The past week has been crazy busy and so I haven’t had the chance to write the final segment of the series about my time in Russia – so I’ll have it ready for next Wednesday. Great to build suspense anyway, right?

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.

This weekend we draw inspiration from pioneer missionaries to India, China, and Africa serving in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
“Christ is either Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.” – Hudson Taylor (China)
“My only joys are that when God has given me a work to do, I have not refused it.” – C.T. Studd (Sudan & China)

This post was meant to appear last Friday, but I spent the better part of the day at the doctor with my son, getting an IV antibiotic to help his little body is fight off an infection. Thanks to everyone who is praying for him, we trust his healing will come speedily. Here is the final story in a series about my recent trip to Russia.
After all our work was done in Komi, KC, Cheryl, & I spent a day in Moscow seeing the sites: a tour of the Kremlin, …

On the front end of my trip to Russia, I trained 150 leaders at a leadership conference along with a couple from Atlanta, Tom & Dianne Boldt. It was the 5th of 6 conferences held in Syktyvkar that is a product of treeoflife’s partnership with John Maxwell’s EQUIP.
After 5 conferences, we have gotten to know the attendees pretty well and are often asked to pray for certain needs the various leaders are facing. On Saturday night, I had a request from a couple who lead outreaches into state run …

As the train took us further & further north, the trees of the dense Komi forest became sparse and skinny. By the time we were within the Arctic Circle, all the vegetation had disappeared – swallowed up by the permafrost tundra.
We were headed for Vorkuta, a coal mining city only miles from the Barents Sea/Arctic Ocean and one of the top gulags (slave labor camps for political prisoners) in the former USSR.
It is reported that a few of the political prison camps operated into the 1980’s and the city …

Two weeks ago, I was touring the Kremlin in Moscow Russia at the end
of my Spring mission trip to Russia. Yesterday, Russia’s new president,
Dimitry Medvedev (med-vya-deyev) took office in that very same
Kremlin and today the former president (as of yesterday), Vladimir
Putin, will be confirmed as the new prime minister – a post appointed
by Russia’s president.
I refuse to sensationalize current events (I hate when Christian leaders do that),

We traveled mostly by train through the night arriving at each city by morning. After settling in, eating, and maybe resting a bit, we would often have blocks of time devoted to counseling & praying for the believers of that city.
One counseling session stands out because of the extreme circumstances of a particular situation. A young man, Artum, was born into a Muslim family. Later he came to be

I promised a few stories from my time in Russia, so here’s one.
We stepped off the train in the city of Pechora just before 7am to temperatures of -20 (Celsius) and was greeted by the pastoral team there. The cold crisp air freezes the

Almost all of the posts you have read over the past few weeks were pre-written & time released. I did this in case I wouldn’t get to a cpu because of travel schedule &/or internet access while I was in Russia. Turns out I only had 2 opportunities to blog in the 16 days I was overseas. That means there were very few updates, so in honor of the snowy cold spring weather I encountered while in Russia, I want to unleash a flurry of highlights of the mission trip …