Yes, I've Really Been to Siberia

Welcome to ​“Ron’s Adventures,” the podcast that highlights the adventures that Ron Pearce has experienced over the course of 30 years following God around the world. With me in the studio is Ron and Charis Pearce. So welcome guys, I can’t wait to hear the adventures, the fun stories that you have experienced. What do you have for us today?

Ron- I think we’ll start off on this first one that we’re going to be talking about on a trip that I had many years ago, I think it was 1992 wasn’t it, Charis?

Charis-Yeah, it would have been back then.

Ron- It was to a place called Abakan, Siberia. We were going in there to meet the national church and I think there were some Bibles going in and some other things, but it was the trip as a whole that was the most exciting part. It was the airplane ride and so I thought we would talk about that today, Joy, as the first one. What happened was, we went to the airport and I still remember walking up and I was somewhat of a rookie at that time as to what was going on in Russia. This was right after the fall as far as the Soviet Union and Russia was still there but it was pretty broken. So we were getting on Aero-flop, I’m sorry, Aeroflot Airlines to go from Moscow over to Siberia. So I can remember that we walked up into the terminal there and if you had luggage you threw it down this hole almost, you put your name on it and where you were going etcetera, and it was like this cavern that you threw it into hoping that there was someone on the other end to put it on the plane. Well, we didn’t do that, what we did was we took our luggage with us on the plane, we carried it on. So this was the biggest carry-on luggage adventure I’ve ever had. So we go out and we’re waiting in the terminal and had our boarding pass and they say, ​“Okay go walk across that runway to where all those planes are parked on the far side.” So I still remember with these hockey bags and everything like that, there was a group of us, I think about six of us at that time, and we picked up these bags and walked to the edge of an active runway. This is where planes were taking off right in front of us, and I mean, you had to put your hands over your ears, they were that close from where we were standing. Then there was a break and it was almost like a ground crew guy said, ​“Okay, run!” And so we ran with our bags across the runway between jets taking off to where all these lanes were all lined up. There must have been eight or ten planes and we walked down the row and kept asking, ​“Is this plane going to Abakan, Siberia?” The answer was ​“No, no, no.” I went to this one flight attendant and said, ​“Are we going to Abakan?” She says, ​“I don’t know; I’ll check.” So she goes up the stairs, talks to the pilot or somebody that’s in the plane, comes back out and says, ​“Yes, we’re going to go to Abakan.” Oh good! So here we are pulling all of our luggage up these steps and we’re on board. There were a lot of people already sitting there and I still remember the animals. There was a guy with a chicken in a cage sitting on the floor and there were dogs at the back and I turned left and went up a little bit further to the front and we put luggage everywhere. The seats pulled up and you put luggage there, you put luggage in overhead, you put luggage at your feet and any excess luggage, they threw it up at the front of the plane, basically overtop of the doors to get into the cockpit. So I’m sitting there looking at this thinking I have never seen a plane like this before in my life. All of a sudden, the pilot and the co-pilot got on and they were walking from the door up into the cockpit area and everybody along their route was patting them on the back and clapping. So I asked our translator, ​“What are they saying to the pilot?” and they said, ​“Good luck, you can do it!” It was very exciting at that moment, my heart was really pounding. And then after the pilot and co-pilot got in there, they took the remaining suitcases and just threw them up to make a small mound. You couldn’t see the door, it was all luggage at the front. So we get down to the end of the runway and these were powerful planes that they had at that time, so we are at the end of the runway and he puts the gas on and I would suspect half the seats in there were broken and all of a sudden, I was laying backwards. The seat just fell back and I‘m sitting there looking up at a lady, I was laying in her lap basically, looking straight up at this lady looking down at me. I apologized and pulled my seat back up etcetera, and everybody was in the same sort of position. So we get up to altitude and the flight attendants were coming by and they were handing out these large four-inch cookies. They looked like hockey pucks, they were thin, it was like hardtack and they were throwing them like little Frisbees around the plane and this was our lunch. They were throwing these cracker Frisbees at us and then they would come by with water in these jugs and they had glasses that were all different colours, shapes, and sizes. Everybody got a glass and they would pour water in it for you. Well, I looked in my glass and there was a fly in there and I said to the flight attendant when she came by {whispering},

