Bourque Family Album - Dan's Russia Trip 1

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Dan's Russia Trip
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Dan had the amazing opportunity to visit Russia in October, 2005. He went as part of an eight-person team to put on a retreat near Moscow for a group of about 30 missionaries and their children from all over Russia. Here's the story. . .

It started last year when our pastor, Doug, and his wife, Beth, volunteered to be the pastoral care couple for the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) missionaries in Russia. They went to Moscow for the annual retreat last year and decided to take a team this year to help with music and put on a vacation Bible school (VBS). This is our team: Dan, Sharon, Bruce, Autumn, Luke and Ben (two of Sharon's four boys), Beth and Doug.

Wednesday, October 26th was our first day, and we started at 5 AM to make our 9 AM flight from Denver. The Sunday prior, when we were sharing prayer requests at church, I (Dan) was beginning to worry about whether or not I was going to go because my visa still hadn't come in. My worries were groundless, though. The whole church prayed, and my visa arrived a whole day-and-a-half before I left!

After stops in Chicago and Frankfurt, our flight finally arrived in Moscow around 6 AM Moscow time on the 27th. We were carrying VBS and music supplies as well as care packages, computers and candy for the missionaries, so our luggage looked like it belonged to about 20 people--everything you see here is ours!

Moscow was about like you'd expect in late October, gray and rainy. We didn't care, though; we had arrived!

The first big clue we weren't in America anymore was the traffic. Our guest apartment was only 20 miles or so from the airport, but it took us almost two hours to get there! In Moscow, the rule is "stripes matter not, if there's asphalt, use it." There are probably 20 times as many cars now as there were 10 years ago, but the roads still haven't been upgraded at all to handle all of them.

The next day, the clouds slowly lifted, and we had beautiful sunshine. . . for eight straight days. It was the dryest, sunniest fall in Moscow in 120 years.

We packed everyone onto a bus and headed outside the city to a little retreat center called "Ognikovo."

Ognikovo is a very peaceful place in the middle of a large birch forest. It is surrounded by woods, lakes and summer "dachas" owned by a few wealthy families.

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The missionaries all converged from different airports and buses and the family reunion began. This team only sees eachother twice a year, so this time at retreat is a really special time to relax, catch up and talk in English for a while. There were a lot of kids, but this isn't all of them. Many of these families have teenage kids going to school at Black Forest Academy in Germany, another aspect of the sacrifices they make to serve God.

Every day, we all ate together and got to know one another. The missionaries included us like family and spent a lot of time asking us about our families and lives back home. The pictures of Noah and Angie were a big hit.

I'd heard bad things about Russian food, but I liked it a lot, especially the borsht (beat soup) and belini (filled crepes).

My responsibility was leading worship every day. We had 30 minutes to an hour for worship, and the missionaries liked singing! Our "worship band" was two guitars, one microphone and one small amp. We could either plug in one guitar OR the microphone. We chose the microphone. One of the missionaries, Phil, played the second guitar that another missionary on home assignment had left behind. Our "rhythm section" consisted of a tamborine and a shaker egg that missionaries could pick up and help out with.

The missionaries all have different tastes in music, so we sang a mix of new songs, some older songs and some hymns. My brother, Jeff, wrote a song called "Never Cease to Praise," and it was a big hit with the missionaries because of its very Biblical words of encouragement. As you can see, we occasionally went straight acoustic.

Let me tell you, though, I had it WAY easy! The VBS guys were the real heros of the week. They had their hands full six hours a day and did a great job. One morning, we walked out of our rooms to hear all the kids waiting in the hallway screaming in unison "V B S! V B S!"

There was enough free time to play games with the missionaries (Rook was a favorite), go to the swimming pool (indoors, of course) or just wander around the center. There was a beautiful frozen lake nearby, and for some reason, this scene just caught my eye.

One day, the guys all joined in a "banya," a traditional Russian bath. Now THAT'S an experience! The dry sauna room was a balmy 100 degrees celsius. . . that's 212 Farenheit. It burned to breathe, but for some reason it was quite soothing.

On Sunday the 30th, we had a "fall festival" next to the lake. The guys all wandered into the woods to bring back logs for the bonfire. We all felt like real men hauling our heavy, frozen claims hundreds of yards back to the lake. . . my arms hurt for three days.

Of course, the logs need to be the right size to have a successful fire. We had about 15 guys and one cutting instrument, a 12" hatchet. If you've never used a hatchet, it's not exactly the tool of choice for cutting 12" logs. It was quite humorous as we stood around and watched the one poor guy with the hatchet trying all kinds of wacky tricks to try to split the logs. This is the "get the hatchet unstuck from the log" technique.

That night we had a spectacular sunset.

Once the sun went down, it got cold! The 50 of us huddled around the bonfire and roasted marshmallows while singing old TV theme songs. My toes were frozen, and now I have char marks on the bottom of my tennis shoes to show for my attempts to warm them!

The five days at the center went all too quickly, and we found ourselves saying goodbye and climbing back on our respective busses. I will never forget these families, and I can't wait to see them again in the years to come.

Our adventure wasn't over yet, though, because we still had a couple of days left in Moscow, so click the link below to see the rest of the story. . .

Click Here to See the Rest of the Story