Those elusive visas

As I wrote before, the freedom with which foreigners in Russia can obtain the right to live here has been severely curtailed since we arrived a year ago. What many are now doing are either becoming students (of Russian) or looking for a work permit (often by teaching English). Since neither of these fit my need or calling, I have avoided going in that direction. I don't want to force a square peg into a round hole just to stay; I believe God has creative solutions for those who wait on him.

A work permit doing coaching and coaching training fell through. With barely a month to go before we had to leave, we had to move fast, and the only option was a three-month "cultural exchange" visa. These kinds of visas are easy to get, but the expense and trouble of getting any visa is enough to make you cringe at doing them so often.

So how did we end up in Germany? Several months ago, knowing we would have to leave in July, we started looking for an affordable place to stay in Europe while we waited for the visas to be sent to and processed in the U.S. After looking high and low, the answer was under our noses. Tobias and Katarina, new friends, colleagues, and Harbor volunteers, offered us, free of charge, a country house owned by well-to-do friends of theirs who make it available for people in ministry. It was too perfect. We needed to rest after so long in moving so fast. Even our staff conference last year was not really rest. So we got the best of both worlds - rest in a beautiful place (check out the view from our porch) and a place to wait for visas.

Back to the search for a long-term solution, almost immediately after the first visa door closed, Diana got offered a position at the International (Christian) Academy teaching high school writing with a work permit. Sounds good, and she was excited, but it takes her away from homeschooling and learning Russian. Moreover, the wild card is that the school doesn't even have the ability to invite teachers yet. What if they get turned down, as happened to another private school recently that was trying to keep their German teacher (Tobias, the missionary we stayed with in Germany)?

They also want me, as part of the deal, to teach a Bible class and be available one day a week to substitute. I could enjoy the experience, but it's not dead center of my calling.

It's not like I'm not open to being a student or a teacher or working somewhere else. It's just that I want to do what God wants. Please pray for direction, because we can make us some logical paths, but we want God's path alone.

I dropped in on an legal firm yesterday (July 30) that works with foreigners. They offered a kind of work permit that would be great if it's for real. Now I have to find out if it really is, but I've learned to keep my skeptical glasses on here. So many try to skirt the law to make things work.

Update, August 13th: Every step of the way right now is a new test in faith. I tried to encourage Diana with this fact today, pointing out that it took Abraham over a hundred years to get to the point where God could really trust him with His greatest task. "We don't have that long," she responded. "I expect not," I agreed. "But He has us on the crash course right now." Diana, ever unsure, mused, "or maybe a remedial course."

Yesterday, I spoke with an old-timer. He pointed out that though the legal firm may be doing things right, from a formal legal sense, the problem comes when (if) they ask you at the border what the nature of your work is with the company. This puts you in the position of essentially having to lie to keep from being kicked out. Doesn't seem like the Christ-honoring thing to do.

Last night I spoke with a friend from Richmond who planted an idea I'd already had: to offer the firm real services in exchange for the visa.

Today, we met with another missionary whose information on these types of agencies is that they are quasi-legal at best, fronts for government investigation at worst, since they mainly serve illegal immigrants from former Soviet republics.

Teaching at the International Academy has its own problems, even if we felt called. Latest word is that they won't get permission to grant work permits until at least several weeks after our visas end, assuming they get it at all. But the director is going to call any day now and ask for an answer. Should we still say yes and then hang out in Germany a couple of months again?

In short, options are running very thin. I know that these are the times that God gets to show up in power and in a way that only He gets the credit. So this is the kind of moment we are needing now.

Update, August 20th: I had been feeling more and more certain that work through the I.A. was not what God was calling us to. We had phone calls the other day with our director and his director, and they were both (independently) clear that, of the options on the table, getting a student visa was the best one. The director of the school forced our hand the next day, and Diana had a wonderful conversation with her, despite the fact that she was realizing the need to let that opportunity go. They both realized that there was something of God calling them together, but it was not for now, at least not as intensive as originally planned.

Having let go of the teaching prospect, Diana came to be excited about the possibilities of being more focused on her language development. Actually the terms of the language school we would use would require us each to take about 4 hours a week of private lessons. If this is where we end up, then we would be content, since it so clearly would support and not detract from why we are here. Even I need to grow in my language. The main disadvantage is the tuition costs. We would be looking at an additional $10,000 of need over the course of this coming year.

We actually don't have to decide quite yet. We just had to let the school know where we stood with them. This leaves us in some limbo, but that's a good place for God to work on us and work everything else out for His glory.

