About the Calvinist

I should at some point mention a few words about the Calvinist, aka, Peter Jessen. Peter is the Head Holy Honcho (yes, that is his official title; he has three large “H”s embroidered on his Sponge Bob pajamas) over at First Presbyterian Church in Franklin. This church of apparently very accepting people has been around forever, and so has Peter. Just kidding, of course, though the Calvinist is old enough to be my father.

The Calvinist is actually quite smart (Princeton Seminary aint for slouches), and has a wonderful vocabulary. He is well-travelled and well-read, and, despite a proclivity for horrible puns, is a good conversationalist.

Most importantly, the Calvinist is one of the most theologically informed Pastors I know (present company excluded, of course). This is a great encouragement to me, since I tend to think that most of our problems relate to having a false or at least small view of God. Peter is a big-God-er. That is, his view of God is very large, which makes his view of man, ummm, ... not so large. This is not to denigrate mankind’s worth, but to mistrust mankind’s powers. And I try to walk the same road.

Unfortunately, much of American church leadership is dominated by a rather small view of God, and a large view of man’s methods and power. These small-God-ers would rather plan than pray, and many of their plans seem to succeed on some level. I do not begrudge them their strengths, but I do hope that the Kingdom will not only always have a few men like Peter, but that their tribe may increase (Sponge Bob pj’s and all).

Captain's log: Mission date: 04/28/2010

Today, gentle reader, I thought it good to give a detailed description of my day’s activities, here in the fair city of Tyumen.

I wake up at 5:45. I am in a strange bed; cigarettes litter the floor, and the vodka of the night before makes my head feel like that volcano in Iceland must have felt, just before it exploded. Okay, just kidding. But I really didn’t want to wake up that early.

Actually, I don’t have to wake up that early. My head knows this, but it is apparently not talking to my body. Not sure if it is the jet lag or what, but, even though I am WAY behind on sleep, and even though I am still snug as the proverbial bug in the proverbial rug, I know I will not sleep anymore.

So I rise, and pop into the shower. Breakfast consists of a fiber bar and some amazing Russian yogurt. I spend the next hour thinking about my lessons, checking witty comments on facebook, answering some emails, and admiring the face in the mirror.

At eight, the Calvinist and I leave the apartment and head to the Cultural Center. It is about an hour walk, but we catch all the lights and make it in under 50 minutes. The Calvinist does most all the talking, since I am not a talkative man in the morning.

At nine the Calvinist begins his teaching. His class is on the “Doctrine of Man”, and I’m not sure why he needs two weeks to say, “YOU’RE ALL COMPLETELY DEPRAVED”, but apparently he does.

I slide into a side room to work on my lessons. For the next four hours I study and pray over three Psalms. It is difficult to teach for four hours and still maintain interest, and I noticed spirits flagging by the end of the day yesterday. I am asking God to help me in this. (The students generally attend both classes, so for them I am the last part of a nine-hour day). Sometimes I feel ready after three hours of prep or so, but today I could have used ten.

At one o’ clock we all break for lunch. It has actually been pretty good (with the exception that Russians have the nasty habit of slipping mayonnaise into almost everything, and I feel about mayonnaise the way Sean Hannity feels about Obama; they even bake mayonnaise into pizza sometimes. No wonder we had that whole cold-war thing).

At two o’ clock I enter the room to teach, and the shine of joy on the student’s faces needs no interpretation (“AT LAST! SAVE US FROM THE CALVINIST!”). Hmmm, I guess I did interpret that. Oh well.

I write the first Psalm on the left half of the board, and Zhanna writes the Russian on the right side. I go line-by-line, trying to explain what I think is the meaning. Russians often have longer words than we do, and often I find this phenomenon: I give a ten second snippet, and Zhanna then translates that for, oh, I don’t know, about a half-hour. Okay, I am exaggerating. But I do wonder if she is trying (and probably succeeding) to improve my exegesis. Oh, the trust we place in our translators!

