My Interview with a Christian Missionary to Siberia, Russia

There he sat in the chair across from me, an aging veteran of the Christian mission field. My hand shook with nervousness, coupled with excitement, as I fumbled my digital voice recorder, setting the mic sensitivity, adjusting the range. His worn, weathered hands rested on his knees, begging to tell the story of a lifetime of world travels. I had waited for this interview for nearly a month. The moment was finally here. I was supposed to be the professional, the expert interviewer. Yet he seemed the expert for the moment, the victor over all life had thrown at him.

"Do you mind if I record our conversation?" I asked.

"Not at all," replied Truett Dodd, eighty year-old missionary to Siberia, Russia.

He is the youngest of nine children, all of which were born and raised in southern Alabama. Truett's mother passed away in 1941 at age fifty-three, due to cancer of the liver. She was unable to walk for the last two years of her life.

"Dad used to drive her to church on Sundays and park the car next to one of the windows so she could hear the music and the preacher," Truett told me.

Truett's father passed way in 1963, at the age of seventy-five. "I remember kneeling around mom and dad's bed with my brothers and sisters and praying on our knees. That was just tradition." Truett was baptized in 1937 at the age of nine, but stated, "I wasn't a Christian at the time. I was a counterfeit for the next nineteen years." He attended one year of college in 1958 at Troy State University, located in Montgomery, AL.

"I took a music director position at the First Baptist Church of Semmes, Alabama," Truett said. "And I started a local plant nursery business, and began building it from the ground up."

On August 6, 1968, he suffered the first of many circumstances that would shake the foundations of his faith and forever alter the course and future of his life. This one came in the form of a house fire, one which destroyed all of his possessions. Prior to the house fire, Truett had been tithing at his new church. "I didn't understand how God could allow something like this to happen. After the fire, I learned not to tip God anymore." Truett's plant nursery business ran smoothly up to 1982, when he handed the business down to his son George. The years between 1982 and 1985 were, "discouraging and unhappy" times in Truett's life, when he was searching for meaning and purpose.

In 1986, Truett took a trip northward to Brentwood, TN to visit long-time friend Bob Norman. After hearing of Truett's inward struggles and questions, Norman suggested he contact the Baptist Southern Missions Core and consider a life of mission work.

"It felt like a ton of bricks was lifted off my back," he told me. "It was probably the first time I felt God really working in my life." Truett was fifty-seven at the time.

On December 23, 1986, the Mission Core sent Truett to Wells, Nevada. He spent the first two years of his new career here and founded a Baptist church, which continues to operate today. Truett went to New Mexico next, where he resided for the next four years, working primarily with the Navajo Indian community.

"They were a different type of people. Their drinking was terrible," Truett said. "It was hard to minister to them." Truett started more Baptist churches here and even reopened one which had previously been shut down.

In March of 1993, Truett left New Mexico, convinced he would, "retire and live on the beach." While driving to Mobile, Alabama, on a highway in the midst of Louisiana, camper trailer in tow behind his minivan, Truett recalls seeing the word "Russia" mysteriously appear on his windshield.

"I didn't know what it meant," he said, "It was just visible to my eyes."

Truett arrived home and attended a service at Mobile's Dauphin Way Baptist Church the following Sunday. Afterwards, he was approached in the lobby by friend and fellow minister Calvin Martin, who was holstering the question of Truett's life.

"Would you accompany myself and a team to Novosibirsk, Siberia?" The team was operating and funded under the banner of Campus Crusade (www.ccci.org). Their goal was to show the 1979 Jesus film to hundreds of local citizens. Originally distributed by Warner Brothers (www.warnerbros.com), the two-hour "Jesus" film remains the most retranslated film in motion picture history. (www.jesusfilm.org)

Truett agreed. The first two weeks in Novosibirsk saw several professions of faith from local citizens. At the end of the two weeks, the majority of Martin's team left for St. Petersburg determined to do some sightseeing. "I decided to stay in Novosibirsk," Truett said. "I couldn't really understand why God wanted somebody from south Alabama here in south Siberia. But I obeyed."

Deep within Siberia, Truett was immediately accepted by the people, Christian and non-Christian alike. "They always treated me good," he said. Truett began working in the city's urgency and regional hospitals, handing out Bibles and witnessing room to room. He spent an average of five hours in each hospital and brought much needed medical supplies to the doctors. He prayed with patients and spoke to families of sick patients.

While in one of the urgency hospitals, he encountered a fifteen year-old woman by the name of Irene. Irene had lost both her feet from frostbite. Truett was so intensely moved by her situation, he paid to fly her to America and have prostheses made for her legs. The prostheses company performed the procedure free of charge.

Truett's next ministry in Novosibirsk was with men's and women's prisons, the interiors of which he described as, "dark and morbid." He began to speak to inmates and hand out more Bibles. While working in the prisons, Truett was accompanied by a female translator named Oksana and her husband Taxter. Novosibirsk has a rich history of crime and violence. Truett recalled being mugged in the streets twice during his stay.

"The first time, they took my billfold," he told me, a look of fearful uncertainty in his eyes for the first time in the interview. "I was too scared to do anything, but it was really my fault. I shouldn't have been in that part of town."

Truett moved himself into public view and began distributing Bibles in the local flea markets, placing them in the hands of enthusiastic locals.

"They would literally run towards us to get a Bible," he said. "We gave out Bibles on buses, subways, trains, but we never had enough."

During this time, another of Truett's "best" translators, Ann, received Christ and subsequently led her mother to salvation. Before her conversion, Ann was a professing atheistic.

I asked Truett why he considered her to be his best translator.

"Many times it was thirty-five degrees below zero, but she never complained about anything."

On December 6, 1993, Truett faced his second unexpected hardship: a tumor.

"The doctor told me I'd be dead in twenty-four hours." Truett underwent a frightening, nerve-wracking surgery, performed by the hands of Russian doctors. It was a success. This was the first of two medical occurrences in his life. The second would come six years later in 1999. Truett had a heart attack and was forced to undergo his second surgery in Russia. When word of his open-heart surgery spread through the locals, television stations came from miles around to interview him.

One local reporter asked Truett, "How have you made it through this ordeal?"

"I trusted in God first, then the doctors."

In January of 2007, Truett moved his mission work into Omsk, Russia. He has spoken on several Russian high school and college campuses. He continues his work with local hospitals and flea market ministries. Truett has also began seeking out local drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Omsk. He visits them at least once a week, bringing supplies such as basketball nets, soccer balls, and other recreational materials for the residents to enjoy.

Omsk is also home to a Baptist college, supported by the Southern Baptist Ministries, where all students are granted free room and board. Pens, pencils, and other essential school supplies are all furnished through a joint relationship with the Russian Baptist Church. Truett speaks to hundreds of students and has seen several come to salvation.

The villages surrounding Omsk are laden with poor people who make no more than twenty to thirty dollars per month in American currency terms.

"I've never had a welcome like I had in Omsk," Truett said. "Omsk has been a real joy and I can't wait to go back." He has started two churches here and both continue to operate today. January 2008 will be Truett's fortieth trip to Omsk.

"I've been thinking about setting up my own motor home there," he said. "I'm going to go to Heaven from that motor home."

Truett's website can be found at www.comeandsee-goandtell.org.

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