Living with our Landlady

We had an interesting start to our relationship with Julia. We wrote about her in an earlier newsletter:

After meeting her the day before, Julia and I met at her bank to sign the paperwork. Since nothing in Russia is quick, we had plenty of time to talk and get to know each other.

Julia mentioned that she had been getting nervous about being able to find good renters. (She actually immigrated to the U.S. - a big part of her puzzlement over why we would do the opposite.) Her two months here would end in less than a week. Now more comfortable discussing matters of faith, I said, "that must mean God sent us to you, and you to us."
"Absolutely," she affirmed. "Yesterday morning before you arrive, I went to visit Ksenia Blazhennaya about this to beseech her help." She was surprised I hadn't heard of Ksenia. "Even Laura Bush came to visit her when she was here!"

My curiosity peaked. How could I have missed knowing about such a revered person here?
"So where is she?"
"She's in the Smolensky Cemetery," Julia replied.
"Oh, so she's dead, you mean."
That's when I got Ksenia's story -- my head swimming the whole time.

Julia gave me not only the grand tour and introduction to her apartment, but also as much of her little microcosm as she could show me in three hours. We walked to a nearby cemetery, in the midst of which was her own church. Now she began to open up more about her own history and faith.

Through the love and prayers of the former priest of this church, Julia had a dramatic conversion to Christianity eight years ago. This man was apparantly such a spiritual father to the community that literally thousands came to Christ through him. Julia's own daughter, born the very hour of his death, is named after him. Moreover, she also credited his influence in the restoration of her marriage two years ago after years of divorce.

Our conversation continued:
"So this school you want to take your boys to, what kind of a school is it," she wondered.
"Christian," I answered, simply.
"But what kind of Christian?" she pressed.
"It's not one kind," I replied. Even though it was formed out of one church, I didn't want her to pigeon-hole it. "The beauty is, the teachers come from many different streams."
"Which ones? Does that include Orthodox, Catholics?"
"No, well, they are pretty much all Protestant," I backpeddled.

By this time we were walking with a friend of hers Julia recommended as a babysitter. So the conversation turned into a Q & A on Protestantism, which they had no clue about. I highlighted the brief history of the schism between East and West in 1054 and then between the Catholics and Protestants 500 years later. They seemed to appreciate much of what I said, especially my assertion that a foundation of Protestantism was a desire to return to a more biblically-based form of church, approaching the simplicity of Apostolic times. This agreed with their distaste for these "new sects." My statement that salvation (and all of life) were a gift of God through Christ also met with a wholehearted endorsement.

Arrival at our destination cut this conversation short, but I later told Julia I was already sad to see her leave after just meeting. Would that we could build on what we had just experienced!

Fast forward to June. She wants to come with her husband and two children to live with us for the month of July! Even if we were best buddies, this would send Diana to her grave. Thankfully, we leave for Germany on July 2nd for three weeks. In her two days with us, however, she managed to stress the dickens out of us, accusing us of:

• opening one of her rooms (which we did to put her stuff in it that she had left all over the apartment). But not content to get an apology, she couldn't stop going on and on and on about it, asking me to explain our reasons for doing it and then tearing into me again as though my reasons amounted to a retraction of my apology.
  
• taking her stuff from another room for our use (when she had actually left the stuff for us). Again she kept going on about it, unwilling to allow any possibility of her memory being wrong.
  

Her maliciousness was unbelievable. She brought out a side of me that never gets expressed in the U.S.: vehemence. I had to keep Diana away from some of it it was flipping her out so much. We left for Germany sure that there would be trouble and a raised rent waiting for us when we returned.

Update July 26th: After spending time in prayer, not only about the situation, but also for Julia herself, we returned yesterday and met with Julia today. She could not have been more pleasant, brought up none of the yucky stuff, and informed us that they had decided not to raise the rent. Praise God! Our Realtor is amazed and thinks she could get more than twice what we pay!

Yuri

Yuri describes himself as the only Christian to survive the only Christian orphanage in the city. I have heard from other sources that this orphanage turns kids away from the Good News though their methodology, which is sad. Though still an exaggeration, there is no question that God has a special hand on Yuri.

Providence sent Yuri to this orphanage at the age of 11 - unusually late - with his sister (6). He knows nothing of his father, and he only sees his mother once or twice a year even though she lives here. The institution did give Yuri a good background in English; he was in my English class this past fall, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the class. We would love to show you a picture of Yuri, but as a resident of the Harbor, we can't do that. When we reshuffled placements at the end of the year, Yuri ended up as my sole student, and we excitedly agreed to have him come over weekly for lessons.

