This past summer was an incredible experience. It was my first time overseas, and my two biggest fears going into it were what if I were to go alone and what if my baggage got lost.

After being accepted to go and as the time grew nearer to leave, I found out that I was the only one going over for the Siberia Reality program. I was a little nervous about this at first, but God totally gave me a peace about it.

Then after arriving in Moscow, for some reason my main bag did not make the flight over from Seattle. I remember watching the luggage being brought in and beginning to get anxious after about 10 minutes of not seeing my bag. I asked God, “What do I do if my bag doesn’t show up?” and He totally reassured me that He would take care of me.

Well, sure enough, my bag wasn’t on the flight and God took care of me! At this point I only had my Bible and my backpack of books. This did make customs easy to go through, though!

A week later, in Siberia, my bag arrived! This was a huge answer to prayer. God is so good! People were surprised that my bag made it. In Moscow when I first realized that it had been lost, a Russian lady at the airport told me, “Ah, it is Russia. I am sorry but you probably won’t get your bag back.”

This summer really showed me the value of life-style evangelism. For 70 years the Russian people have been told what to believe. They don’t need another group of people to come over and tell them to believe in Jesus. They need a group of people to come over and show them how to believe in Jesus.

I really saw this in the missionaries over there. They were building relationships with people of all backgrounds and sharing their lives with them. The Russian people can’t help but see Jesus and His love in the missionaries’ lives, to see that Jesus is real and not just another doctrine that someone is trying to push.

Ryan Samples graduated from Corban College (formerly Western Baptist College).