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| Dreams ~ Photo take at St. Basil's Cathedral Moscow, Russia 1999 |
What did you want to be when you were 5? When you were 12 what did you imagine yourself becoming? At 18, with your first steps into adulthood, in which direction had your dreams pointed you?
May I share my dreams with you? It is my joy to do so - for this is a story of dreams coming true. And the amazing thing is, more of them keep being added to my "about to check off the bucket list" list.
The road to these realizations has been long. Many dreams were added along the way, like pretty pebbles picked up along the beach. I wasn't always certain what would become of them. Sometimes pebbles stay in your pocket. Later they fall out in the wash. Then they get picked up and put on a shelf. They look pretty, but are they useful? Will they ever become something more than a hoped for destiny?
My dreams probably began earlier than I can remember. According to my grandmother I wanted to be a missionary when I was 6 years old. Sometimes we forget our dreams. God is good at remembering what we forget.
My earliest memory of my dreams began on a lazy summer day in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota in 1995. One month past my sophomore year found me busy reading the books I loved and delving into various artistic expressions. As I worked away on some new craft while sitting on my bedroom floor, stories poured from my radio to fill up the silence. A doctor was sharing about his experiences on his recent medical mission trip to Russia. My ears perked up. The Soviet Union had collapsed three short years before this, producing a sudden interest in all things Russian across our nation. The change in the political climate of Moscow also provided me the opportunity to study Russian as my foreign language the previous 2 years.
I caught only a few more words as the doctor shared his story. Now pictures were flooding my mind. Faces of men, women, and children. Faces that I had never seen with my own eyes burned their way into my soul. I could identify them as being from the former Soviet Union. And I found myself weeping. They didn't know Jesus yet - they probably had rarely if ever heard His name.
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| Central Asian girls in Moscow |
My own journey with Jesus was only a couple years old. Although I had prayed to accept Him when I was six, it wasn't until I was 14 that I learned to talk with Him and discovered what it truly meant to follow Him.
My own recent beginnings with Jesus made me keenly aware of the dichotomy between life with and without Him. And I found myself weeping over faces and hearts that had not yet had the chance to know this Lord who gave me Life.
Shaken and shocked by the experience, I sat on my pink and green rug hugging my knees. "Jesus, they don't know You, do they? Do You want me to go tell them?" I had to get to Russia and find out what this was all about.
One year later I landed with a group of passionate teenagers in Tyumen, Russia, the 'gateway to Siberia'. And I fell in love! The taiga forest, the lakes and rivers all reminded me of Minnesota. And the people! God again filled me with love for these people I did not know but whom He had loved since the creation of the planet.
And what a joy to tell them about this life that I had found in Him, inviting them into joy and peace and relationship with the Father. Little time-worn babushkas, rough construction workers, ladies who served us tea in their homes, farmers tending their potato fields, children playing on dilapidated jungle gyms. All listened as we shared this good news of life in Jesus. And although only a handful responded, they all got to hear!
Leaving Tyumen nearly broke my heart in two. What do you do when you dive into a dream bigger than yourself, but have to leave before it is completed? I was learning what it meant to put my dreams into the hands of the One who calls Himself the Beginning and the End. But I also asked to come back. Three summers would pass before I walked in Siberia again.
love LOVE this. Can't wait to hear the rest of the story!
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