Ron‑I’m not going to answer that, I don’t know. I know in Asia it wouldn’t be for pets, it would probably be for supper but who knows there. Anyway, all these little stations were around and then all of a sudden, I heard singing. I recognized the melody, these were Christian songs and it was from the church that we were going to in Abakan. It was the young people and they had taken an old truck, it was a truck but it sure didn’t look like it anymore, and they had made it so that they could cut down the side, lay the side of the box down and prop it up so they could make it a stage. They took it around to various locals and they would do singing and evangelism and all sorts of outreach, drama, and everything of that nature. So the young people are out there singing and there were dancers in the front. It was quite something to see. So I stood over in the distance and I had my translator from the church there. He spoke English rather well and I would ask him questions about this and that and why are they doing this and he would answer. Then I asked this one question. All the girls, very nice young ladies, and they were dancing but you could see that they were extremely thin and I mean their arms were like toothpicks and their legs were very slender and tiny. They were undernourished. Really undernourished. So they were dancing at the front and I said to the young pastor, ​“Boy, those girls are thin.” And he looked at me and he says, ​“Nobody has told you? Nobody has filled you in?” I said, ​“No,” so he says, ​“You don’t know what these young girls do?” And I said, ​“No.” He said, ​“The young people at the church get a bowl of food every day. That is their rations you might say. They take every other day’s allotment of food and give it to the poorest of the poor, the people that they are ministering to and telling about Jesus. So they will share their food and they are only living on 50 percent of their rations.” He says, ​“These girls will take their food and give it away to others. That’s why they’re so thin.” I looked at him and I had never heard anything like this before in my life, so I looked at him and said, ​“They give away half of their food?” And he looked at me and I still remember he said, ​“In Abakan Siberia, that is how you witness.” I went behind that truck and literally, I cried because I had never experienced anything quite like that before. I had seen all sorts of things but not that much dedication of the young people, that much concern over lost souls, that sort of sacrifice that was being lived out in order to tell people about Jesus. We went to the church the next day and I walked into the church and there was probably about 2,500 people in there, huge stage, this was a church that was raucous, it was exciting! The singing was loud, not only that but everybody participated and they were dancing. The pews were made of tree trunks and trees that had been laid sideways and cut then in half lengthwise and put little feet under them, so you were sitting on the flat part of half a tree. Those were all over the place and I was sitting up near the front as a guest and they were having the service and they had everything at the service, including a wedding. So they had a wedding and a young couple getting married right in the middle of the church service. So I remember sitting there and looking at this wedding and all of a sudden it came time for the rings and he didn’t have a ring for her. So he’s looking around and he’s supposed to have a ring and sort of whispering, ​“I don’t have a ring.” Well, everybody’s quiet and all of the sudden the Lord says, ​“Go give him your ring.” So I took off my ring that I had won in a contest from my previous employer and took it up on stage and I handed it to him. Well, 2,000 people were just in awe. All of a sudden he takes the ring, gives me the biggest hug, she gives me a hug, the congregation explodes like this is incredible and we went on with the worship service. Somewhere in Siberia right now is my ring.

Joy- I bet she’s still wearing it.

Ron- I have no doubt about that. The one part I want to get to before this story ends is that somewhere in the service I found my way out to this building, which was the Sunday School room, and it’s where all the kids would go out to and they were all probably six to eight years old, somewhere in that range, maybe four to six years old. So I go out into this house, and I walk into it and it was nothing like I’d ever seen before. You see, they didn’t have enough room for all the kids on one level, so what they did in this house was build shelves, like bookshelves, all the way up from the floor to the ceiling. They would put kids up on the shelves so they were all around the walls from floor to ceiling. Probably about four or five kids high all throughout. I walked into this room and was looking around and there were kids absolutely everywhere. I listened and they were doing their Bible verses, they were singing, they were so excited about coming to church and being part of Sunday School, and learning about Jesus. The teachers were the best in the world. Maybe they weren’t as mature in the Lord as a lot of us over here in the West are concerned but they loved these kids, they knew God, and they were going to talk to them about Jesus. They would just sit there and they would read them Bible stories and the kids were just glued to them. Not a movement! I know my grandchildren and they would be moving all over the place. Not these kids. These kids sat and they listened so quietly and attentively for a long period of time. Those are my recollections of that trip to Abakan, Siberia.

