Impressed By The Christians In Russia

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30802, 14 July 1965, Page 2

Impressed By The Christians In Russia

About 80 per cent of the Russians were Christians at heart, including Mrs Khrushchev, said Mrs Louise Eggelston, leader of the visiting American Friendship Mission, in Christchurch last evening.

“I would like to see Christianity as vital in the United States as it is in the Soviet Union,” she said.

Because the Russian Christians were dominated by a powerful “minority group of nonChristians” they could not be aggressive about their faith.

“But I have never seen such devout people as I saw in Moscow, Leningrad and other cities in Soviet Russia,” said Mrs Eggleston.

The interdenominational Friendship Mission, which makes an extensive tour every year, visited the Soviet Union, Scandinavia and the Holy Land last year. All members wear crosses.

“People in Russia noticed our crosses and would come up to us in the streets and whisper: ‘I, too, am a Christian.’ Each city is only allowed one church, and the congregations are packed like sardines. Nine-tenths of them stand to make room for more worshippers. Through the church windows and doors you can see huge crowds standing outside listening. The people take turns at going inside the church on alternate Sundays,” she said. Two services are held on Sundays and two during the week. Each service lasts two hours in the Moscow Chureh, which is 90 per cent Baptist. “This church has 100,000 members, 10 full-time, paid ministers, and 90 volunteer ministers. There is undoubtedly a religious revival in Russia; it is simply soulstirring,” she said.

Mrs Khrushchev attended a meeting held in Moscow for the Friendship Mission last year and gave a talk. “It was one of the loveliest challenges I have heard.” Mrs Eggleston said.

In Poland there were some fine missions, but their services were held in back rooms, not in public places. The Christians there, she said, were afraid to profess their faith.

“The Church has been bypassed in Scandinavia,” she said. “Less than 5 per cent of the people ever enter a church, but new prayer groups are springing up there now.”

Fifty-four members of the Friendship Mission made a brief stop in Christchurch last evening. They will be joined by six more in Singapore and Thailand on this year’s tour of mission stations in the South Pacific. “We like to see for ourselves the needs of missionaries throughout the world and to help them as wit-

nesses for Christ. We know what we haye been doing is not enough,” she said. Mrs Eggleston, the daughter of a Methodist minister, is the founder of the mission and president of the Koinonia Foundation, a spiritual training centre dedicated to finding Christian technicians who will serve the United States Government in developing countries.

“We feel it is important that Americ-ns who do these jobs in other countries in the Peace Corps and other organisations, should have the right spiritual background,” she said. Mrs Eggleston says the mission is not a wealthy group. By Faith

“The whole enterprise runs on faith and the Lord kind of looks after us,” she said. All members of the travelling parties pay their own way.

Mrs Eggleston is a firm believer in spiritual healing—a believer from experience. Her own life was saved twice by prayer—once as a child dying of peritonitis and 36 years ago, when she was operated on for extensive cancer. No-one looked healthier or happier in Christchurch yesterday than Louise Eggleston from Norfolk, Virginia.

"I learnt that God is real and you can stake your life on Him,” she said.

The widow of a banker, Mrs Eggleston gives her full time to the mission. Her major work is training people how to be “a channel for God’s healing spirit,” she said.