July 15 - Day 1 of Debriefing in Novosibirsk

I had the BEST sleep last night! Luckily we got to sleep in since breakfast wasn't until 9:00, but even at 8:30 I didn't want to get up! It is really hot here too - it was pretty cool until the last couple of days. 

Breakfast was cheese, apples and bananas (and cereal, but I didn't want any). Next was devotions, but they wanted me to help lead the worship songs for our 10:00am worship, so I rehearsed with the worship team instead. Today was very exciting because George Verwer, the founder of OM, came to speak to us! After worship, he began telling us a bit of his story, and about some of the other ministries OM is doing. I liked when he said, "I know I can't please all people, so I just try to please God".

He talked about when he first came to Russia, and was smuggling Christian literature and Bibles in cornflake cereal boxes. He said everything went well and they did not get caught handing anything out. However, they came across one of their Gospel of John books, and found a butter smudge on it. They didn't want to hand that out, but also didn't want to flush it down the toilet. He ended up taking it back with him, which he said was really dumb. As they were driving down the highway, he threw the Gospel of John out of the window. By the time they had gone another 10 miles the road was blocked by police, the army, and other such groups. He was brought in for 3 days of interrogation for that.

They had many books here, and four of them were free to us, but they only had Russian ones left. That is because the Russian books are printed in St. Petersburg, so they are already here. He didn't want to bring any books in English with him, because he was arrested the last time he came to Russia for bringing in Christian literature to distribute. 

We also spent lots of time praying for the different ministries of OM, including AIDS education, abortion education, children and teen ministry, Ministry in India, etc.

Afterwards we had a big BBQ out in the yard, and then I went inside for a bit of quiet time. Then Kristina, Dimona and Lena came in, and we spent some time praying together about our own prayer requests.

Next we met in our teams and did some debriefing of the whole trip. We all had many positive things to say about our ministry and our team. I am still kind of processing everything - it's all happened so fast! I will have to do some more thinking before I share!

Then we had tea time, another worship service, and then our team shared with the other team about our mission, and vice versa. Then we had dinner (spaghetti & sausages), and had a bit of free time. They put on a movie for us this evening (John Carter), which we are watching right now, although I'm not too interested. 

Tomorrow we get to go to the ballet! I'm so excited! Time to head to bed!