During this final week I am living in Moscow as a mission worker of the Presbyterian Church USA I am writing to summarize my thoughts and feelings as I prepare to begin my new work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship. My heart is mixed with grief and gratitude as I think about leaving the wonderful people with whom I have been working in close fellowship for almost eleven years. I am very thankful for the privilege of serving as a mission co-worker of the Presbyterian Church here in Russia. And I am deeply grateful for the support and encouragement I have received from so many of you. The group of people which I have come to know these past eleven years, many of whom read my letters and send encouraging responses includes not only people from the United States (from Maine to Texas, from Florida to Washington) and Russia, but also people from Holland, Hungary, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, and other places around the world. Thank you for your encouragement and support throughout these years that have been among the most satisfying and inspiring years for me as a Christian worker even as they have demanded so much of both my family and of me.
The past months have been spent with preparing for our move back to our home in Richmond, Virginia. This involved selling, giving away and packing up our belongings accumulated over eleven years time in Russia – including our library of over 1000 pounds of books to ship back to the USA. Our great triumphal day in this process was on April 26th, the day our shipment cleared customs in Russia, a process that took much research and at least four trips to the airport. I say it was a triumph because when we arrived in Russia eleven years ago I spent six full days running around the customs offices at the airport with two Russian pastors and paid about $1000 in warehouse storage fees to obtain our personal belongings. This time we worked with a customs broker and paid only about $550, accomplishing our goal in half the time. (In Richmond I was able to clear customs in fifteen minutes with a check for $35.)
We made our move to Virginia on April 28, before the completion of the school year here in Moscow, in order to attend our daughter Hannah’s senior art exhibition and graduation from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Her senior art exhibition included a presentation of seven large stained glass windows which she made over the last two years (See photos). We were delighted to meet her art professors, supervisors from her work in the cafeteria, her pastor with his wife, friends and parents of friends who attended the art exhibition and graduation which took place on consecutive weekends early in May. Asbury College has been a great experience for Hannah. We recommend it for those looking for a great liberal arts college.
Accompanying our joy at attending Hannah’s graduation has been the great and unexpected loss of my father, Donald Dearborn Marsden, who died in the hospital in Connecticut while we were flying from Munich to Washington DC the morning of April 28. He had undergone surgery to remove his gall bladder on April 18. He seemed to come through the surgery well, but on the second day went into septic shock. He was placed in intensive care for a week where my brother Peter, my sister Ann and friends from First Presbyterian Church in New Haven, Connecticut came regularly to visit him and pray for him, but he did not pull through. He has gone into eternity now with my mother Constance Avery Vose Marsden, who died almost a year earlier. He was 86 years old.
After Hannah’s graduation Laurie, Hannah and I returned to Virginia from Kentucky, and then drove up to Connecticut to help my sister Jane and my brother clear out Dad’s house. We rented a truck to drive much of the furniture to our home in Virginia, arriving at three in the morning on Sunday, May 18th. Our family will gather again from Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington and Virginia with friends in New Haven for a memorial service to give thanks to God for our father, grandfather and friend on June 15 which is Father’s Day in the USA.
I returned to Moscow a week ago to be with Jeremiah, who stayed here with his friends the Blacks to finish out the school year at Hinkson Christian Academy. Jeremiah is sad to be leaving the school of which he has been a part of since kindergarten. He will be a junior at Freeman High School in Richmond in the fall. Another big reason for my return to Moscow was to conduct the first official meeting of the newly formed advisory board for Narnia Center (see photos) which was held May 26-27 in the library of the Institute for Bible Translation at Andreevskii Monastery on the bank of the Moscow River. I am very encouraged by the meeting, because now Narnia Center has a group of responsible, highly competent, well educated and socially engaged Russian Christians who together with me are giving their attention to the present and future mission of Narnia Center. They are Vladimir Obrovets, Vice President of the Russian-American Christian University, Alexander Kharitonov, President of Christian Camping International in Russia and the Baltic States, Olga Zaprometova, a professor at the Euro-Asian Evangelical Seminary and head of the international board at the Institute for Bible Translation and Irina Yazikova, chair of the department of cultural studies at St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute in Moscow. They are shown here together with members of Narnia Center staff Alexei Markevich, Larisa Zhukova, Sergei Kokurin and myself inside the compound of the monastery.
