Heart for the World with Terry and Barbi Franklin

"STORY LINKS" FROM SIBERIA 2005 MISSIONS OUTREACH DETAILS

Encounter with the Militia

After we had been in Ulan-Ude for about a week ministering in many villages and seeing the number of decisions for Christ steadily rise, Terry and I and the boys were on a high. The concerts, preaching, dramas, and other ministries were being very well accepted and very few were resisting the gospel message. But we had no idea what was going to hit us!

When we came to this area of Siberia, we knew it was the home of the largest statue of Lenin as well as the largest one of Buddha. But we didn't know that they had not gotten the memo that communism fell years ago. The militia still write their own rules in Ulan-Ude, and if they don't like you, you're in big trouble.

Well, the pastor that helped set up many of the meetings we were doing had been one of our students a few years ago at St. James Bible College in Kiev, Ukraine where we taught courses in Leadership, Worship, and Spiritual Warfare. This new pastor in Ulan Ude had a vibrant, growing church and had grown in favor with many people around this region of Siberia. He even made inroads to hold meetings on the local military base in their meeting hall on a weekly basis. His church's growth had hot gone without much warfare, though, including their newly constructed church building was burned to the ground just months after it had been completed.

Though there had been much fruit up to this point in our meetings, we had no idea what we were about to step into. This local Pastor had gotten advance permission from the head official to bring the team onto the military base and for us to present a concert in the same meeting hall the church had been coming to each week for the last 6 months.

As our bus transporting us and our team arrived at the military's entrance gate of the base, the guards looked at the passports and waved us through. We went right to the meeting hall to set up our sound system and prepare for our concert presentation.

Soon after set up began, one of the team members came running in saying "something is terribly wrong". It turned out that within about 5-10 minutes, we were told we must take all our things, get back on our bus and wait there. Soon a man came into the bus requesting all our passports.

As we saw our passports being driven away in a military vehicle, we knew we were in trouble. After 3 hours of negotiations and waiting in prayer on a very hot bus, several of the Russian Pastors and translators came back onto the bus. One of the military officials followed them on and told us each to sign something proving they had our passports. One by one he called our names and we obediently filed to the front of the bus to "sign-zee-papers"... We were then told to come back in two days to pick up our passports and pay a fine for being on their military base illegally.

This was disconcerting and untrue. We HAD gotten permission, and besides, the guards then let us in on the base. This smelled of extortion. We were threatened to no longer do ministry outside of the city of Ulan Ude while we were there and were then sent on our way. Well, we knew this was just a threat, and we had permission to go anywhere in Russia by our legal Visa's. But still, they had the power, because THEY had our passports. And there had even been talk of deportation.

After they let us leave the base, we continued on for the next couple days doing ministry everywhere we had planned, believing God would protect us from their unreasonable threats and that we would get our passports back when they said we could. Our team began each day with an early morning prayer time behind the hotel and continued to see many lives saved through our concerts and Gospel presentations.

Well, when a few days came and went, and it was finally time to get our passports back, we all went in the bus to the military headquarters to retrieve them. That's when it really became a major ordeal. Again, we were harassed and threatened by the officials that we had to stay within the Ulan-Ude city limits. We were also made to pay a hefty fee for entering their military base "illegally". This was clearly the enemy trying to scare us and stop us from doing what God had brought us so many miles to do.

After holding us for over 6 hours with interrogations and threats, making us sign papers that took hours to negotiate correct wording for, we each signed a several page document saying we had gone on their base illegally, though we had gotten permission to do so from "(named official)". This was the best we could do without being thrown in jail without our passports.

The military leader that was overseeing the whole process became very heated numerous times throughout our encounter that day. All the ministers and translators involved were in an amazing state of peace, maturity, and unity as was the rest of our team.

God gave us all the grace and wisdom to trust Him to take care of us. Even when the official yelled curses at us and said, "You Christians are... blankety, blankety, blank" (the translators didn't relay all the explitives and curses) and told us, "If you go outside this city, WE'LL FIND A WAY TO GET YOU!" no one on the team walked in fear. We all just kept ministering and seeing more and more come to Christ!

Every day after that, the official threatened our team, and every day, we saw more people saved in each village we visited. By the end, we saw well over 1200 people saved!

We knew at the time, and we know even more clearly now looking back, that when the enemy roars his threats, we just need to stand. This was unmistakably a spiritual battle in the heavenlies for peoples' souls, and satan didn't want to give these precious souls up to Jesus. But God had the victory, and we came home safe, revived, and surprisingly refreshed! We didn't even experience any jet lag! Praise God! He is so good!

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