Just these simple changes made a world of difference in our relationship. Wednesday evenings became an opportunity to let Yuri build a relationship with our whole family. We feed him our strange Americal diet. (He discovered that he really does like beans, for example.) We plays games together and joke around. He shares things from his web page (the Russian equivalent of MySpace).

English lessons quickly evolved too. Since we can talk about more than Dick and Jane, I started asking some penetrating coaching questions and having him do some homework that would lead to conversations about life and purpose. Where we have landed surprised me: Yuri is really motivated to know what it means to be a godly husband. Well, why not? What modeling did he have? And this happens to be one of my biggest passions, having written an in-depth study for husbands back in 2006. God planned this connection well.

Our relationship is somewhere between English tutoring and old-fashioned mentoring. We use my study as a launching point for discussion and getting to his own "heart of the matter."

Even though Yuri is a 19-year-old student at a local technical college in chemistry, he longs to be in youth ministry. Pray for him, that God would release in him the faith and vision for a bold life of leadership in whatever field God sends him.

Vadim and Vending

I have a lot of stories that are still in the percolation stage, meaning I don't yet have enough to report on that would make it worth reading. This is a story that isn't ready for prime time, but I have to share what has been happening to date here on my blog.

God connected me with Vadim through one of my prayer partners back in Richmond. She had read an article about him in the Fuller alumni magazine and sent it to me. I could tell he was one of those "must meets" right away - a seminary graduate who had decided to open a business instead of a church. On our very first meeting at his coffee shop he was already sharing his vision for supporting missionaries with his second business - coffee vending machines. It was a neat idea, since it is both profitable and takes very little time. But I was more interested in the man behind the idea - a calm, mature believer who uses his business to disciple his employees and manifest Kingdom principles. That may not sound too radical to some, but in Russia, it's an anomaly.

Before long I was doing my newtorking thing: I introduced Vadim to Colleen and Igor to see what magic could happen, and they all hit it off. We started working on a project to start a new Christian business forum for networking and training of Christians for business ownership. That project is in an uncertain status at the present, but the vending for missionaries kept coming up in my conversations with Vadim. (Mind you, we are talking about supporting Russian leaders, not foreign missionaries.)

I had already had a powerful meeting with some of the leadership of CRM's Enterprise International, which starts businesses where CRM is located to support local missions. These guys had come to St. Petersburg in December to meet someone else and had had no idea that our team was here. God corrected that oversight at the last minute, and I got to share my vision with them.

The problem was that they were already pulled in too many directions to do anything for us just yet. But the more I talked with Vadim, the more I wanted to get these guys involved. Finally in June Vadim and I came up with a plan to set up a mission that would focus on finding, supporting, and training leaders, with his business as one of the ways that those leaders would be supported while in training. When I shared the vision with Steve Hall of Enterprise, the response was more enthusiastic than I had anticipated. What shocked me was that I was so worried about how to create a ministry model that would fly with supporters. Steve told me that all that was important to find the capital we needed was a good business model. The potential supporters already know and trust CRM well enough to expect that the ministry model will be solid. Another affirmation that I am associated with the right team (CRM).

Update, October 3rd. We have met with a lawyer about whether to go for-profit or nonprofit, and although both are possible, it looks like we will go for-profit (called "commercial" here). I spoke again with Steve today and things are coming together. Even though we have some details to work out in the exact business structure and how we will compensate Vadim for his time in training the missionaries, He has everything he needs to go to the board of E.I. next week (meeting Tuesday Oct. 7th through Friday) to ask them to consider making this project a priority for the upcoming fiscal year. This is really exciting to say the least, since, apart from the research I have provided from this end, Steve has done most of the work needed to formalize the plan for the board, freeing me up to concentrate more on the ministry side of the planning.

Best case scenario: the board calls this project a "needs to happen" and pulls budgeted funds our way. Steve comes and does his due diligence and finalizes plans here in the next several weeks, and we are up and running by the end of the year.

Worst case: the project falls below the fundable priorities, but we could still raise funds from outside of CRM. Indeed Steve has some donors interested in funding this project. Steve feels, however, that my ability to serve this project at least temporarily wearing the business director hat bodes well for its prospects this week.

Thanks for praying this week.

This thread continues here.