During the meeting of the advisory board we reviewed the work of Narnia Center which has now published over forty books. Among the strategic needs which I presented to the board for Narnia Center is the need to identify and name a person to succeed me as president. Narnia Center needs a leader who can provide vision for publishing and education, who can lead the Narnia staff team and who can effectively raise the funds and manage finances such that Narnia Center can continue its call to serve Christ through publishing and education. It is my intention to pass on the leadership of Narnia Center to a new president or to the board under a new charter within two years. At the same time I am confident that with God’s help our Narnia Center staff is competent to continue its work under the supervision of the advisory board during the interim period. Narnia Center needs your ongoing financial support to continue its work. Please let me know either if you would like to continue receiving reports about Narnia’s work or if you would like to be removed from the newsletter distribution list for Narnia Center.
Another personal note – our daughter Christiana, who had a wonderful second year at Gordon College, has torn her ACL and undergoes surgery on her knee today. Please pray for the success of the operation and her speedy recovery.
Very soon a new email account with the address donaldmarsden@pff.net will be opened for me and you will be receiving communications from me from that address. However, I will keep this address functional until such time as I sense that I have been able to establish contact with all with whom I am in active correspondence.
One of the things I have missed a great deal while living in an apartment building in smoggy Moscow for eleven years is the opportunity to plant and tend a vegetable garden in the (relatively) clean air environment of Virginia. Even as I grieve to leave beloved friends behind me in Russia, I am thrilled that I will have that opportunity again. So if you come by in July, August or September you can enjoy fresh green beans, tomatoes, green or red peppers, sweet onions, mint and other yet to be planted fresh growing fruits and vegetable from our backyard garden. Not only am I thrilled about living in Virginia again, but I am trusting that the God who led us into missionary service in Russia these past eleven years is leading us now into new vistas of work and new ways of service as I join the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship team because God is always faithful to lead us in our sojourn on this earth.
Next week both Jeremiah and I will return to Virginia where we will join Laurie, Hannah and Christiana at 508 Cokesburg Lane, Richmond, VA 23229. Our telephone number is 804-658-4256. I will be available beginning July to speak in churches in the USA. I have promised to visit some of you and have had to postpone due to our changing family circumstances. Please feel free to contact me at any time about visits for July and into the fall.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you,
Donald Marsden
Contributions for the Narnia Center may be sent through normal mission-giving channels by designating gifts for ECO # 051800 - Narnia Center. Gifts by credit card can be made by calling PresbyTel at (800) 872-3283, or checks payable to the PC(USA) can be mailed to: Presbyterian Church (USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Designate the check to ECO #051800 - Narnia Center. Contributions may also be made by check payable to “The Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church” and mailed to The Outreach Foundation, attention Linda Patrick, 318 Seaboard Lane, Suite 205, Franklin, TN 37067, or by calling the foundation at (800)791-5023. The memo on the check should read “Narnia Center.” For further information contact Donald Marsden
Late February, 2008
We stayed that night in the apartment of a young couple named Sasha and Valeria. They are the recently arrived missionaries in Tege. Sasha is a Khant. Valeria is one of the Komi people. Together they have three small children - Solomon, Timothy and a baby girl Vera. They moved there from Beryozovo where they are members of the Baptist church. Their parents helped them buy an apartment in Tege. The apartment is inadequately heated, so they use a space heater, but the apartment is cold anyway and they are struggling to pay the electric bill. That's the way it is for every one in the village. Sasha goes hunting and fishing with the local men who mainly make their living that way.
Correspondence Date 03/11/08
The apostle Paul was a very busy man. His desire to preach the gospel in places where “Christ had never been named” kept him on the move to such an extent that he was unable to visit the churches he had organized as often as he would have liked. He had to rely on letters to keep in touch with the churches flung across the Mediterranean Sea. And while Paul was off speaking of Christ in some city, in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece or Italy, other preachers sometimes moved in to visit the churches he had started in another city. These other preachers on occasion worked to discredit Paul and his teaching. Such was the case in Corinth, and this provides the background to much of what Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. (These, by the way, are typical missionary conditions. No missionary worth his or her salt can ever keep up with all that needs to be done, and if that missionary is doing good work, some other so-called missionary (a.k.a. wold in sheep’s clothing) will come along and work to discredit what he or she has done, persuading people to disassociate themselves with the missionary who introduced them to the gospel. It’s sad to say, but I’ve seen it in so many places in Russia.)
The situation in Corinth had grown so strained that Paul felt as if some people wanted him to provide letters of recommendation to vouch for his good reputation and integrity. That seemed absurd to him, since he was the one through whom God had brought the Corinthian church into existence. He wrote to them “Do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ.” (II Corinthians 3: 1-3)
To put it in other words the Corinthians were asking Paul “How do we know you’re for real – that you bring us the real gospel?” Paul’s answer was straight to the point “Your faith – your lives are proof that I’m real. I don’t need any more proof than you yourselves. Your lives bear witness to the truth of Jesus. Any one can read for himself. You are a letter of Christ.” As far as Paul was concerned the lives of the Christians in Corinth were adequate proof of his genuineness. He knew them, and they knew each other.
