I hadn’t even been to Russia yet – wasn’t even sure I was going to go – but one morning in 2003, God began to impress on me that there was an assignment for me to do there and I was led to read some verses in the Bible. Some Scriptures out of Ezekiel & Habakkuk that I was acquainted with were included but they took on a specific meaning for me that morning.

I came away with a sense that God had something for me to do in Russia and it was urgent. Somehow, even then, I knew that my assignment there (whatever that was) needed to be finished by the end of 2008. I guess it’s more clear now why this was the case – but it wasn’t so clear at the time. Later I would discover what a major part of that assignment was – training leaders in the region of Komi and Chita – and would eventually partner with EQUIP in order to accomplish that facet of it.

Recently we held the final conference where we graduated the last 150 of 500 leaders who now have the knowledge & resources to train up to 15,000 more Russian people in godly leadership principles. Perhaps you didn’t know, but after 9 trips to Russia, I had issues getting my travel documents in order and couldn’t attend. The good news is that we had put people in place to take care of all the administrative tasks dealing with our events and we had three wonderful teachers from the US that did get cleared to go over.

All this after starting out 5 years ago knowing no one in Russia and my first conference in Komi being organized, administrated, person-to-person marketed, and even taught exclusively by Kristen, myself and a Russian interpretor – all on a shoe-string budget in 6 weeks. Of course God added all that we were lacking and His grace was more than enough. And the stuff we went through stretched our faith and prepped us for what I believe to be a lifetime of meaningful ministry that will impact the US and other nations of the world.

For the next few Wednesdays, I’m going to be posting some of my (still fresh & limited) understanding on our assignment in Russia and the significance it may play from an eternal perspective. My hope in doing this is to give my readers (many are supporters) a better idea of what God was doing through all of us and in so doing gain a deeper appreciation for and understanding of what we’ve been through in the past 5 years.