Mami had studied Russian. Loved Dostoevsky. Would I be willing, she asked, to have a Dostoevsky book club with her? Mami could tell I was about to decline. “Could you help me by explaining all the biblical allusions in Dostoevsky? Could we learn the Bible through Dostoevsky?” I was pregnant and exhausted and soon going back to the States on home ministry assignment. It was the most reluctant Bible study-slash-Russian book club ever started!

But book club led to Moms and Kids club, and then Bible study and worship.

When new people in Bible study asked why Jesus had to die, Mami was quick to answer. Well, she said, we really have to start that discussion way back at the beginning. Then she proceeded to share of Creation, the Fall, and the need for a Savior.

She liked the church. Liked the Bible. She told her husband one night that she loved the Bible and thought she would probably read it every day, all her life. But, she said, she wouldn’t become a Christian. She and her husband agreed. It was just too crazy to think that what happened with a man 2000 years ago had any bearing on us today.

Three days after that conversation she was at a funeral. A Christian funeral. The pastor read a passage she was very familiar with. (One of Dostoevsky’s favorites!) Jesus went to Bethany to Mary and Martha after Lazarus died. Then the pastor quoted the verse she knew well, from John 11.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 

And that was her moment. ...