This was a light day?

Friday, January 8, 2010 – Petrozavodsk, Russia – Republic of Karelia

Today was not as busy as others, but physically it seems to have taken its toll. As with most places in Russia, we walk almost everywhere we go, and the main section of Petrozavodsk is not very large. An average day consists of 3-4 miles of walking. Today, however, I think we put about double that amount under our feet. That is a lot of mileage under good circumstances, but add to that snowy and icy sidewalks and a couple of inches of new snow to that and the going is even rougher. Needless to say, tonight we are pretty worn out.

Temperatures here have also played a factor. This morning’s high of 14F quickly dropped and shortly after noon it was around 5F with wind chills below zero. Tomorrow’s highs are expected to be 3F.

We have spent the past couple of days collecting research on Petrozavodsk, the Republic of Karelia and the Karelian people. The task of the day was to shoot video of me in different places around town sharing that information. So, we did not cover a lot of new ground, but revisited a lot of familiar territory. That task will continue tomorrow as we ran out of sunlight faster than we wanted, and felt the temperatures dropping.

Of course, no day here seems to be without adventure and today was no different. Petrozavodsk is located on the shore of Europe’s second largest lake, Lake Onega. Right now the lake is covered with two feet of ice and another two feet of snow. What better conditions than to join the other ice fishermen on the lake? We trekked about 200 yards from the shoreline over the frozen surface and quickly struck up a friendship with Vladimir who allowed us to join him for a little bit. As we were talking we were able to pull a few small fish out of the ice and had a couple of others that got away. It was a strange experience to know that you were sitting in the middle of a lake and visions of the opening scene of “It’s A Wonderful Life” kept running through my head. However, it is an experience that I shall cherish and never forget.

More photos of Vladimir can bee seen here.

According to the sign on the door of the church that Tim found yesterday they were supposed to hold services tonight – a prayer meeting we think. We were hoping to make contact with the pastor and other church members so we could start working on a story about what God is doing in this part of Russia. However, when we arrived at 6:00pm tonight, the lights were off and the doors were locked. We are praying that was just because this week has been a holiday week that the doors were locked. I can’t imagine anything sadder than to find a church has had to close and lock their doors. To our knowledge, this is the only evangelical church in the area, and possibly the entire Republic.

Continue to pray for us as we work. We have more stand-ups and video of the city to shoot tomorrow. And since we are not used to the bitter cold it seems to be zapping our energy levels more than expected. Also pray for the church here. We hope the closed doors are not a permanent condition.

Blessings,

Marc