After this we have a break, and we prepare the board for the next lesson. The students endure four hours of this (after putting up with four hours from the Calvinist) yet still seemed surprisingly engaged. And while today is better than yesterday in this regard, I have been surprised all week at the length of the student’s patience, and the depth of their insight.

I end the class by playing, as I occasionally do, a Psalm that an American has put to music (the translator speaks the words in Russian while it is playing). Not sure if this goes over too well or not.

After class, one of the students has a number of questions, in this case not about the Psalms but about life in America. We talk for a while, then I wait as my hosts take care of a number of details around the cultural center. It is seven o’ clock by the time we leave and take a car over to Irina’s apartment for a Russian dinner. Irina is the director of the Cultural Center, and, I am told, an excellent cook. I am praying for not too much mayo.

In fact the meal was both elegant and delicious. We had borsh, (a Russian soup), and seasoned ground beef rolled up in something like a tortilla (Irina, if you are reading this, I am sorry for this terrible and un-Russian description; but it was wonderful). My favorite part was compote (think fruit juice) that she had made from cherries. She had saved a bit of cherries in her freezer from last summer, and she broke them out for us!

Irina was formerly a teacher of Russian literature, so after dinner we had a fine discussion of Dostoyevsky. If you know me, then you realize that my getting to discuss Dostoyevsky with a Russian literature teacher is like an aspiring high school quarterback being tutored by Peyton Manning. I was in heaven.

We walked back to our apartment well after 10, and I quickly made my way to my room. I fell asleep in my prayer time, and, all things considered, did not feel a bit guilty.

Pics below:

One of the better lunches (no mayo!)


Amy looking cute in her Russian hat


Amy and some Calvinist


Irina

"The Brothers Karamazov" in its original Russian glory

Pics from around town

Okay, I'm pretty sleep deprived right now (and I just woke up!), so I am not up to much writing. But just for you, gentle readers, I will upload some pictures from around town;

This is Jeff and Amy's apartment complex where we are staying


This is me striking my Lenin pose

This is the largest apartment complex in town, called either, "the great wall", or ,"the ant hill"



This is the theatre building (think "Nutcracker Suite", not "Star Wars")

Behind me is a pedestrian bridge, called, "the lover's bridge". After getting married, tradition dictates that the couple go to the bridge, throw something over (I forget what), and then tie a padlock on the railing (symbolizing something about the steadfastness of their love). Over my left shoulder is a Russian Orthodox Church. Over my right, way in the background, is a Russian Orthodox Monastary.

This is a typical courtyard behind a typical apartment complex

This is some random building with a cool mural

This is the back of the new Cultural Center

And this is the front

Here is a closeup of the monastary. No, I dont know if that is actual gold flake, but it sure shines like it is

Their are a LOT of Russian Orhtodox churches


This is a World War II era statue, honoring the male students who went off to war, and the female students who stayed behind and worked for the war

Lost in Translation

Today was my second day of teaching. Now, my Russian is a little rusty, so all the teaching involves using a translator. In my case, it takes two translators to capture all my brilliance and wit. Here they are.
The woman on the right is Zhanna, and the other woman is her sister, Anya. They are both exceptional translators and work as linguists. Translation is very difficult work, and so Zhanna would translate the first two hours and Anya would take over for the last two.

I am very grateful for their flexibility. I get the impression that normally those whom they translate for have written speeches, which the translators preview. That’s not how I roll. I stuff my head with so much information that it is about to explode like a week old zit (wait, bad simile; How about, “like a fragrant flower exploding into bloom?). Then I pray over it till it feels right. Often I don’t use any notes at all. But these women roll with the punches.

By the way, this is the Calvinist with his translator, Elena. She is smiling because she does not have to translate for me. He is smiling because he was predestined to. And yes, the Calvinist has only one translator. I don’t want to imply he is less profound than yours truly, but…
Any communication with a translator is difficult. But this difficulty is doubled when you are teaching out of a translated English Bible, and she and the students are reading out of a translated Russian Bible. And the Psalms present more problems than most parts of scripture (because it is poetry).

