Interpreting - Part III

One of the surprises of our trip was running across a very interesting book in the church in Moscow - “To Siberia!” by Bishop Theofil Meyer. The book recounts Meyer's travels from 1925, when he made his way from Moscow to Baikal and beyond with the goal of strengthening the Lutheran church in the Soviet Union.I'll reflect more on Bishop Meyer's book in a later post, but here I'd like to share one quote that seems particularly appropriate for our journey:  “If everywhere in the world fellow believers of various nationalities  related to one another as well as they do here … then our Church would be much better and could contribute more significantly to [mutual understanding among] peoples.” Meyer was talking about a particular congregation, one which compared favorably with others that he visited. However, I think that his words reflect the experience of our delegation throughout all two weeks of travel and each of the 6 congregations we visited. I was thankful to be a part of it.

At the same time, I wasn't free of the work of translating! That was especially the case on our way from Vladivostok (where we were deposited by the train “The Ocean” on the morning of the 24th ) to Ussirisk and Arseniev. Once again, translation turned out to be as much cultural as linguistic  For example, I had to assure the terrified Americans sitting in the van that, yes, this was normal driving for Russia. At the same time, I was careful to selectively translate the irritated (to put it very mildly) exclamations of our small-city driver in big city traffic. Had I not been used to it by now, I might have even blushed. 

Sharing photos in Ussirisk. Oleg and his wife Olga in
the center; Ekaterina - far right.

At any rate, our first congregational visit in the Far East was to Ussirisk. Once again we visited a small congregation (St. Mary's) where most church events take place in the apartment. Like in Khabarovsk, there we saw a “family” type congregation with very impressive lay leaders, despite having no full-time pastor. As their lay preacher, Oleg, spoke of the situation of those living in the area, his words contained the mixture of hope (e.g., related to the economic prospects of the region as it developed ties with neighbors in Northeast Asia) with concern and uncertainty (related to the social/ political situation of the country) that we ran in to so frequently here. During our short visit, we experienced the warmth and hospitality Bishop Meyer knew so well almost a century before; our group came to the conclusion that the blinys (crepes) made by church council president Ekaterina win the prize for the best in Russia. 

KA-52 "Alligator," made in Arseniev

The trip to Arseniev was suprising in a number of ways. Perhaps I  had expected things to look and feel familiar since I know their pastor, Alexander, and a number of their lay leaders pretty well thanks to my work in education in the church. What I hadn't known, for example, was the degree to which Arseniev is surrounded by natural beauty. Areas of fertile soil made for rich farmland, while the forested, high-rising hills and quick-flowing rivers reminded me that we were now in the real wilderness. Going into the city, too, I could see that it would be different than the rest of the places we had visited. With the exception of Ussirisk, everywhere else that we had been had the status of a state capital; these other cities had recently done much to improve the quality of life of their residents, and it was clear that development was still going on. Not so with Arseniev. Here we were experiencing the “provinces,” and a depressed economic situation similar to what I had seen in certain parts of European Russia. Arseniev's situation is made even more complex by the fact that it is more or less a “mono-city,” i.e., a city based on a single factory. Arseniev's “Progress” factory makes helicopters, and the fortunes of everyone in town is based in one way or another on the number of helicopter orders the factory receives in a given year. Despite the more difficult economic situation, we were impressed by the warm and positive interactions we had in the city. 

Our evening there began there with an organ concert. We had arrived in the Vladivostok region during the “German Cultural Days” organized by Dean Brockmann. Many of the congregations in the  Far East use culture as a way of reaching out to new people, and the primary means of doing this is music. Arseniev has very little by way of cultural events, so an organ concert (by a German organist, held in a Soviet era hall that had clearly not seen renovations since the 70s or 80s) was a big deal. While Pastor Alexander had hoped for a better crowd, we were impressed both by the music and that so many people would come out on a weeknight to attend it.

Pastor Alexander Lapochenko with Bishop Mansholt

After the concert we went to the church, St. Luke's. Like our congregation in Novosibirsk, the church building is a private home that has been remodeled. Unlike Novosibirsk, Arseniev is a congregation that was founded with no tie to German-Russians. Here, too, we were met warmly by the congregation as our conversation stretched late into the evening. As someone in our group remarked later, in Arseniev it became especially clear how frequently we saw the people of this country striving toward beauty – for example, in their singing and renovations of their church. 

And speaking of renovations of the church building, in our final destination, Vladivostok, this was at the very center of our attention. St. Paul's there is the only historic Lutheran building (from the Urals to the Far East) currently in the possession of our church. Before being returned (in very poor condition) the building housed the Museum of the [Russian] Pacific Fleet. Besides commemorating 15 years from the date of the building's return, we also were celebrating 20 years of Dean Brockmann's ministry in the Far East. Our days in the city included concerts at the church, a city tour, and worship. To give you a sense of the guests represented at the anniversary celebration, the Gospel lesson on Sunday was read in Russian, German, English, Slovak, Finnish, Afrikaans, and Korean! Besides visiting St. Paul's and Dean Brockmann, we had a very good opportunity to meet with other guests, including ELCUSFE Bishop Otto Schaude.

On the 1st of October we were in Vladivostok's new airport for our trip back to our respective homes. There we were reminded one final time of the vast distances of the country; a mosaic in the terminal shows how far it is to various cities – Anadyr (in the very NE corner of Russia) – 3750 km. Tokyo was much closer (1500 km), and even Singapore (5000+) was nearer than Moscow, seven thousand km away. We covered those kilometers and saw much along the way. At the same time, of course, we still missed much more that we saw. That means that I can hope that these two weeks of interpreting will not be my last.

PS. I read a newspaper on my flight back to Novosibirsk. In it I stumbled across a number of articles that really stuck out. For example, I read about how the head of the Russian Orthodox, Patriarch Kirill, had just visited Vladivostok before we arrived, and how the turnout for his appearance was disappointingly small. I read about a festival of native peoples of Siberia and the Far East, a topic that came up frequently in the museums we visited. There was an article on helicopters from Arseniev, the quality of Russian airplanes, as well as a number of items on politics and corruption. As our trip came to a close, then, I received a small sign of confirmation that we had been talking about the right things as we traveled, and that we had all taken some steps the right way in the path of being interpreters of culture.