John White - Developing Church Leadership in the Russian Speaking World DCU, Prospect Ilicha 106-A, Donetsk 83059, UKRAINE May 2006 011-38050-567-6550 | jwhite@alumni.princeton.edu | http://www.marucheck.net/jw
Well, I’ve managed to keep myself so busy the last few months that I haven’t had the time to write you—I sincerely apologize. Since I last wrote you, I’ve moved to an apartment on DCU’s campus, gone on a WorldVenture team retreat to Poland, traveled to the States for a month as DCU President Rybikov’s translator, and managed to almost finish teaching two more classes. I guess it’s finally time to settle down and share.
Even with all of the traveling I’ve done, my favorite moments have been times when I’ve been teaching. This year, I’m doing all of my teaching in Russian, and even though it’s often humbling, I feel like I have a much closer connection with my students.
This last semester, I’ve been teaching Introduction to Missions and Missions Seminar classes. In my Introduction class to first-year students, often the best part of the class is teaching about different missionaries in history. One of my students, Sasha, said that she was so interested in reading a book on Amy Carmichael (a missionary to India who worked with orphans) that she read the whole book in one day. She said that she had never done that before in her life, and I said that I hoped it wouldn’t be the last time! She is really seeking God on how He might use her as a missionary.
My Seminar class is for graduating students, and they have to write 15-20 page course papers on various topics associated with missions. This year, I covered a number of new topics in the class, including globalization, nationalism, missions and politics, and the place of suffering and spirituality.
I just got papers from my students this last week, and am excited to read about such topics as Russian Orthodoxy and Missions, Nationalism and Missions, Medical Missions, the Dynamics of Mission Teams, and Christian Education in a Hindu Context. These students are able to write and think about so much more now than they could two years ago!
I guess if teaching moments are going to have a lasting impact, they need to be teachable moments as well—both for the students and the teacher! I’m learning a bit more about how to direct my students. I can see how books, movies, and ideas can lead them to try new things and think differently. This new generation has little memory of communism and is used to receiving floods of new information from both East and West. How can they piece together, from amidst all of the ways life is changing, God’s will for their lives?
I think my most teachable moments come when I realize that ultimately, I can’t tell them everything they need to know or everything they should do. I must trust God to lead them. I would ask you to pray for our students with me—these are such times of change and instability here. Yet they are times of opportunity as well. Please pray that God would raise up this generation to be light for a dark world.
In Him,
John