Book Excerpts
Chapter 1
A Little Girl Named Nasan
“You are insane to try and create a home for Chechen orphans,” the surly Russian soldier said. “We’re going to be putting a bullet through their heads in five years.”
That was the voice of evil in Chechnya during the ten years I ministered there, trying to create an island of hope in a land so filled with hate and violence that it was said that even the Devil blushed with embarrassment at the atrocities committed there. It was not the only such voice, and at times they seemed to call out from all directions.
I had often rumbled along Chechen streets escorted by armed personnel carriers, protection provided by my hosts, and I would stare out at the grey sky and burned-out buildings, and wonder why God’s Spirit had seemed to have departed this place. The capital, Grozny, was liked Paris in the minds of the people in this Northern Caucausus region, but it had become nothing more than a sarcophagus with broad avenues. I saw a whirlwind of ashes through the armored vehicle porthole once, and the furtive face of an elderly lady who was out seeking food. I recognized these as icons of the netherworld I was in, a place where corruption was the currency of the land and death was the oxygen that people breathed. I uttered a brief prayer, asking God to spare the old woman from the snipers.
I had not gone to Chechnya because it was the reasonable thing to do. Even those who cared most deeply about me said I must be crazy for my willingness to take the heat of that sin-scorched place. Of course, reason and sanity had nothing to do with it. The Lord had spoken to me about sharing the Gospel in Chechnya, a Muslim republic in Russia, and all the pros and cons boiled down to a matter of simple obedience to God’s will for my life.
And then, of course, there were the children. They were the ones caught in the vortex of madness in the region, where tribal fueds have been raging for millennia, and had been aggravated by Soviet-era interference. Russian president Vladimir Putin wanted to keep the “renegade” Chechen government under his control.
There was suffering for everyone in this parade of malignant regimes, but especially for the children. Up until this point I had only seen their anguished faces in magazines and on the nightly BBC news and I knew I needed to see conditions for myself in Chechnya. It was during my first attempt to get into the war zone that God spoke to me about our future ministry to Chechens. He spoke through a child, and her name was Nasan.
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Chapter 5
Christmas In Hell
The cold January air knifed through the car as we joined the convoy of trucks on the jammed M29 road heading towards Grozny, the same familiar route I had taken many times before. At the Kavkaz checkpoint we picked up a Russian military escort - an APC carrier- its crew nursing a couple of bottles of cheap vodka, which they considered human anti-freeze. One of the soldiers joked and asked, “Why are you Americans going to Grozny? Don’t you know you will be spending Christmas in Hell?”
The afternoon turned cold and gray as a light snow began to fall.The winter white somehow helped mask the ugly scars of war that blighted the landscape as we passed Samaski, Achoi Martan, Batumi, and the road leading to Vedeno in the mountains, each village carrying horrible memories of massacres. Chechen women stood by the road,some holding babies wrapped like Mexican burritos in blankets, some in bright clothes and high heeled boots, waiting in the snow for packed mini-buses to take them somewhere - anywhere.
Five young Chechen boys walked along the road selling home-refined petrol and cigarettes, their faces dirty with soot from kerosene fires they burned to keep warm. Idris stopped and bought some cigarettes from them. One boy wore a knit cap with the L.A. Lakers logo on it - in black and silver, a pirated copy. He didn’t care, it was warm.
Our trucks rolled slowly towards the next checkpoint. Two OMON guards left their guard shack and walked over to inspect our documents and trucks. After a few moments of chit-chat and the exchange of a few rubles, our vehicles pulled forward and began the familiar snake like weave through the final barriers of the maze.
Back onto the road, staring us in the face, was a huge, crudely painted sign with the words “Welcome to Hell” written in large red letters in English. The words of the soldier at the border hit me like a cold slap in the face. I realized that it was January 7, 2001, Russian Orthodox Christmas Day. His remark made sense- we were going to Hell on Christmas Day!
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