Joy- Okay, so really quickly, because my brain is having trouble envisioning the children on the walls. Were they in little cubby holes, were they hung on hooks?

Ron- These were like bookshelves, but only the seat was about 10 – 12 inches deep, and therefore, they were just put up there like books on bookshelves. But they were bigger ones and they were just all up the walls. Nowhere have I seen that in the world since.

Joy- Wow, that’s quite a picture. I can imagine [that you’ve never seen that].

Ron- I don’t think they met safety codes with that but at the same time nobody seemed to care about anything. This was an exciting church. This was a church that was really both strong in evangelism and worship and probably a lot of things I didn’t see. But the one thing that I did see was the fact that they were poor. They were really, really poor. But poor does not stop you from getting to know God.

Charis- Wasn’t this the church also that during the offering they would put the offering bowls at the front and it was a joyful time to go and give what they didn’t have?

Ron-Oh, I forgot all about that. They thought that the highlight of the entire worship service wasn’t the wedding, wasn’t the singing, it wasn’t anything else, it was the offering time. They took whatever little bit they had and they would take it up to the front. Everything that they had saved, everything that they had found, everything that they had sold to find money to be able to give it on Sunday. And it was all for evangelism, it was all for feeding the poor, it was all for taking care of the downtrodden. And I’m thinking, the poor are taking care of the poor better than anybody else is! It was the most exciting time. Oh, this just came back to me! I remember in the offering, that there was this little old lady and she must have taken 10 minutes to go from her seat up to the front. She was on crutches and it was like two inches every minute sort of situation. They did the offering but then she kept on going up. When she finally got to the front to put in her little pennies or roubles[JB1] or whatever it is she was going to put in, the service stopped cold. And everybody knew she got to the front and she put in her offering in absolute silence and when she did it, everyone erupted in applause and the worship started up again and she went back to her seat. I was sort of like we’re waiting for grandma to get up to the front. That’s church. If you want to call it why do people go to church? I tell ya, that’s why I would go to church. Just to be with a group of people with those sorts of priorities.

Joy- Well, thank you, Ron! It was incredibly thrilling to hear about your adventures. ​“Ron’s Adventures,” the podcast that reminds us that following God does not have to be boring. Oh, and also that a fly in your cup is really the least of your concerns.

Ron- That’s right! Exactly!

[JB1]Does Empower use this spelling or rubles? Google has both.

Joy- But did you drink it?

Ron- No, not a bit, nothing. So we’re sitting there and people were sharing food with one another, there was some cheese that was going around. It was a free for all. This went on for three, four, or five hours, I forget how long the flight was. Then we were coming down in Abakan, Siberia and I still remember landing and we were landing in a storm. We found out when we landed that everyone had gone home from the terminal, they left the landing lights on on the runway but there was no one in the terminal. So when we were approaching, there was nobody in the tower. We were landing this way, probably up about 4,000 or 5,000 feet, the plane was getting buffeted around. Then all of a sudden, one of the panels, over about the front three or four rows, the ceiling tiles, it fell down on the passengers in the front two or three rows. It just plunked right on their heads and all the other passengers got up and lifted the panel and they were trying to fit it back into place. Well, you could see a bunch of cables up there, and wires, and here is this guy, and he’s just holding it there while we landed. So he’s not in his seat, but he’s standing there holding the panel up while we were landing in this pretty severe storm. So we land, get to the end of the runway and somebody must have been there because they had pushed over the steps so that we could get down. We get down (those of us that got off there…it was like a milk run) and we stood under the wing of the plane because it was just pouring cats and dogs. They threw our luggage down to us, the ones we had marked and we were standing there. Then they pointed to a hole in this fence, this chain-link fence so we had to go over to this hole and pull our luggage through and there were cars on the other side waiting for us, and our driver Igor was there waiting.

Joy- But that’s not his real name.

