eat and be satisfied. All who seek the Lord will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy. The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him. All the families of the nations will bow down before him.

For royal power belongs to the Lord. He rules all the nations. (Ps. 22:23-24, 26-28 NLT)

At times in this world, all eyes turn toward what seems most important, most invincible, most extraordinary. Those times, if we let him, the Lord will remind us what actually is.

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I originally told the story of this extraordinary trip in my book, When Walls Come Tumbling Down (New Hope, © 1994).

Featured image is from a 2021 photo of the front page of The Baptist Record, Sept. 26, 1991.

There’s more to this story

• #1 An August coup and a promise of breakthrough: My story
• #2 When getting there is the battle – We knew where God wanted us, but the hindrances just kept coming. Then, the breakthroughs began.
• #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.