The Russian mission trip sponsored by the “Let’s Start Talking” program has been canceled for this summer and postponed until next year due to an insufficient number of students. The mission trip was planned to take place this summer with the “Let’s Start Talking” program, a non-profit organization that takes people overseas into non-English speaking countries and provides them with a method for sharing their faith.
“We wanted to take a group of Harding students to Ukhta, Russia, specifically to help encourage the church,” Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences Dr. Paul Swann said. “We had a couple of students who actually signed up and went to the organization’s first meeting in Nashville, but they dropped out for whatever reason and they decided they couldn’t go so we are down to zero people now.”
The idea of going on a mission trip to Russia dates back to 1992 when Swann went to northern Russia with a group of other missionaries from Montgomery, Ala., to help establish the church there.
“I was just finishing up my master’s in religion from David Lipscomb University,” Swann said. “A friend of mine that I graduated college with had just returned from Ukraine, and he was just on fire with excitement so I wanted to go and do some mission work and decided to go along with him.”
Since 1992, Swann went to Russia five subsequent times until 1994 and he married one of his translators, Dr. Inna Swann, assistant professor of physical therapy, in 1993. The Swanns moved to the states after marriage and have not been able to go back to Russia since then, but his in-laws have continued the work in Russia for the past 20 years.
“One of the reasons I came (to Harding) is because I really wanted to get back into mission work,” Swann said. “I was pretty nervous, like anybody, to go to Russia for the first time. But once I went, what was so cool about it was that people were excited to hear about God and they were excited to hear about Jesus and willing to be baptized.”
According to Swann, the benefit for the church is to be encouraged to have people from another culture who are also Christians coming in to encourage them. For the students, it is also an encouragement to see Christians in other places they have never been before in their lives. It is a faith-builder on both sides.
“There is a vacuum where people are dying to hear about God,” Swann said. “They just couldn’t get enough knowledge. If you went somewhere where people wanted to hear what you had to say, you are excited to go back. And that’s what exactly happened.”
Despite the benefit, Swann said the travel distance and the cost could be deterrents to going since it is 10 hours to Moscow and several more hours to Ukhta by flight, and the train is 36 hours.
“The reality is we just don’t have any students who are truly interested in committing to raise the money and going for six weeks,” Swann said. “I pray that it will work out that we can take some Harding students next year to go there and encourage them and encourage the church.”
