First Impressions: A Study in Contradictions

Welcome to my first post on the Orphan’s Tree blog. I made my first trip to Russia as part of an Orphan’s Tree team May 18-28, 2013. It was not only my first trip to Russia, but my first international “mission” trip of any kind. We spent the bulk of our week at the Ministry Center in Ivanovo. George and Rebecca have invited me to share with you my impressions of the country, the people, the work of Orphan’s Tree, and, most of all, the experience of attempting to be an ambassador for the Kingdom of God. This is the first of a four-part series adapted from what I wrote for my own ministry website, TheAwesomenessConspiracy.com, during and immediately after my trip. Wednesday, May 22, 2013. It was early morning of our third day in Ivanovo when I was awakened before 6am by the sound of a Russian road crew working to patch a semi-paved street outside my hotel window. I wasn’t quite sure why they were bothering to patch what was essentially a dirt road, but the early wakeup call gave me my first bit of free time since arriving to reflect on the first few days of my experience in Russia. As it turns out, paving a dirt road at six in the morning was just a microcosm of the sense of contradiction that, for me at least, defined those early days. Our team of four had arrived late in the evening of Sunday May 19 after an exhausting 24 hours-plus of travel from Pittsburgh via New York and Moscow. The bulk of our time during our first two days was spent in the tiny ministry center run by Orphan’s Tree where young families and teenage orphans come every afternoon. In the mornings we visited local sites like a huge textile center (Ivanovo was once the textile capital of Russia) that I can best describe as a sort of outlet mall for all things fabric. We also visited one of the technical schools where many of the students from the ministry center attend. What struck me most about the first days of our visit and our host city was the overwhelming sense of contradiction in almost everything. Russia is not a “third world” country by any means. In most places, if it weren’t for all the signs being in Cyrillic, Ivanovo looks very similar to most American cities…there are shopping malls, restaurants, museums, churches, hotels, markets, and everything else you’d expect in a city of roughly half a million people. Interestingly, though, there seemed to be little to no separation between commercial and residential areas. Modern architecture sits side-by-side with blighted buildings. Paved (and semi-paved) streets are lined by dirt sidewalks. Just across from our recently-remodeled hotel was a 10-story tenement building overlooking a lovely riverfront park. An ultra-modern shopping mall stood right next door. My American sense of “place” was constantly disrupted. I realized quickly that I had absolutely no frame of reference to describe the contradictions I was both observing and experiencing. Even today, almost two months later, I still feel as if I don’t have a vocabulary for it. Of course, at least at that early point, everything about this trip had been a contradiction. From the time I accepted my friend Brooke Patterson’s invitation to join the team, it was difficult to discern exactly what this journey was going to be all about; let alone explain it. To most people, the idea of a “mission trip” means going to a place mired in extreme poverty and trying to “fix” something: infrastructure, economic conditions, education issues, etc. For us, though, the poverty with which we found ourselves confronted was more of the emotional variety. The teenagers & young adults that come to the ministry center grew up in orphanages, where their lives were largely managed for them. Now they find themselves in a world where they have no skills for the basics of relationship building and trust necessary to survive and thrive in their culture. The night before I was awakened by the early-morning road crew we took about 10 boys ranging from 15-22 years old to the mall where we played air hockey and ate “Russian McDonald’s” in the food court. Something American teenagers utterly take for granted, an activity I had done with my own youth group countless times before, was like a trip to Disneyland for my new young Russian friends. What I was learning was that, through all the contradictions of the culture and the environment, the one constant was the people. From the students and staff at the ministry center to our incredible interpreters and guides, the relationships we were forming were what would ultimately define my experience in Ivanovo. After only two days I could already tell we wouldn’t have nearly enough time to spend with the amazing people I was encountering. My only hope was that they were receiving even a small portion of what they had already begun giving me. Next week: Love Wins...A story of culture and hockey