Bike trip – July 22 – Taishet town

Our bike expedition has never met such tests as yet. We can not agree that we move along a federal highway M53. There is no road. We move toward Irkutsk town. We see a lot of road signs along the “highway”. Speed limit here is 40 km/h. Next sigh – “overtaking is forbidden”.  Highway engineers perhaps joke. Our speed is 5 km/h. No drivers ever attempt to overtake other cars. Only bikers went forward straight to Taishet town.

The distance from Kansk and Taishet is 180 km. Taishet was founded in 1897 as a small village. It is located on the bank of the Taishetka River (right feeder of the Biriusa River). This is the hydronym from the Ket’s “ta”, which means “cold”, and “shet”, which means “river”.  Taishet became the town on the 20th of March 1938. Its population in 2000 was 42, 3 thousand people.

Rev. Sergey Tokarev, Pastor of a small local church met us at the entrance to the town. There are 22 members in Taishet church, and most of them are young people. The church there exists since 1938, when the first baptism was performed. Denis Bondar founded the church there. In 1948 he passed away to be with the Lord. A year after his death his church people received the notice addressed to him with the request to come to militia. They were very much surprised as their Pastor was “living” already in another place. They did not take the notice seriously. But 5 days after officers of home affairs came to the house of late brother Denis to make a house-check  To the question: “Where is your husband?” his widows Anastasia answered: “He does not live with us”. One of the offices said bewildered: “But Baptists do not divorce!”. Then Anastasia reminded them that her husband was with the Lord for more than a year. Some people who were present there in her house that day knew about the death of her husband. It remained a secret why officers came to arrest the passed-away person.

Drug addiction and alcoholism are two basic troubles in Taishet. The church of Evangelical Christians-Baptists has a rehab centre. Mrs. Helen V. Kovolenko, Mayor of the town is very much disposed toward Evangelical Christians and is grateful for the social work of the church.

We had evangelistic service downtown Taishet in the 22nd of July. We gave people  the NTs and the copies of the magazine “Faith and Life”. We gave kids the magazines “Path”, balloons and sweets.

The ECB church in Taishet was well-prepared for our visit. Christian are anxious about the life of their co citizens and used our opportunities for 100%! We thank you, dear Pastor Sergey, for your sensitivity and attention to us. God acts through such humble and simple people as you are!

P.S. Today is the 23rd of July. We got up at 4:30 local time (23:30 p.m. Moscow time). We congratulated Nona Batagova with her birthday and wet to Nizhneudinsk town. Local men warned us – there is no road. The lack of road, which we met on our way there was nothing in comparison with what expected us in the future.