Ron- That was his real name, yes. I think half of Russia has that name. So Igor is there, we pulled our luggage through, we were drenched and we go and sit in the car. I remember sitting in the front seat and I had my camera bag in front of me, and all my luggage sort of at my feet, and I’m just crammed in there and we started off down the road in the pouring rain. So we’re going down the road and in those days in Russia, they didn’t use their headlights all the time and they didn’t use their windshield wipers. In fact, people would steal their windshield wipers off the cars because everything was so poor. So you always took your windshield wipers off and stored them in your glove compartment when you left your car. Well, he put the windshield wipers on but he didn’t want to wear out the headlights. So he drove without headlights until we approached an oncoming car, then he would turn them on at that moment while we passed and then turn them off again. It is the scariest thing, Joy, to be driving in a pouring rainstorm on dark roads without the lights on and then all of a sudden, he turns them on and the car is right in front of you and then he turns them off again. We probably went that way for half or three-quarters of an hour until we got to the hotel, got out at the hotel, and went to our rooms and spent that night recovering. Then in the morning, we went to a market. We were going to the church afterwards to meet pastors and everything, but they wanted to take us to the market. And the market in Abakan at that time was this huge flea market sort of thing and people would pull up with their cars and caravans and wagons etcetera, and you would walk around and be buying and bartering various things. I still remember guys walking around with swords with chunks of raw meat on it and you would buy your meat and they would have a bit of wax paper so you would grab your meat off the end of this sword and put it in your bag. They were selling shoes on the top of a car. They wouldn’t be totally pairs of shoes and the sizes were all off but you would find two shoes that you wanted, a red one and a blue one if they fit you, and you would buy those. I still remember they would sell dogs in this little area on the ground where they had made a fence around it and had various dogs that were being sold there.

Joy- As pets?

Ron‑I’m not going to answer that, I don’t know. I know in Asia it wouldn’t be for pets, it would probably be for supper but who knows there. Anyway, all these little stations were around and then all of a sudden, I heard singing. I recognized the melody, these were Christian songs and it was from the church that we were going to in Abakan. It was the young people and they had taken an old truck, it was a truck but it sure didn’t look like it anymore, and they had made it so that they could cut down the side, lay the side of the box down and prop it up so they could make it a stage. They took it around to various locals and they would do singing and evangelism and all sorts of outreach, drama, and everything of that nature. So the young people are out there singing and there were dancers in the front. It was quite something to see. So I stood over in the distance and I had my translator from the church there. He spoke English rather well and I would ask him questions about this and that and why are they doing this and he would answer. Then I asked this one question. All the girls, very nice young ladies, and they were dancing but you could see that they were extremely thin and I mean their arms were like toothpicks and their legs were very slender and tiny. They were undernourished. Really undernourished. So they were dancing at the front and I said to the young pastor, ​“Boy, those girls are thin.” And he looked at me and he says, ​“Nobody has told you? Nobody has filled you in?” I said, ​“No,” so he says, ​“You don’t know what these young girls do?” And I said, ​“No.” He said, ​“The young people at the church get a bowl of food every day. That is their rations you might say. They take every other day’s allotment of food and give it to the poorest of the poor, the people that they are ministering to and telling about Jesus. So they will share their food and they are only living on 50 percent of their rations.” He says, ​“These girls will take their food and give it away to others. That’s why they’re so thin.” I looked at him and I had never heard anything like this before in my life, so I looked at him and said, ​“They give away half of their food?” And he looked at me and I still remember he said, ​“In Abakan Siberia, that is how you witness.” I went behind that truck and literally, I cried because I had never experienced anything quite like that before. I had seen all sorts of things but not that much dedication of the young people, that much concern over lost souls, that sort of sacrifice that was being lived out in order to tell people about Jesus. We went to the church the next day and I walked into the church and there was probably about 2,500 people in there, huge stage, this was a church that was raucous, it was exciting! The singing was loud, not only that but everybody participated and they were dancing. The pews were made of tree trunks and trees that had been laid sideways and cut then in half lengthwise and put little feet under them, so you were sitting on the flat part of half a tree. Those were all over the place and I was sitting up near the front as a guest and they were having the service and they had everything at the service, including a wedding. So they had a wedding and a young couple getting married right in the middle of the church service. So I remember sitting there and looking at this wedding and all of a sudden it came time for the rings and he didn’t have a ring for her. So he’s looking around and he’s supposed to have a ring and sort of whispering, ​“I don’t have a ring.” Well, everybody’s quiet and all of the sudden the Lord says, ​“Go give him your ring.” So I took off my ring that I had won in a contest from my previous employer and took it up on stage and I handed it to him. Well, 2,000 people were just in awe. All of a sudden he takes the ring, gives me the biggest hug, she gives me a hug, the congregation explodes like this is incredible and we went on with the worship service. Somewhere in Siberia right now is my ring.

