Hi everyone! This is Rebecca writing this time. We are all well. We just returned from a week long trip to Khabarovsk, about 4000 miles east of Tambov, where we visited the church we started almost 7 years ago. About a year ago, we left Khabarovsk and turned the church over to Ray’s longtime assistant: Sergei Matyushchenko and his wife Natasha.

What a time we had in Khabarovsk! The past few weeks just flew by! There were two men from America that accompanied us there. One was Steve Van Horn, the missions pastor of Calvary Chapel in Aloha, OR. The other American was James Larson, a member of that same church. They and Ray were planning to talk to Sergei in person and see the status of the church and seek to officially affiliate Sergei as a Calvary Chapel pastor. Me and the kids and I just went to visit our precious friends there.

First of all, Steve and James spent time here in Tambov. They were really impressed by the zeal and joy of the young men and women in our church and how they played so gently with my children like a nurturing mother.

The children love the train. They love to immediately climb to the top bunks where they perch and eat potato chips, a special treat. They dangle things over the edge and fish with coat hangers while Ray and I hang the coats and make the beds. Then the children climb down to sleep on the bottom bunks while Ray and I sleep on the top. There are no guardrails for the bunks and the train lurches so sharp sometimes that it’s a wonder we don’t roll off. The children sleep beautifully through it all. They’re born travelers.

We got off the train the next morning in Moscow. We stayed at a hotel for the day and helped the visiting Americans go souvenir shopping. We got on the plane to Khabarovsk that night. The children were preserved by a mandatory nap every afternoon through the whole duration of the trip.

The airplane trip was a good 8 hours in which the children were put to bed on the floor and the baby on the remaining seats. We arrived in Khabarovsk and saw some of our friends in the airport. We got to our hotel there and and our old neighbor and the kid’s "Russian grandmother" Ala was waiting. She just held and kissed Lizzy for the longest time.

The next day we had a meeting at church. What a great time that was! They were waiting for us on the street outside even! We felt so loved. When we were finally seated and looking at everyone, we got the strange feeling, and they too, that we had not been away for very long at all. Maybe just a week!

We hugged and told them about the church in Tambov and how God was blessing it but there was always the feeling among many of the people in Khabarovsk that we had abandoned them for another church. They all wished we would come back. They had gotten used to Ray’s sermons and always wanted to hear them. I tried to encourage them by telling them how God was using us to bring more people to Christ, but they had little interest in the "other church".

For the first time, I saw the church the way Jesus sees it, as a bride yearning to be loved by the bridegroom. It seemed that Ray was some sort of representation of Jesus to this church, a tangible person that could give them God’s love and God’s teaching. They had come to love him as their teacher and comforter and they just wanted him for their own.

The church in Tambov seemed like a young vivacious girl with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes always laughing.

The church in Khabarovsk seemed like an older mature woman, no less beautiful, but more graceful, wise, and able to go through hard times with dignity and stability. She seemed like a woman with long, glossy brown hair and big soulful brown eyes also wanting to be loved like the church in Tambov. Now I understand and even feel how Jesus could make the church his bride.

Steve and Ray talked to Sergei and he was greatly encouraged. They realized they left Sergei too alone for the past year. Sergei greatly needed the fellowship and advice of other like-minded pastors. He also needed financial support as he was finally going to quit his secular job and pastor full-time. Ray pledged to help him in that way. Sergei was also worried what his parents would think as he left his high status job as a university teacher in order to pastor a church full-time. Such a move is regarded as very foolish in a country like Russia. Leaving that university job also means Sergei could be subject to the dreaded Russian military draft.

But Sergei decided to take this step of faith. We pray for him daily.

In our last meeting with the church in Khabarovsk, Steve had a great idea what to tell the people; about why we live in Tambov now and not Khabarovsk. He said that God told us all to go out and spread the gospel to every nation and that we were really just fulfilling the Great Commission. God wanted to start a church in Tambov so he called us out of Khabarovsk, called Sergei to be the pastor, and started a church in Tambov. Tambov Calvary Chapel is, in a sense, a missionary outreach of the Khabarovsk church. And when the same pastor starts two churches, the churches are like "sisters". So the Tambov church was their sister. "Little sister," added an older member of the church to me later.

Then I saw that they began to understand how this was all part of God’s plan. I told them to pray for us and their little sister church.

In the last days that followed, people continually visited our hotel to spend more time with us. Finally we hugged all our loved ones at the airport and said good-bye and that we would come see them again which is more likely now because Ray plans to be more involved with Sergei and travel to Khabarovsk at least once a year.

Finally we flew back again, the whole length of Russia. Once again, the children were laid down to sleep on the plane as we began one of the longest days of our life. We followed the sun as we went west back to Moscow so we got there at 6:00 P.M. which was about the time we left Khabarovsk! We took the long taxi ride through traffic from the airport. Then we went to a McDonalds and had a quick bite of American food. Then we hauled our luggage to the train station and got on the train to Tambov at 9:30 that night. It was still daylight! The children, who had helped haul diaper bags and toys, were once again put to bed on the train. After a jerky sleep, we arrived in Tambov 7:30 the next morning.

What a surprise we had! There were at least half a dozen teenagers and college students from the church waiting for us at the train station to help carry our bags. They said how happy they were to see us again and how they liked us better than the substitute pastor and his young friend and the interpreter. Some of them had skipped school or set their alarm clocks in order to meet us.

Ray sometimes thought he might be a little too old for this young crowd but they didn’t think so at all. They were just all smiles and joy and laughter to see us and immediately went shopping to get some things for our empty refrigerator. One guy said he missed my singing at church and asked me to play a song for us to sing together. We sang and these people acted like they were in second heaven.

You ask me if I’m happy with my life? I’m just delighted and overflowing with joy! This surely must be the springtime of my Christian life. At our first meeting after we came back, we sang songs and told the people to sit down but they kept standing up again, first one and then another, then finally everyone as if sitting was too passive for such a glorious time of worship. Naturally Ray and I were overjoyed at this because as you see, it’s not us at work. It is the Holy Spirit and it is so wonderful to see him change people and make them so happy to worship Him.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God called us here and am very happy to be in his will.

Next week, were going to have our first baptism here!

We love you all. Thank you so much for your prayers and financial support! You are very much a part of this ministry as you join us in the spiritual battle for souls as well as physically enable us to be here.

Rebecca Curran

5/25/01