Back in 1990, when Cathy and I with three of our six children moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), we were among the first Westerners allowed to live in the USSR without government connections. In fact, we lived there full time, with Soviet and Russian realities, delights, and pains in our lives from 1990 to 2015. In those twenty-five years, having planted churches from Latvia in the Baltics, to Vladivostok in the far east, we’ve come to know Russia right well.
Here is my advice on Russia for President Donald Trump and American Christians:
My family makes fun of me because in the summer I love to get out and do "slash and burn" trimming of our own land (or anyone's that needs it). Summertime is a good time to get out and deal with the land God has given us. (I am in the middle of just such a project now at my son-in-law's and 4 grand babies' house.)
In February of 1991 I was ushered into an ornately built but run down marble central room in the palace. My friend introduced me to the fifty or so people at the meeting. I was asked to share why an American with three children and my wife six months pregnant would move to the Soviet Union in October of 1990 right when everything in the country was falling apart, and thousands of Soviets were beginning to emigrate to America.
This was one of history’s last meetings of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
