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MISSION SUMMARY
In 1996 God called us to a mission of service and love in Siberia, specifically among the Sakha people of the Sakha Republic of Russia. Because the educational institutions in Russia needed English teachers and an educational institution in Yakutsk needed an English computer teacher, we responded to that need, went through the training of ESI, Educational Services International and taught English, Computer English, and Business English in Yakutsk, Russia. We learned to walk in the shoes of the teachers of Russia, and as we taught their children, we quickly moved into the culture and lives of our students and colleagues. The second year we taught directly under the jurisdiction of the Russian Institutions, without the protection of an American institution or contract. God quickly taught us to endure the same struggles and hardships of our Russian and Sakha colleagues who worked under difficult physical and financial conditions; only then would we earn the right to share the gospel with an oppressed and hurting people. God taught us that the only way that we could reach the hearts of the Sakha people in Yakutia was through a heart of love, humility, and servant hood.
As we served a people through teaching, and compassionate and sensitive humanitarian aid, God opened for us doors and opportunities that only He could have orchestrated. At the end of our second year, we were invited to teach English at the Teacher’s College in Vilyuisk, Russia. Vilyuisk is the cultural and linguistic heart of the Sakha and a very closed and isolated region. Foreigners do not live among them. But because of our reputation of love, compassion, and service to the Sakha people, the head of this closed region invited us to live and teach English in Vilyuisk. God’s sovereignty provided the funds to purchase a home in that region and we invited our colleague and boss and her family to live with us in our two-story log home. God very clearly showed us that the model we were to follow in interacting with this Sakha family was that of the Christian family. God was calling us to adopt them as our family and to love and serve them, within that framework. They in turn, responded to us in the same way, and literally adopted us into their family and extended family. There were times that we knew we were being used, but God told us that our unconditional love and service to them would win their hearts to Christ. After our third year with our dear Sakha family, mom, dad, daughter, and cousin were baptized as new believers in Christ, as well as believers in several different villages.
God called us to lay our lives down for our Sakha family, serving and loving them with God’s love. In turn, God opened the region as they shared God’s love with those in their influence, as God brought to us those, hungry to hear the Word of God, and gave us to minister God’s love through corporeal provision. As we ministered in sacrificial love, compassion, and humility, God opened the hearts of the Sakha people to receive the message of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation of the gospel. God used us to plow the hard ground of desperate, hardened hearts with the Word of God, fleshed out in our lives, as we gave of ourselves in loving, humble service to a people to which God had foreordained that we minister. As the doors have closed to us to remain, God has burdened our hearts to continue in ministry, as conduits to the church that He is growing in that land. He has taught us how incarnational ministry reaches any people, no matter how closed or isolated.
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