Oh, I love your boots! Where did you get them?
“These are my Siberian reindeer boots, and I purchased them in Siberia.” Comments from total strangers initiate conversations when they notice my footwear.
The winter ritual of pulling out my stored boots awakens within me the memory of a mysterious land far, far away. Never did I imagine that helping to fulfill the Great Commission would take me halfway around the globe to a portion of geography shrouded in mystique. But on several occasions, from our home in Budapest, we had the privilege to visit our missionary leaders in Siberian cities with names like Irkutsk, Perm, and Krasnoyarsk.
To westerners, the thought of Siberia conjures up horrors against humanity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, gulags, work camps, frigid temperatures, and starvation. Sadly these descriptions are every bit real as statistics overwhelm comprehension for the numbers of people who suffered severely at the hands of a brutal regime.
In fact, one of our Russian friends recounted to us the personal story of both his father and grandfather who were exiled to a gulag in Siberia for preaching the Gospel. Today, this beloved saint represents the first generation in his family to be able to freely share the Gospel.
Other colleagues related stories of prisoners suffering transport for countless days in boxcars. Once they reached the middle of Siberia, they were tossed from the boxcar and given an axe and a shovel. These primitive tools became their only hope of survival in the subzero temperatures of this cruel terrain. A rare few survived, and lived to tell the story. Others did not. But their legacy lives on in the citizenry populating the late twentieth century Siberia which I visited.
Today’s men and women are the descendants of thousands of Christ followers banished there decades ago; there are also children and grandchildren of the political dissidents and intelligentsia, even the artistically gifted, who suffered in Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Overall, modern day Siberia is home to a population of bright, beautiful, hospitable people. They are wonderful!
This photo shows my intrigue with Siberia’s Lake Baikal, “the world’s most voluminous and deepest body of freshwater”, where freight loads supposedly drive across in winter over the ten foot thick ice.
Warm conversation with my friend offset the bitterly cold temperatures at an outdoor market.