Over the years I have received a lot of encouragement and affirmation for the work I have done in Russia. The work itself has been very satisfying. The encouragement and affirmation has been like icing on the cake. Of course, if you lived closer to me and observed me in my work day in and day out, you would surely notice the weak areas. Another thing you would notice is that other people do most of the work for which I receive affirmation and encouragement. As I prepare to leave Russia in the spring to begin work with PFF, I want you to hear more about some of the people who do the work here at Narnia Center and will continue to do it after I move from an active, hands-on role, to the role of an advisor.
As I prepare for this transition I want to do everything I can to set up Narnia Center to continue to prosper in its work of proclaiming the gospel through literature and training. I can think of no better way to do that than to send these letters of recommendation – that is – testimonies from the lives of the people who with me do the work of Narnia Center. Most of you don’t know them. I know these people because I have been working with them. Their lives are letters from Christ which speak for themselves.
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Alexei Markevich, the director of Narnia Center, was born in Moscow in 1971. An only child, both of his parents were engineers. In school he was an active member of the pioneers, and the club of international friendship, which were government sponsored programs to raise the next generation of leaders for the communist party. In 1988, at age 17 he enrolled in a six year program at the Moscow Aviation Institute, studying to assemble aviation equipment. That same year he began searching for God. His search began because of an emptiness he felt inside. He had read a popular atheistic book ridiculing the Bible. Something in it struck him as untrue, and he decided he would read the New Testament. In 1990 he bought a New Testament on the street for twenty-five rubles, half his student stipend. After reading the New Testament he came to believe, and began searching for a church.
He visited an Orthodox church where he was told that if he would memorize the Lord’s Prayer and pay twenty five rubles, they would baptize him and make him a member of the Orthodox Church. This did not appeal to him. Alexei found his way to another church, as it were, “by chance.” He found the address for this church printed inside the cover of a book he read by Josh McDowell called More Than A Carpenter. His father had told him about this other church, the Baptist church, which he had seen in his student days. He had never visited the church, but he had seen it near his engineering institute. Alexei visited this church, what is now called the Central Baptist Church in Moscow (at the time it was the only Baptist church in Moscow) and on August 8, 1991, he gave his life to Christ in that church.
Just eleven days later the 1991 Soviet coup d’etat attempt was staged in which a group of hard line Communist party leaders briefly deposed Mikhail Gorbachev, holding him captive in his summer dacha. They claimed his health did not allow him to continue leading the USSR. It was during the next three days that Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank outside the Russian White House defied the leaders of the putsch and, backed by Soviet military leaders, caused them to step down. Although he had always been very interested in politics, and still is, Alexei remembers that these events and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet economy did not trouble him much. His life had taken a new direction with Christ.
On November 19, 1991 Alexei was baptized at Central Baptist Church. His wife Oxana at first seemed indifferent to his new faith, but within a year, she too had received Christ and been baptized in the church.
In 1992 Billy Graham held a large evangelistic meeting in the Olympic Stadium in Moscow. Alexei, along with other young people from the Baptist church, was invited to help organize a “follow up” Bible study group for those who attended the meeting. The group in which he participated eventually became one of the new Baptist churches in Moscow – Hope Church. In 1993, Alexei’s pastor, Sergei Belov, suggested that he enroll in the newly organized New Life Bible College, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. He was able to do this while completing his degree at the aviation institute.
As he enrolled in the Bible college, the political situation in Moscow remained unstable. In October 1993 another group of hard line politicians tried to oust Boris Yeltsin, taking over the White House. Yeltsin called in the army whose tanks shot at the White House until the rebels surrendered. All that seemed like a minor disturbance in the background to a new life.
Alexei received his diplomas from the aviation institute in 1994 and from New Life Bible College in 1995. In the fall of 1995 he enrolled in the Moscow Baptist Theological Seminary. This is where I met him when I went to teach a course on Christian Education there in the winter of 1998, exactly ten years ago. He became a deacon in Hope Church, and in 2003 he was commissioned to organize a new church in his own neighborhood of Butova in southern Moscow where he continues to serve as the organizing pastor.
Alexei has been working with me since the fall of 1999 when he became my teaching assistant at the seminary. He became the director of Narnia Center when it was chartered in the summer of 2000. He is a hard worker who keeps on going and going until the job gets finished. He motivates our staff to work together to get books out and lately has helped immensely in the promotion, sale and distribution of our books through new channels. Alexei is married to Oxana Markevich. They have three children – Artyom, age 17, Vladimir, age 14 and Lyev, age 11.
