September 20 - Birobidzhan

We ate lunch at the only open place we could find: the drab, Soviet-style restaurant in the Vostok hotel.

We were surprised when we heard people speaking English at the table behind us, where we saw a middle-aged couple and two young women--obviously all American-- having lunch. We tried to figure out what in the world these people were doing in Birobidzhan. We immediately crossed off tourism and business from our list and came up with the only other logical conclusion: missionaries. After years of religious repression and with people searching for answers to make sense out of the changes that have rocked their lives, Russia is fertile territory for the thousands of missionaries from every imaginable religious group that have descended on Russia.

Sure enough, they introduced themselves and explained they were here representing the Church of Christ. Tony and Pat, the older couple from Lubbock, Texas, had already spent almost a year in Birobidzhan, and the girls, Rachel and Shelly, are on a three-month mission. On their way out, Tony handed me a piece of paper with their phone number and email address, and invited us to drop by and sit in on one his Bible study meetings. He added that if we needed anything, including a place to stay, we could give him a call.

Getting our email at night has become kind of tricky. Surprisingly, bad phone lines are not the culprit. The problem is retrieving our email and leaving the apartment before Sasha and Maya corner us with a bottle of cognac and a plate of food. It is hard to turn down Maya's home cooking, especially considering that we have been surviving on a package of turkey pastrami, bread, a bottle of flat rootbeer, and noodle soup. But once we make the commitment to sit down with them, we have crossed the line of no return: it's inevitably two hours and five cognacs later before we are allowed to leave.



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