Today (Monday) has been a travel day. We're now in St. Petersburg at Novasaratovka Lutheran Seminary, where we will be until Friday evening.

Yesterday we shared worship with Andrey and two of his congregations. The first is the Evangelical Lutheran Church that meets at the St. Mary's church in Tomsk. It looks like a very old, traditional church, but it was really built about 6 years ago. It's a common practice in this town to do major public projects in anticipation of the visit of foreign dignitaries. In this case, Chancellor Angela Merkel was to visit, and was interested in the German Lutherans in Tomsk, so they built this church for her visit:

Unfortunately, this building is now caught up in a controversy between two different Lutheran communities. Andrey's is the "historical" congregation, which was already worshipping in Tomsk before the 1930's before the Soviet actions against the churches. There is also another, newer, congregation present in Tomsk that is affiliated with the Siberian Lutheran Church, which has sponsors through the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. These two congregations have been sharing the building for these last few years, but this has not been a happy relationship. They continue to struggle with how to share the space and cooperate in other ways on building finances and even something as simple as which bulletin board may be used to post notices. After years of negotiations with the government by the two churches, the conflict has not been resolved and it seems possible that both have received promises that the building is rightfully theirs. Andrey's congregation is now planning to pursue other arrangements, and find a different place to worship. For now, however, this is their home.

The service was attended by about 15 brothers and sisters from the congregation, and they commonly have up to 35 or 40 present. (This is the time of year when many of them are away, spending the weekend at their datchas (sp?), working on the gardens that provide a great amount of their food.) Pastor Todd had been asked to preach, and Andrey's wife Lena served as his translator. Lena works as an English tutor and teacher and they did quite well together. He had provided a manuscript in advance so that she could be properly prepared. I also shared a greeting at the end of the service, during announcements, and she translated for me as well.

Their worship service is a mixture of Russian and German language. Andrey, however, does not speak German and has been encouraging the congregation to do more songs and liturgy in Russian. This is in part so that they can be more welcoming to new members and visitors. For example, they have recently been joined by two young men from Indonesia who are here for three years to study engineering. We spoke at length after worship. They appreciate having a protestant church where they can worship and practice their Russian.

After the service, we met up with a van and driver, which took us out to one of Andrey's other congregations. This is a very small group that worships in a "prayerhouse," the front room in the home of one of their members named Sofia. There were five sisters present, plus three visitors - Sofia's daughter and granddaughter and one of the daughter's friends. So our visit doubled the size of the service! Andrey visits them one Sunday a month to lead Holy Communion. Otherwise they are self-organized and lead their own weekly worship.
Following the service, Sofia served a simple but very delicious lunch. Then we returned to the city, a journey that took about two hours.

Finally, we went to a cafe called the Library to share a final meal with Andrey and Lena. The conversation was lively, even though it had been a long day. It also happened to be Andrey's birthday, and he said our visit was a very good birthday present. I think he was very pleasantly surprised when we accepted his invitation to visit Tomsk and we appreciated very much the chance to get to see a view of Russia outside of the big city centers. Just as the US can't be judged by New York or New Orleans, I was reminded that we cannot get to know Russia by remaining only in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

When we returned to the hotel we said our farewells and shared some gifts with them, including a prayer shawl and some Minnesota wild rice. (This last was especially appropriate because Lena had been asking us at dinner to describe some "traditional" American foods.) We saw Andrey once again this morning when he accompanied us to the airport and helped us to get checked in for today's journey.
We flew to Moscow, then transferred to another airline for our next flight to St. Petersburg. The big adventure of the afternoon was that we had decided to rent a car for our stay. This will give us more flexibility when it comes to our sightseeing excursions, since the students are busy with their finals right now. Todd had done all the research in advance, including the application for an International Drivers License. Finding our way to the Hertz office was quite a challenge, but at last we zipping down the freeway in our rented VW. We only got honked at once, which seemed like a major accomplishment!

Once we arrived at the seminary, we were greeted by Anton Tikhomirov, who is the seminary president. He had visited Grace Lutheran last June. Ronald is the only one who had not yet met him. Anton showed us to our rooms in the dormitory and then offered us a tour of the campus. The two buildings are filled with a great deal of activity this week. In addition to their regular student body of about 12 students, there are also some pastors on campus for a seminar event and later in the week they expect some of the extension students to arrive. We are looking forward to the opportunity to get to know them over the course of the week.