The first day was mostly an introduction to the different types of parallelism in Hebrew poetry, but when I tried to illustrate this on the board, it soon became apparent that I and the students were quite literally "not on the same page." We worked it out by going back and forth explaining and correlating the English and the Russian, but it took some work, and was a little distracting.

When Tuesday morning came, I remembered that, just as the Spirit inspired the scriptures, so He would be the greatest help in helping us interpret them together. After all, if He translates our inneffable (look it up, Keith) sighs into intelligible prayer requests (Romans 8), He can certainly handle our little Hebrew-English-Russian problem. So I prayed. Intently. And the prayers were powerfully answered. Tuesday's lesson seemed to have a much greater connection with the students, and they responded with wonderful questions and comments. It was a different world.

Now, I realize that as a Pastor, one of those people who get paid to be holy, I should have been praying about this long before. But, there you are. I wasn't, yet God showed kindness by his help, not a reproach of, "about time, stupid". Hmmm...makes me wonder about what else I should be praying about lately, but haven't. How 'bout you?

Thinking of Stalin

Today was the first day of our actual teaching at the Cultural Center. We took TAL (The Amazing Lada), since we had to carry several gallons of water. The reason we had to haul water illustrates both the glory and the folly of the old communist system.

The water is out at the Cultural Center because of a leak. But the leak is not on their property, but that of a neighbor. All the pipes in the neighborhood are connected, and the city supplies water at no cost. In fact, the city even provides hot water freely, through a huge pipe that connects to a really, really big boiler someplace. No one has a water heater, but everyone has hot water.

This seems like a much more effecient and equitable system than in America. No water meters, no water heaters, and no water bills. Less headaches for each and equality for all.

Unfortunately, when your neighbor's water shuts down for repairs, so does yours. This is what happened at the center. The owners of the pipes in question decided they did not want to pay for the repairs, since rumor had it that the Cultural Center was bankrolled by some rich American (if only). Surely he would pay to have the pipes fixed!

So at this point, we are in a standoff. The Community Center feels no compulsion to pay for someone else's repair, but the neighbors refuse to get it fixed themselves. So in the meantime, we haul water to the kitchen every morning, and use a make-shift outhouse (a shed with a hole in the floor) when we need to make water.

I'll think of Stalin when I squat.

Siberia: First Impressions

The Calvanist and I arrived in Tyumen at 3 am Saturday morning. Our hosts, Jeff and Amy were good enough to pick us up in the middle of the night. They borrowed a Lada, pictured here:



You may be surprised to hear that this sportscar did not want to start. But it didnt. Jeff fiddled with the choke (yes, it really has one), and it still wouldn't start. He then offered up a prayer, and the engine roared to life (okay, maybe "roared" is a bit much for this car; but it at least meowed to life, and that was enough).




The Calvanist and I dragged our sorry carcasses to bed, but whatever system in my body that keeps track of what time it is was completely confused, and I woke up in five hours. I spent the rest of the day in the fog they call Jet Lag. I think it feels like a hangover, but I've never been drunk, so I will have to ask Chris Huff what that feels like.



This is a pic of Jeff and Amy. She is the one on the right:




Jeff and Amy invited an engaged couple to join us. Dan is from Scotland, and Sascha is Russian. Long story.




After lunch Jeff took us for a walk around the city. Tyumen contains around a million people, and almost all of them live in apartments. A nearby mall has a unique color scheme:



The inside was quite similiar to American malls. The computors were about twice the price that we pay in America, but otherwise prices seemed comparable (though the average citizen makes 500 bucks a month).



For dinner Amy made killer Lasagna, and a group of students came over. They are not believers yet, but come over for supper and discussion every Saturday. Very cool group, but no pics here, cuz I didn't want to freak them out ("Mind if I post your mug on some foreign web site?")

Bed felt good last night.