Kathie and I were privileged to serve as part of a six-member Salvation Army pioneer officer team in Russia, immediately following Perestroika- they were busy, heady and often difficult times.
One of our favorite activities, once we’d moved on to re-found the SA in Moscow a month earlier, was participating in or leading the Sunday evening devotions at the USA Embassy, a gated community in the center of Moscow with high walls protecting it. A group of some 35-40 expats, mostly Americans living in, or visiting Moscow, would meet to worship each Sunday evening. The congregation included several familiar faces, including the Bowers, an American Baptist couple, both members of the Embassy staff and regular participants in our Salvation Army services. Mrs. Joan Bowers served as our pianist during our early start-up period and Ron as a Sunday school teacher.
Visitors were always found in our small assembly and one Sunday in late December there were five others in our fellowship in uniform, USA military officers visiting our evening service. All five belonged to the Association of Christian Military Fellowship. They had been active for several weeks in the Soviet Union visiting and seeking to enlist Russian military officers into their association. They were given the opportunity to share the Gospel with large groups of military personnel on various bases, an unheard of witness opportunity in the history of the Soviet military.
The spokesperson for the ACMF shared the association's history and make-up.... AMCF
The AMCF traces its origins to 1851 when a British cavalry officer, while serving in India, brought together officers and soldiers for Bible study and prayer.
From those gatherings, the British Officers’ Christian Union and the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Scripture Readers Association were formed. Military Christians in other European nations gradually began replicating those two groups as they saw the benefit of fellowship with their believing coworkers. By 1990 indigenous Christians in over 100 nations had formed MCFs.
Some are small, with only two or three Christians meeting together for encouragement; others have tens of thousands of members. All seek to live for Christ and have a positive effect on their nations as they live out their faith in Him while also serving their countries in the armed forces.
Over coffee at the Embassy canteen following the worship service they outlined their expansion plans.
The five USA military officers had learned that one of my SA related activities was lecturing weekly at the Russian Military Academy (Introduction to Social Services). They were eager to further their reach into the Russian military machine and thought I could be helpful in their gaining direct access to the Academy, the Russian equivalent of West Point in the US and the UK’s Sandhurst.
We arranged to have dinner that week, on December 24, at a typical Russian restaurant, a decade before any westernization and improvement in the decor or menu selections of Russkie Stolovayas (restaurants).
We arranged to have dinner that week, on December 24, at a typical Russian restaurant, a decade before any westernization and improvement in the decor or menu selections of Russkie Stolovayas (restaurants).
We entered the rowdy premises, smoke-filled enough to sting one’s eyes. The Russian people's staple libations, vodka, cognac, and champagne were flowing freely; the voices of the Russians boisterous as they sang and toasted each other. They’d begun celebrating the lead up to the new year, an important Russian event. And some, no doubt, were looking forward to celebrating Christmas Day which falls on January 7 in the Julian (Russian Orthodox) calendar, corresponding to December 25 in the Gregorian (western) calendar.
As we entered, five dressed in heavy well decorated USA military officer overcoats and two of us in Salvation Army Model C overcoats with red epaulets, We must have been a very strange sight indeed; the cold war had not yet thawed completely! Did more than one slightly blotto, intoxicated mind think that the long-threatened invasion by the USA was under way?
On entering, we stomped the snow off our boots, shook our hats and overcoats free of snow and presented them to a startled doorman. The celebrant's rowdiness became a hushed murmur and their glances apprehensive as they spied the dozens of service ribbons and medals.
As we were escorted to our table greetings of 'Hello Yankees' and 'Nazdtrovia', the Russians' courage boosted by the contents of glasses that were lifted and 'clinked' in our direction!
With menus distributed, drink orders taken, we bowed our heads in prayer…. it was our Christ-mass table, thousands of miles from our families, celebrating their Christmas Eve stateside.
As we waited for our meals to be prepared, our thoughts and conversation turned quite naturally to “home and family”.
Each military officer shared a brief overview of himself. As the conversation moved around the table, one officer shared that he was born and raised in Chicago, and went on to say that he became a Christian as a young boy. A ‘Salvation Army man’ had come to his home on Christmas Eve delivering a parcel of food and toys to him and his siblings. His father, he explained, "had abandoned the family and they were living on welfare. After passing out the Christmas gifts, the Salvation Army man asked my mother", he said, "if he might be allowed to read the Christmas story- we sat at our kitchen table as he read… and then he asked my sisters and me if we'd like to have Jesus living in our home and in our hearts- we knelt there in our tiny kitchen, and he prayed with us- and Jesus has been my Lord ever since".
I shared enthusiastically that I too was from Chicago, the north Clark Street area where many hundreds of Swedish-American immigrants had settled. “In fact I attended Lake View High School, near Wrigley Field.
"So did my sister," he exclaimed!
"So did my sister," he exclaimed!
I asked what year was the visit made to your home by the ‘Salvation Army man’, and he informed me that it was 1960. I asked him to describe the uniformed man who had visited his home and he shared, “He was tall, maybe in his late 30s, and he spoke English with an accent of some kind." "Could it have been a Swedish accent," I asked? And, at that moment, all of us at that Christmas table realized concurrently, in a tearful moment, that the man who had brought the gift of Jesus to that young boy, 40 years earlier on a Christmas Eve was my father. I shared that my father had been promoted to glory 9 years ago.
The re-gifting of the story of the birth of Jesus, the love of God, to that young boy was the catalyst that was now bringing the name of Jesus to thousands of Russian military men and women, former atheists, and agnostics. The Name above all other names was being re-gifted.
My father spoke from time to time throughout the years about my grandfather, reflecting on the sad ending to the Army’s unsuccessful campaign in early 20th century Russia. The Salvationist pioneers had brought the Christmas message to Russia, but The Salvation Army's presence was short lived…. My grandparents were the last SA officers to exit Moscow when the SA was proscribed.
I believe my father often pondered whether those early efforts by his father would ever find resolve and be reconciled with the scripture's command found in Matthew 28:19 (NIV). “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Here, in a noisy Moscow tavern, the resolution was celebrated on Christmas Eve – 1991.
We transported the team back to the embassy compound. Then it was straight to our quarters to prepare for the first Salvation Army Christmas service in more than seven decades.
Kathie (Ljungholm) Bearcroft and
Sven-Erik Ljungholm
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