MOSCOW (BP)—For years, Valera Zhadan searched for someone to share his dream: a church for the Deaf in Moscow.

CENTRAL ASIA (BP)—Chalk races across a blackboard as Anne-Marie Bennett* struggles to keep pace with her students. The names are coming quickly now—Napoleon, Washington, Stalin. She has asked her class to list the world’s greatest leaders, and they have plenty of suggestions. But the 37-year-old Southern Baptist worker’s next question is more telling.

Uzbekistan (BP)—There was a time when Maksud’s* heart raced with each telephone ring. He recalls gripping the receiver and working up his courage to simply say “Allo” (hello). He felt exposed and at risk even behind the locked door of his Uzbekistan home.

KRASNODAR, Russia (BP)—Not everyone in Krasnodar, Russia, celebrated last September’s return of Catherine the Great to this Northern Caucasus city.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (BP)—It was late and the crowds had thinned out at the airport outside Harrisburg, Pa., except for a small group huddled at the far end of the arrival terminal. After two exhausting days of travel, months of preparation and a lifetime of hope, two brothers, along with their wives and children, had finally made it to their new home.

MOSCOW (BP)—How do you reach the 15 million souls of Moscow? One at a time.

First-century evangelists had a short life expectancy—and no shortage of enemies.

PAVLODAR, Kazakhstan (BP)—Roman Gopanchuk gestures with his left hand and leans forward to explain a Scripture passage to his home Bible study group in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan.

I grew up during the Cold War era, when political tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union dominated global diplomacy. Missile silos and bomb shelters reflected the paranoia of a massive military conflict between the communist bloc and the free world.

NIZHNIY NOVGOROD, Russia (BP)—Sitting on a plane headed for Russia, missions volunteer Sally Hinzie leans back in her seat and begins to feel sick to her stomach.

IZHEVSK, Russia (BP)—No father should have to bury a son.

IZHEVSK, Russia (BP)—Vasily Zagrebin sports the busted grin of a boxer who’s gone too many rounds: crooked teeth, broken nose, bent eye socket.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed two years later, the world changed. More than half a billion people across 12 time zones were freed from oppression—at least temporarily—in the 15 nations that emerged from the ashes of the communist superpower. This week, pray for the missionaries working to tell the story of Jesus in a volatile and sometimes chaotic region.

RICHMOND, Va. (IMB)—Why give through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO)?