Russian Baptists take tough 2,480-mile journey to share gospel in Siberia

Baptists of Russia have embarked on an “evangelism tour” to Siberia.
The 2,480-mile journey began Feb. 10 in Hanti-Mansiisk, north of Tiumen in western Siberia, and ends March 22 in Moscow.
Planned by the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (RUECB), a member body of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), the journey has three main objectives:
4evangelism,
4visiting missionaries who are “living in very remote and [nearly inaccessible] locales” and
4making contacts “with many non-RUECB congregations of Baptist orientation.”
Dubbed “The Gospel for the Peoples of Siberia,” the tour covers treacherous terrain.
“The missionaries in the Far North can only be visited in the winter when the ground conditions are most stable. When again heading southward, the tundra will be replaced by the forests of the taiga,” wrote William Yoder, spokesman for the department for external church relations for the RUECB.
Extreme conditions
Leonid Kartavenko, RUECB’s director of financial services who is leading one leg of the tour, expects “the hardest driving conditions in the taiga,” as the “[r]oadless forests will demand [zigzag] driving on the southward journey.”
The six-week tour, which passes just below the Arctic Circle through some of the most extreme climatic conditions, is supported financially by local Baptists in Russia.
“Our sisters and brothers … wanted to do this by themselves. We are very pleased by that,” Kartavenko said.
Mikhail Zhdan, administrator of RUECB’s missions department, added, “Our people have noticed that these [programs] are needed. They will therefore be willing to make donations.”
And as far as finding volunteers, “people announce their readiness themselves and are willing to cover their own tour expenses,” he said.
This is the fourth evangelism tour planned by the RUECB. The last was a 9,000-mile bicycle tour in 2007 that began in Varel, Germany, May 13, and ended in Vladivostok, Russia, Sept. 2. Another bicycle tour is planned for early July from Krasnodar in the south via Moscow to Murmansk in the Far North.
The RUECB is Russia’s largest unified Protestant church, representing 80,000 adult members in 1,750 congregations and groups. Yuri Sipko, a vice president of the BWA, is RUECB president. (BWA)