WorldNetDaily 
By Scott Lively
My first ministry trip to Russia was in October of 2006. My wife and I flew to Vladivostok in the Russian far east by way of Seoul, South Korea, then were transported north by car along the roughly 400-mile easternmost Russian/Chinese border to Khabarovsk, where we boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway for a 22-hour train trip westward along northern border of China, which is defined by the Amur River. Our “sleeper” train car was an antique straight out of “Dr. Zhivago,” with beautifully hand-carved woodwork, red velvet curtains and an ornate silver samovar in the common area. There had been a few Soviet modifications, including a complete remodel of the bathroom in ugly utilitarian stainless steel, and our car’s stern and stocky matron could have played the formidable Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film “To Russia With Love.”
Our destination was the city of Blagoveshchensk on the north bank of the Amur, over which a well-used bridge connects Blago with Heihe, its Chinese counterpart on the south bank. Blago was the first stop in my year-long speaking tour of the former Soviet Union. Later we would take a second train trip â five days long â from Siberia to St. Petersburg, which reinforced my impression of Russia as very sparsely populated…