Joy- I bet she’s still wearing it.

Ron- I have no doubt about that. The one part I want to get to before this story ends is that somewhere in the service I found my way out to this building, which was the Sunday School room, and it’s where all the kids would go out to and they were all probably six to eight years old, somewhere in that range, maybe four to six years old. So I go out into this house, and I walk into it and it was nothing like I’d ever seen before. You see, they didn’t have enough room for all the kids on one level, so what they did in this house was build shelves, like bookshelves, all the way up from the floor to the ceiling. They would put kids up on the shelves so they were all around the walls from floor to ceiling. Probably about four or five kids high all throughout. I walked into this room and was looking around and there were kids absolutely everywhere. I listened and they were doing their Bible verses, they were singing, they were so excited about coming to church and being part of Sunday School, and learning about Jesus. The teachers were the best in the world. Maybe they weren’t as mature in the Lord as a lot of us over here in the West are concerned but they loved these kids, they knew God, and they were going to talk to them about Jesus. They would just sit there and they would read them Bible stories and the kids were just glued to them. Not a movement! I know my grandchildren and they would be moving all over the place. Not these kids. These kids sat and they listened so quietly and attentively for a long period of time. Those are my recollections of that trip to Abakan, Siberia.

Joy- Okay, so really quickly, because my brain is having trouble envisioning the children on the walls. Were they in little cubby holes, were they hung on hooks?

Ron- These were like bookshelves, but only the seat was about 10 – 12 inches deep, and therefore, they were just put up there like books on bookshelves. But they were bigger ones and they were just all up the walls. Nowhere have I seen that in the world since.

Joy- Wow, that’s quite a picture. I can imagine [that you’ve never seen that].

Ron- I don’t think they met safety codes with that but at the same time nobody seemed to care about anything. This was an exciting church. This was a church that was really both strong in evangelism and worship and probably a lot of things I didn’t see. But the one thing that I did see was the fact that they were poor. They were really, really poor. But poor does not stop you from getting to know God.

Charis- Wasn’t this the church also that during the offering they would put the offering bowls at the front and it was a joyful time to go and give what they didn’t have?

Ron-Oh, I forgot all about that. They thought that the highlight of the entire worship service wasn’t the wedding, wasn’t the singing, it wasn’t anything else, it was the offering time. They took whatever little bit they had and they would take it up to the front. Everything that they had saved, everything that they had found, everything that they had sold to find money to be able to give it on Sunday. And it was all for evangelism, it was all for feeding the poor, it was all for taking care of the downtrodden. And I’m thinking, the poor are taking care of the poor better than anybody else is! It was the most exciting time. Oh, this just came back to me! I remember in the offering, that there was this little old lady and she must have taken 10 minutes to go from her seat up to the front. She was on crutches and it was like two inches every minute sort of situation. They did the offering but then she kept on going up. When she finally got to the front to put in her little pennies or roubles[JB1] or whatever it is she was going to put in, the service stopped cold. And everybody knew she got to the front and she put in her offering in absolute silence and when she did it, everyone erupted in applause and the worship started up again and she went back to her seat. I was sort of like we’re waiting for grandma to get up to the front. That’s church. If you want to call it why do people go to church? I tell ya, that’s why I would go to church. Just to be with a group of people with those sorts of priorities.

Joy- Well, thank you, Ron! It was incredibly thrilling to hear about your adventures. ​“Ron’s Adventures,” the podcast that reminds us that following God does not have to be boring. Oh, and also that a fly in your cup is really the least of your concerns.

Ron- That’s right! Exactly!

[JB1]Does Empower use this spelling or rubles? Google has both.