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Sergei Kokurin was born in 1960 in the city of Kinyeshma on the Volga northeast of Moscow, he is also the only child of his family. His father was a builder/foreman and his mother worked in a chemical factory. When he was seven he family moved to Ukraine. After finishing school and working for two years, he was required to serve in the army.
Before going into the army in 1980 he decided to visit his grandfather back in the city of Kinyeshma where he was born. Taking the train from Kiev to Moscow, he had an entire day to spend so he bought himself a ticket to a movie and sat down on a bench on Tverskaya Street to read a book. A young Finnish couple sat down next to him, and struck up a conversation with him. In broken, but understandable Russian, they witnessed to him of their faith in God. He told them he was an atheist. God cannot be seen, he said. There is no God. This couple waited for him until he came out of the movie and accompanied him to the train station to visit his grandfather. Although he did not believe in God at the time, the couple made an indelible impression in his memory. While in the army he began to pray, and afterwards, he started going into churches to pray.
Following his discharge from the army he enrolled in the Kiev University in the department of journalism, where he studied from 1983 till 1989. According the Soviet system in which education was free of charge, Sergei was required to work for three years in a kind of journalistic internship. He found an opportunity to do this with the city newspaper in Sudak on the shore of the Black Sea in the Crimea.
Many of his young colleagues in Sudak were reading books on philosophy, poetry and religion. One of them was a woman named Yelena Veniaminovna. She had recently been baptized in the Baptist church. Sergei visited this church often. It seemed that he was surrounded by his journalistic colleagues and well educated friends as he attended this church. He liked going there because the sermons and prayers were understandable. He attended this church for several years. People began to ask him “When are you going to be baptized?” As he was thinking about this, a question rose up in his mind – “What do I do about the fact that I was baptized in the Orthodox Church as an infant?” Sergei hated what he knew of the Orthodox Church, but he said to himself “I don’t understand the Orthodox Church, but I don’t have the right to reject that which I don’t understand.” He decided to set out on a path to learn everything he could about the Orthodox Church and its faith.
He began reading books on Orthodox theology and liturgy by Berdyaev, Menn, Bulgakov, Florensky, Solovyov, Schmemann and Meyendorf. As he read these books he discovered new and deep dimensions to the Orthodox faith. He discovered that Orthodoxy is not just a bunch of old women lighting candles in a church where anti-Semitic priests mumble prayers in an incomprehensible language. It is based on a deep theology that speaks straight to the mind and heart of contemporary persons. It is a living tradition that cannot be fathomed. He began to understand the meaning of icons. Things that formerly irritated him about the Orthodox Church no longer bothered him. He experienced that the church of Christ is alive – if you open your heart.
Even so, for several years there was a psychological barrier for Sergei. He could not find a priest before whom he felt comfortable making his confession. And without making a confession he could not participate in the Eucharist. Then he met Father Georgi Chistyakov in Moscow. In 1997 Father Chistyakov heard his confession and became his spiritual guide. He began taking communion in the Orthodox Church.
While living in Kiev in the later 1990s and early 2000s Sergei worked with the Association of Christian Schools International. He helped produce a Christian radio program for those serving in the military. In 2005 Sergei and his wife Svetlana Panich sold their apartment in Kiev and moved to Moscow. Sergei began working with Narnia Center as coordinator of book projects in 2005. He has a finely developed literary sense. He serves joyfully and energetically in his role. He shows the greatest respect and appreciation for each person he meets. Sergei will soon become the acting chief editor for Narnia Center, a role in which I have served since 2000.
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Since I announced that I will be moving to Virginia to begin work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, funding for Narnia Center has fallen off. For the first time in eight years we have had to delay sending books to press because of a shortage for funds. I am grateful that many churches have chosen to support my new work with PFF, yet I am aware that Narnia Center has not yet come to a position of self-sufficiency. Narnia Center continues to be active in publishing and promoting books to the extent that we can.
Back in early February we introduced a new book by a contemporary author named Maria Kondratova. Her book called First Flight is about a little bat who could not fly (until the end of the story). The author came from Yekaterinburg to Moscow to visit friends and to participate in presentations and book signing ceremonies in bookstores and libraries. During the book presentations she spoke of her Christian faith.
On the first of February I attended Narnia Center’s book presentation at the municipal Gaidar children’s library, the central teaching and training libraries for Moscow’s children’s libraries. I was moved by the words of the head librarian who opened the meeting by telling of how she, realizing that Narnia Center had some kind of a religious affiliation, was at first skeptical about the books we publish, until she began to read them, and then fell in love with them. We could not have asked for a better recommendation. We are encouraged by the response of librarians across the Russian Federation.
