Our team arrived on time on Saturday evening and with all their luggage! Praise the Lord! Everyone was in good health and ready and excited to see the sites of St. Petersburg. As our tradition, after checking into the hotel we all strolled down to the Mouse Café to eat before going to sleep after being up and traveling for 30 hours.Sunday began with a breakfast buffet in the hotel and then a bus ride to the Lomonosov Baptist Church for services that began at 11am. Pastor Andre and his church of about 30 members have done a lot to the facility since our last visit. Their sanctuary is complete,
brightly lit and they have fully remolded this structure built in 1892. Other parts of the building are at different stages including the heaters on the wall in the kitchen. They have been there for 3 years, but it will take 38 pages of documents to get approval to hook them up! The rules keep changing, so they have just continued to use the portable electric heaters.The service was beautiful with the choir singing familiar tunes, but of course in Russian. I could see all of us trying to remember the words as we would recognize the song. I was invited to share a little about why we were there and how we wanted to be an extension of their church as we serve in the local community. After the 2 hour service, we were greeted warmly by the members as we graciously tried to understand each other. You could tell Christ was in our midst.
They invited us for tea upstairs. They have a small room that has a small kitchen at the end and a long table with benches on either side. The room was about 64 degrees
as the electric heater hadn’t been turned on. However, it was a warm fellowship and the hot tea felt good on a cool Sunday afternoon. I can see why the Russians like hot tea so much! We had a short team meeting and discussed the things that we would do the following week. We were excited about the possibilities of what God could do!
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