The Impact of Faithful Living

            On Thursday evening, July 18, our mission team set out for a village about an hour from Klintsy. Since the spring, the members of the Klintsy church have been leading a Sunday School for the children of this village. The Sunday School began because a young girl returned to this village last summer singing Christian songs she had learned at summer camp while visiting her grandmother in Klintsy. The children of the village are joined each week by two elderly women who are also believers.

            Mikael has lived in this village all of his life. He is a bachelor and a school teacher. Many years ago he became a follower of Christ. The path he took to faith is an interesting one. As a young man, a copy of the Bible in old Russian came into his possession. He struggled reading the text. The old Russian was hard to understand, and he had no context in which to place the words and events of the Bible. At first he told no one of the Bible he had, but one day, he showed the book to his mother. His mother took it from him and began to read it for herself. In time, she came to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord through her study of the Bible. She discussed the Bible with Mikael, and he, too, came to trust Jesus as Lord.

            In time Mikael discovered that there were others in his village who confessed Christ as Lord. He learned that someone had been preaching the gospel in his village since 1930. The sad news was that only six individuals had confessed Christ as Lord during that long period of time. In his village of over 120 houses, Mikael learned that the believers met in one man’s house and in the corner of his living room this man had erected an altar.

            As the years passed, Mikael’s mother and the other believers died. For many years, Mikael lived in his village believing that he was the only believer. In the corner of his living room, he erected a small altar for worship. Above the altar, he hung a tapestry depicting the Last Supper. In his own way, Mikael has faithfully preached the gospel and lived the gospel among the people of his village.

            As  we went up and down the street inviting people to our meeting, Mikael led the way. He pointed out specific homes and directed some of the youth from the Klintsy Church to knock on the gates of these homes. As a crowd of approximately 75 people gathered, Mikael seemed to be overwhelmned. He stood on the edge of the crowd and watched as the service progressed.

            After the service, many of the men and women of the village came up to speak to me. Almost all of them commented to me that Mikael was a very good man. They told me of some of the things Mikael did for the children of the village. One mother told me that her daughter went to his house on Thursdays to study the Bible. One lady summed things up pretty well. She said, “Mikael is a good man. Because of your visit, I believe more of us will listen to what he tells us about God.”

            As we were preparing to leave the village, a shopkeeper, who was an unbeliever, opened her shop and offered us drinks and sweets. Mikael stood inside. His face was beaming. As he and I talked, he spoke of his heart being filled with joy and his hopes that more of his friends and neighbors would hear the call of Christ to life.

            It is difficult to determine the significance of our visits to the villages. On three occasions, we believe we were not only the first Americans to visit there, but we were also the first people to proclaim Christ to the people there. These encounters are overwhelmning. How do you preach to people who have never heard? How do you react when someone asks you about something you have known all of your life, but they seem to know nothing about the love God revealed in Jesus Christ? How do you tell people whose relatives were murdered by the Nazis who occupied this region during World War II that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ sets people free?

            I hope someday our heavenly Father will allow me to see what He was about as He led us to the different villages we visited in July 2002. There will be many things he will show me at that time, but I suspect on Thursday evening, 18 July 2002, our mission was quite simple. We were both affirmation and vindication for a man who had faithfully and courageously lived his faith alone from many years. Our presence brought encouragement to Mikael. Our presence and our words made people consider more deeply what he had been sharing with them for years.

            As I went to get on the bus, an old woman came up to me. Her face was aglow. She told Lucy she had a request to make of me. She wanted me to invite Mikael to come to America. She wanted him to visit America, so he could return and tell everyone in the village what America was like. As we traveled back to Klintsy, I thanked God for a man like Mikael whose integrity was so respected that the members of his village would trust him to come to America for all of them. I wondered if this trust came because he had so faithfully lived out his faith among them alone.

            God does indeed work in mysterious ways. My journeys to Russia convince me that there is always some witness to the grace of God. My journeys also remind me that Immanuel Baptist Church has a single purpose—to be a witness to the grace of God in our world. May God be honored and glorified in all we do.