Youth With A Mission Perm Молодежь с Миссией Пермь

Peace to you and the blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re very happy to be sharing with you what God is doing in our lives. During our last trip up north our team was able to visit six villages, three of them were somewhat large. 23 people traveled with us, most of them from our DTS school. We split our big group into three teams—one team went to the villages of Bondyoog and Pilva. The second team stayed and served in the village of Nyrob (the largest town in the north of the Perm Province), and showed the village “One Night with the King.” Rashid took a team of four people (three DTS students and one teacher from America) in our Russian Uazik jeep to the very northern edge of the Perm Province, 288 miles from the city of Perm. It took them 12 hours to travel the last 100 miles, and six hours just to go the last 24 miles! The roads were terrible (you may be asking, are they ever good?!) They were covered in snow, and it had not been plowed at all (that’s over a meter of snow.) By the time they got to the village, it was 11 o’clock at night, and there were no lights on anywhere. The team was really tired and didn’t really know what to do, and weren’t even sure if there was anyone left living in the village, or if it had become a ghost town. Rashid and two students went to look for a place to spend the night. As they began to walk around, they noticed that footpaths had recently been made in the snow. The village was inhabited! We found a house that looked occupied and called to see if anyone was home. Lots and lots and lots of dogs began to bark at us! Finally an elderly man named Simon came out and we asked if we could stay the night. Simon couldn’t figure out what was going on! What were these young people doing in his village, at the edge of the world where a truck comes only once a month to bring them mail and their pensions?! It turns out there are 7 men living in the village, and one elderly woman. At first Simon didn’t trust us, but he did find us a place to stay, in a small hut with no electricity (the electricity was turned off in the village years ago.) Ivan, the man who lived in the house where we stayed, gave us all the beds, blankets, and mattresses that he had, and then he himself put three stools together and laid across them for the night! In the morning we were able to talk more with them, to share and pray with them. We visited all the 8 villagers and they were eager to spend time with us. We gave them Bibles, and some bags of food to bless them. But the whole time I was worried because our Uazik’s engine’s starter broke on the way there, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I took the starter apart and tried to see what could be done. Soon all the men from the village gathered to help. They brought a horse to pull the car to get it started. Our muffler also broke on the way, as we got stuck in the snow 15 (!!!!!) times and had to shovel our way out. Praise God the horse was able to get the jeep started, and when we arrived back in Nyrob I replaced the starter. When we left the villagers all embraced us, and were so pleasantly surprised that we had come to bless them and give them hope, not take advantage of them (usually those who go so far into such villages come with the purpose of buying their goods like furs and other taiga foodstuff for much less than they’re worth, or just give them potatoes in exchange, and the villagers are helpless to change the situation.) When I asked if we could visit them again, they all said, “of course!”