Firstly I would like to apologize for the short blogs, but there had seemed to be a problem when I use the "read more" button, so this time I will not use it. After a very challenging season, where our team got really tested in China, we went off to Russia.
To be truly honest, I was not looking forward to Russia, I mean not compared to all the other countries. In fact I thought Russia was still communism, and believe me its not anymore. Anyway I might be giving away my IQ, so we landed in a place called Krasnoyarsk. This airport is so small that it only has one terminal, so its a third of Port Elizabeth's airport and that is only being nice to Krasnoyarsk's. We were met by our new friends who took 4 of our team members: Jonathan, Carmen-Ann, Nelmari and myself to our host parents. While the other team went to the villages and camps.
After getting lost and walking into a big building, climbing a flight of stairs, we entered one thick iron door with only one lock and a small wooden door with about three locks. We met a man called "Gener"(Jeaney, Jeanie) I do not know how to spell his name but its short for Eugene. He couldn't speak ANY english but we were told he had a room mate so our hopes were resting on him. After Eugene left us to go and work, Jonathan and I were stuck in this 1 bedroom 1 lounge 1 toilet 1 kitchen 1 bathroom tiny apartment because we didn't even have a key so we just stayed inside for the whole day. During this extremely boring day Jonathan broke one mug and destroyed the stove. So we we had to eat raw eggs and dried bread, which isn't the best meal nor the best start(mug and stove) for our stay at these guys' house.
That afternoon the men of the house came home, turned out none of them could speak english(not even Roman, the other room mate), it took them 5 minutes to realize that their favourite mug was missing, and that we couldn't have any supper because the stove broke, so they served cut up pieces of raw meat, very awkward I must say. These two men are a true testimony of how Christians should, they loved two loud South Africans who broke their mug, and their stove, and stilled allowed us to sleep on their bed as well as speak loud russian thinking the louder you talk the better we might understand it was very entertaining.
The point of being at this town was to love the people, play sports, and to present to them an African Culture evening. All of this was done by the church and this got me to think: What are the churches in South African doing to reach the lost??
Being lost in translation is a very hard test that God puts you in. With out tithed money we blessed Roman and Eugene with new mugs as well as a lot of cutlery and extras. we stayed with them for a week after which we moved to our next host Ivan.
During this we had awesome chats with some unbelievers(please read about them in Effortless Evangelism 3) we played very good games of ultimate frisbee and football, we truly had a blessed time and Russia turned out to definitely be my favorite country, no other country can compare to how awesome those people are, how quick they accept you and how much love they have for anyone even the lost!!
Now you must be wondering what the title must mean, well one day I bought some donuts and in the middle was caramel, and so we shared some with Roman and Eugene, and one day we got home and Eugene shared some bread with us and this very interesting bread spread, thinking it was caramel I almost took a big bite, but Jonathan had beaten me to it and whispered to me: "This fish paste is not working" I gently put down my bread and turned around and secretly left the room while I left Jonathan to finish the bread.