No More Russian Mission Calls From America

My mom sent me an email the other day with a link to this article from Desert News. Basically, it states that the missionaries for the Church who have been called to serve in Russia will have to be reassigned due to new Russian visa restrictions and that there will be no further mission calls of Northern Americans to Russia.

I was devastated. I feel horrible that they are having problems getting missionaries in. Actually, they are fine getting in, but they can only stay for 90 days, then must leave for 90 days, if I read it right. I just feel so sad that it will be impossible (for the time being) for any friends or members of my family to have the experience of serving there. I feel bad that road blocks of getting into Russia are resurfacing. The Church has really struggled to become a registered religion, to become legal, and now this. I just feel really sad about it; there isn't really another word for it.

Peter helped me see the silver lining here though. Maybe it will be good for the church growth to have more locally called missionaries there. Maybe they understand well enough how the church runs and now they will surely get the opportunity to establish the church themselves. Hopefully it won't halt the work there; they will have a less-American crowd and maybe the Russian people will be more accepting of a message brought by missionaries from their own country or surrounding areas. I am interested to see what happens.

In the meantime, missionaries who are already in Russia will remain there for the duration of their missions. There is an Elder from Logandale serving in my mission, Russia Yekaterinburg. I wonder how or if this will affect his mission. I'm sure he'll be making some trips to Finland.

When I was in Russia, our visas lasted a whole year, so we only had to go to Finland once. Our group (about 8 Elders and myself) had some trouble and were not allowed back into Russia for a whole week. It seemed like a vacation because we weren't allowed to proselyte or do service of any kind. They didn't want us making waves with the Russian government, so we had to just sit around most of the time. I can't even imagine being banished from my mission for 90 days! No wonder the church just decided to give up on sending North American missionaries to Russia. The travel expenses alone must be costing them a fortune.

Anyway, I still have mixed feelings about this. I do have faith that the work will continue there, it is just hard to hear news like this. I know that the Church in Russia has been struggling to get a Stake since I was there, and I don't think they have one yet. I'm sure things like this will only make it harder, but the members there are strong and have handled opposition before. Hopefully we'll be able to get American missionaries back in there soon.