Moscow Journal -- 5-18-07

Moscow Journal

Serendipity

5-18-07

When I woke up this morning I was thinking about the lovely people I’ve been blessed to spend time with herein Moscow. Galina, the church secretary for the Moscow Central Church that gathers here on to worship Sunday morning, had her birthday earlier this month, but those who work here hadn’t celebrated with her, yet. So yesterday around 4:30 PM, I was surprised to be invited by Ea to come to the dining hall to have some pizza.

One of the serendipitous things that happened right away the first day I arrived was that when I went down to the large auditorium that also serves as a sanctuary, a young woman came up to me with a big smile and said, “I know you! We met at Wesley Seminary!” It was Ea who had come to D.C. to study at Wesley during the time that I was working on the outreach to the former Soviet immigrants in the Baltimore-Washington Conference area. How lovely it was of the Lord to right away reveal to me a familiar face.

Ea works in the Bishop’s office doing the very important work of translating documents between Russian and English and helping the Bishop communicate with people who don’t speak English. It has been fascinating to me how much of the day to day life here in the work of the United Methodist Church in Eurasia takes place across what would normally be language barriers.

Neither Bishop Vaxby nor Tobias Dietze, the Dean of the Seminary are native speakers of Russian. The Bishop is Swedish and Tobias is from Germany, but has been here in mission for 12 years. Of those who work here and speak English as a second language, besides Ea there are five people who have an English language capability. The first is Eduard, a pastor and the Bishop’s primary assistant, who was here for a few days after I arrived, but for the last several weeks has been attending Doctor of Ministry DMin) classes at Wesley Seminary in D.C. The second is Lena, who is also a pastor, and in charge of the programs for continuing education for pastors and the lay leader/lay speaker seminars. She just came back from receiving her DMin diploma at Wesley Seminary, all full of joy, but focused on what needs to be done at the annual conference meetings which begin today.

In addition, there is Katya, who is the main Seminary administrative assistant and receptionist and is very fluent. Zhanna, who is the accountant and bookkeeper for both the Bishop’s office and the Seminary has a good English language capability, too. Vera, who coordinates the Bishop’s schedule, makes his travel arrangements, and deals with the administrative details for all the VIM trips and visitors from the UMC in the States is more comfortable speaking Russian, but her ability to understand and speak English will no doubt continue to improve. One of the pastors of the Central Church is a Korean-American missionary from the D.C. area, so of course he and his wife speak English. His office is down the hall on the first floor next to the office of Richard Bryant, an American missionary.

In addition to those mentioned above, Fedya, a young man who works on the UMC in Eurasia website and helps with other office work has been studying English for a while, and is becoming more and more fluent. The only English speaker who lives here in the student dormitory is Pavel, who grew up on Sakhalin Island off the east coast of Russia.

He and his wife, Anya, live in the room next to mine, and they have both been such a blessing to me. Pavel and I often have had a chance to chat and move between Russian and English whenever what we want to get across is easier said in our native tongue. A very gifted man, he has been a pastor in the St. Petersburg area and has been studying here for over a year. Anya took us to Sergeev Posad and I enjoyed being the escort interpreter that day for her and the visiting Seminary professor. I have found it a joy to hear about how Anya and Pavel met, and they showed me their wedding photos.

You can see that in the time I have been here, I have had plenty of chances to speak English with people, but when I enjoy very much the times that I am interacting with the people here who only speak Russian. I am immersed in the Russian language off an on during the day, and often do not encounter any folks who also speak English for hours at a time. I especially like being in an environment like it was during the pizza party yesterday when everyone was talking, laughing and joking around in Russian. While listening to them and putting my two cents in every once in a while, I was thinking about how lovely it is not to have to translate everything into English in my head, but just to be able to understand. I thank God that has come from the opportunities to be here and to have been in Kazakhstan two years ago, along with the years of study and other opportunities from time to time, like when I was working with the former Soviet immigrants, and when we went together to Barrington, Illinois, to sing for the people of my childhood UMC there.

The other day my new friend, the visiting seminary professor sent me an e-mail with two photos attached. One of the photos was of me, taken in a park near a statue of the wonderful Russian poet and novelist, Alexander Pushkin. I was amused when I opened the second one, because it was a photo of one of the street signs warning about the danger of driving your car into the Moscow River. In the e-mail she told me that she was laughing when she read my journal entry about seeing that sign because she had taken a photo of one! More serendipity . . . God is so good!

I am attaching both of those photos for you, and I hope you enjoy them!

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and yours.

Blessings in the Love of Jesus -- Kathy