Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

I should not expect to grab an iced-cold Dr. Pepper while we were in Moscow. That did not make me happy.

Soon, Dr. Ron Cottle arrived from Georgia. He was joined with another Pastor I knew from Albany, Georgia, Pastor Larry Cornett. A few other members of the group joined us, and we all boarded the plane from New York to Moscow. I had never been on a plane traveling that far in my life. It was starting to feel like forever before we would touch down. But before we landed in Moscow, we touched down in Helsinki, Finland. I found out this was where we would leave our Finnair flight and connect to the Russian airline, Aeroflot. While we were on the ground in Finland, backpacks were passed out to each of us on the trip, which probably numbered about twenty now. The backpacks were filled with Bibles transcribed into the Russian language. We were instructed to be secretive with these Bibles because Russia was still basically a closed country to the Gospel. As we waited to board our Aeroflot flight, I noticed a man I recognized that would be on the same flight as us. He was a famous Russian American comedian named Yakov Smirnoff. Yakov’s humor combined a life under Communism and how it related to life in America. He was famous for his phrase, “What a country,” referring to how good and amazing it was to be in America. I spoke with him, and we chatted for the remainder of the trip.

We boarded the plane to Moscow and traveled for about two hours before our arrival in what still was a

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