Vivaldi Plaza near Paveletskaya Metro, Moscow. Nov 2017
90’s in Moscow
We had the great pleasure of living in Moscow from 1991 to 1999, during an amazing moment in history. Perestroika, the Wild West, it was called at times, so many profound changes took place at breakneck speed. We moved to the U.S.S.R., the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Soviet Union, and a month later it all fell apart. The night President Boris Yeltsin made his historic speech on top of a tank in the center of the city, I happened to be there, needing to cross that same square to meet Andy, who was waiting for me with a young couple in one of the Western hotels, where the wife was about to be baptised. I'll never forget the feeling, cutting through that crowd — one of many unforgettable moments.
It was a time of unprecedented freedom. I knew God had done a miracle with the timing of our arrival and the unfolding of significant historical and political events — the Berlin Wall had come down only about a year and a half earlier. By 1994, Andy wisely read the signs of the times and stopped doing any public speaking for the church in Moscow. God had already brought the men and women who would become the foundational building blocks for this community of believers into God’s household (Ephesians 4:19-22); this development only served as another good opportunity for their growth and development and Christ-formation.
Impossible Plans
Now, when I look back and see all this in the rear view mirror, my appreciation for the miraculous timing of God in sending us in 1991 simply skyrockets. I was one of those naive people, living in Kyiv in 2022, reading the news reports about the threat of impending invasion into Ukraine, unwilling and unable to believe that our neighbour nation would actually fall upon their close brothers and sisters so violently. Surely we would have learned something from our parents, who lived through World War II? I have been sobered and chastened for my naïveté, as Christ-formation in me and all the rest of us continues, with more suffering than I expected or imagined.
Since we left Russia in 1999, despite our frequent visits back nearly every year, when the Yarovaya law passed in 2016, I still didn’t appreciate the extent of the propaganda and tightening control our friends and spiritual family in Russia were experiencing. Truly, I cannot imagine what life is like for them now. We actually thought we were going to spend the first phase of our empty-nester years living in Russia somewhere, and helping out in whatever way seemed appropriate to our friends, the current leaders of the Eurasian churches there and to the Greater Eurasian Mission Society who for so many years have been supportive of our continued involvement in the work we began in the 90’s. We had no idea how impossible that noble ambition would prove to be. We spent two years knocking hard on that door, living like nomads out of our suitcases. One month in St. Petersburg, then out to process another expensive visa. Then another month in St. Pete. Then out to redo the visa. Then to Yekaterinburg. Out for a month. Vladivostok. Out for a month. Bishkek, Kazakhstan. And so on. Then, on the eve of the discovery of COVID-19, Andy was told that Canadians could have only two weeks without having to submit an itinerary of every meeting, every destination, every person visited during their stay in the country. Bam! — the sound of the slamming door.
We fell in love with the Russian people as individuals and with their rich language, history and culture. We learned so much about community from them. We came at a time when people sat around their tables at night and drank endless cups of tea and talked for hours. We have lifelong friends there, despite the strain the current political situation puts on these relationships.
We will survive this awful time.
Recalibrating.
It was a great pleasure to walk the streets of Moscow with so much hope and vision in November 2017, thinking we were going to be “coming home to Russia” for a while. We have now mourned the loss of these hopes and dreams and have recalibrated ourselves, prayerfully, to adjust to the new reality in which we find ourselves.
As our dear friend Lynne Green often has to remind me: “…we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling… “ (2 Corinthians 5:1-2) “Our citizenship is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:20)
Originally posted Nov 2017, edited and updated April 2023.