At the age of 28, I was standing on Red Square in Moscow, Russia, just one year after the fall of Communism. I was making dog balloons for Russian children while my “boss” – the late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ – preached onstage to millions. I have a photo somewhere to prove it. With a New York Yankees hat, my grandfather’s coat and skills learned at Inverness Methodist Church Youth Group, I was serving Jesus with animal balloons.
That wasn’t all.
We left Southern California the Monday after our Westernized version of Easter on a 26-hour flight to go spend 21 days in Russia, telling folks about Jesus. We had a big choir coming to join us after we put in the necessary groundwork. They would soon perform in all these historic places, including Red Square. There was also an “army” of behind-the-scenes folks that I was in charge of coming as well.
One of our jobs was to traipse through the subway system that served the 10-million-resident population, handing out flyers inviting them to the concerts. We saw Communists up close and personal and who were upset about the changes in their homeland. We saw real live gypsies that scared the you-know-what out of us. We were strangers in a strange land indeed.
But we mostly saw folks hungry to hear and learn and know Jesus. Their hunger and thirst were real and eye-opening. We went out each day outside of the city and went to small communities and rural places. And we handed out Bibles by the thousands. We handed them out in the big city as well. This was the age of long, really long, bread lines and shops with very little to shop for. We were trying to mentally and physically prepare for an onslaught of Russians. The Russian description we had learned as youth was the tough, mean and overbearing ogres and evil people. Our enemies.
That’s not what we encountered.
After the first concert, we decided to lock arms to form a tunnel of people on each side of a hallway to funnel the crowd out of the concert. But when the door opened, the attendees slowly left. Grandmothers, mothers, sisters, grandfathers, fathers, brothers and more walked toward us, tears in their eyes, and started hugging us. The Americans, their supposed enemies and the Russians, our supposed enemies that we despised and were frightened of – we were all caught up in Jesus’ love.
And then we gave them a Bible. A free Bible in their own language. Something that had been outlawed and removed from society for over 70 years at that point. Many of them sat down where they could and started reading immediately. Some gently tore out chapters to share with others. Statistics showed that any Bible given out would be read in part by at least 26 people.
These folks were really truly hungry for Jesus. I’ll never forget those events. I’ll never forget the hotel “guards” denying me entrance into the hotel each day as they said I “looked Russian.” Somehow, I got in; it must have been my accent and awful attempts at Russian words. And somehow, the Gospel message we were bringing got in as well, despite all the miscommunication. After 21 days, we flew home, exhausted and more than ready for any American food, though the reindeer I got at one meal was pretty decent. We descended into LAX and were met with the smoke and fires of Los Angeles and the riots of the Rodney King trial verdict. Our “safe” home was on fire and in chaos. “Can’t we all get along,” indeed.
Looks like the world needed and still needs the peace and power and healing of Jesus from Moscow to Los Angeles and beyond. An Easter I’ll never forget. Thank you, Jesus.