Today is the last day of one of Russia’s big yearly holidays – International Women’s Day. It is a national holiday, and the streets are rather quiet. Tomorrow they will be overcrowded again. This week Narnia Center will participate in another large all Russia book fair on the grounds of BDNX, the national exhibition complex in the north of Moscow.
I am grateful for the privilege of serving in this ministry in Russia. With this letter I want to encourage you to continue to support the work of Narnia Center.
Yours in Christ,
Donald Marsden
Contributions for Narnia Center may be sent through normal mission-giving channels by designating gifts for ECO # 051800 - Narnia Center. Gifts by credit card can be made by calling PresbyTel at (800) 872-3283, or checks payable to the PC(USA) can be mailed to: Presbyterian Church (USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Designate the check to ECO #051800 - Narnia Center. Contributions may also be made by check payable to “The Outreach Foundation of the Presbyterian Church” and mailed to The Outreach Foundation, attention Linda Patrick, 318 Seaboard Lane, Suite 205, Franklin, TN 37067, or by calling the foundation at (800)791-5023. The memo on the check should read “Narnia Center.”
PS – you might be interested to see that Narnia Center has been in the news of the Presbyterian church USA. See the following link http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2008/08084.htm
Correspondence Date 11/7/07
Bride and Groom Wedding Party Wedding Guests
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Correspondence Date 10-5-07
RUSSIA
We have been back in Russia for a month now. In spite of the usual daily frustrations we experience living in Russia, which seem to stand out to us more after living a year in America,to be back. I am very pleased to see all that Narnia Center staff have accomplished in the year I have been abse it is good nt. They have published books at a faster rate than in any previous year, and made great progress distributing those books both in churches and Christian bookstores as well as on the general book market.
For the first time in its seven year history Narnia Center presented its books from September 5 to 10 at the 2007 Moscow International Book Fair, a large book fair in which the publishing giants of Russia present their works. The fair is held every year at the great exhibition grounds of BDNX, a fairgrounds akin to a World's Fair, which the Soviet Union built to showcase the achievements of their economy. Narnia Center displayed its books at two stands, one in a large exhibition hall as well as one in a smaller building featuring only children's books.
I took my turn with other Narnia Center staff manning the book displays, talking with guests, selling books. Something that impressed me was the character of the people who actually bought our books. Many people glanced absentmindedly at our books as they walked by. Quite a few stopped to browse over our books. Some lingered a while longer, became interested, picked out a few books, and bought them. Most often these were a mother with one or more children. In a couple cases it was a grandmother choosing a book for a grandchild. In every case it was clear to me that the children involved, whether present or not, were clearly viewed as members of the family with rights of full participation, not second class citizens considered a nuisance, a hindrance or excess baggage. These were families where children count and are deeply valued. I was encouraged to see that these kinds of families were drawn to our books. It also gives me hope that our books will encourage families in nurturing healthy relationships and faith.
In addition to displaying and selling books, Narnia Center also sponsored a number of other events at this exhibition. Among these were a master class for aspiring young (and older) writers led by Viktor Krotov, our most published Russian author. Following this class Viktor worked his way through the maze of people crowding the corridor to one of the Narnia Center book displays where he sat signing books and conversing with those who came to him. Narnia Center also sponsored a round table discussion on the theme "What makes a children's book a "GOOD" children's book? Every one who attended the round table discussion had an opportunity to speak into the microphone. (See the attached photos)
At the present time I am staying in a guest room with Alexei Markevich in the educational wing of the Transformation Baptist Church in Oryol, a city five hours drive south and west of Moscow, where we are conducting a four day training session for a group of Sunday School teachers of the regional association of Baptist churches. Alexei is teaching a course called "Introduction to the New Testament." I am working with the students on one of my favorite themes - "The Bible and children's literature."
In my recent letter I told you of our plans to make our transition from Russia to Virginia as I shift from PCUSA to work with Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship at the beginning of 2008. Our family council has met and made a decision that we will stay in Russia through the winter in order for Jeremiah to finish tenth grade with his good friends at Hinkson Christian Academy. This will also help me to lay a more solid foundation for our ongoing work in Russia with Narnia Center and with our ministry among the native peoples of Siberia. (More about this will be coming soon.) So we will make our transition to Virginia in mid or late spring.
We are very grateful to have received news from a number of churches and friends that you are planning to support us in our new work. Please know that the work we have started with Narnia Center in publishing and in training leaders for ministry also continues to be in need of your support. We are grateful to God to have this opportunity to serve him in Russia.
Yours
in Christ,
Donald
Marsden