Abundance in Siberia

  One of the most surprising elements to me of life in Siberia has been the food. After living in Russia for so many years, I thought that I had tried it all - from the sweet and juicy tomatoes of my wife's home in Rostov-on-Don to the cucumber-smelling korjushka (smelt) fish that swim down the Neva in St. Petersburg every spring. 

  

  But I was wrong.

  

  Even today as I was preparing to write this, I tried something new - "zelts." I had to look it up in the dictionary. "Headcheese." I had thought that the aspic-with-floating-meat that I had been eating (or, rather, usually avoiding) throughout the years was headcheese. Wrong again.

Berries in the market

 Thankfully, my learning about food here has not always been related to meat products. This summer, for example, I was in Tomsk at the height of berry season. Every day of the two weeks that I visited the congregation there, I sat down to an enormous bowl of fresh berries, gathered by the family of my host, Ella Romanovna. Honeysuckle. Wild strawberries. Garden strawberries. Raspberries. Gooseberries. The I-don't-know-how-their-names-are-translated berries. Usually with fresh country cream. My days got off to a slow start as I took my time feasting on such goodness. 

Ella's dacha. Strawberries
drying in the foreground. 

   It was there in those days that I was struck again by the fact that stereotypes about Siberia are (usually) quite far from reality. Despite the harsh winters, this is an amazing abundant land. And it was with joy that I had the opportunity last weekend to celebrate that abundance together, once again, with our congregations in the Tomsk parish.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. Ps. 145:15
  This is the verse of the week, the week of the church's annual Harvest Festival.

 Preaching in Anzhero-Suzhdesnk and Tomsk I spoke about God's abundant grace and about thankfulness as the lens through which we can interpret our life. Despite the fact that many of them face material hardship, they, too, could point to many ways that God was good to them. Even without a pastor of their own, they were thankful that they could together every week, to remind one another that all eyes look to the Lord. Despite a sense of being at a bit of a loss during this intermediate time, they meet to hear again that God gives growth in due season. To be reminded of God's abundance. Even in Siberia. It was reason to celebrate. 

   

A photo of those whom I caught after the meal we shared in
Anzhero-Suzhdensk during the Harvest Festival.