Dr. Brueck's 12th Siberian Diary Day

This the 12th daily entry in Dr. Brueck's Siberian trip.

July 8^th 2008

We spent another day at Ludmilla's house; her husband who was short with silver teeth in his mouth came up and started to talk to me in German. As it turns out he was a tour guide for Germans coming to Siberia. It was kind of refreshing and nice to talk to him in German and we shared some stories. It was really enjoyable. It was a common ground and it was nice.

The second day was quite busy, we probably saw twice as many people and it was nonstop. As I was sitting there towards the lunch hour I started to smell this aroma in the air and I wasn’t quite sure what it was and it wasn’t appealing to me but told Masha who was working with me as a translator that I had to go to the bathroom, so I went through the kitchen and out to the outhouse.

As I passed the kitchen I was looking at the stove and there was an iron cast skillet on it with 3 little tiny fish in it, heads, eyes, tails and all. Needless to say this did not appeal to me for the lunch hour. I later talked to Stacy and apparently these fish were caught in the Tashtyp River and had been sitting out for a couple of days and Ludmilla thought it was time to cook them.

Needless to say I came up with an excuse and I don’t remember what it was but I ate some bread and had some coffee. I got back to the hotel that night around 6:15 or so and we were supposed to have Ludmilla's son Sergai come over. Grisha said he would stay at the hotel and wait for him and I went on to Wolfgang's for dinner.

Apparently things changed and Sergai came to the house to speak with me. Sergai is Ludmilla's youngest son. He is 32 and is an alcoholic. We talked for about an hour and 15 minutes and I tried to reason with him and give him hope and we prayed.

Apparently he was in the Russian army during the Georgian/Chechnian war and apparently it was quite common for the soldiers to drink till the point of oblivion. He worked in the city government in Tashtyp and worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off so he would drink.

After speaking with Sergai, the older son, Andres came in to speak with me, he was 37 and had a job working in the government as well; he was married and had a 12 year old daughter.

Apparently something traumatic happened to him when he was a young man and he would not speak to anybody but in talking with him I was able to find out that something terrible happened to him between the ages of 10 and 18 and even though he never fessed up to me what it was I suspect that he may have been abused as a young boy.

We had a very thought provoking session and tears were shared and hugs were shared and we concluded with some prayers.

At this point in time it was about 10:15 and as I went downstairs from the study. Judit asked if I wanted dinner and I told her I was just too tired and emotionally exhausted so I walked back to the hotel to try and go to bed.

The next day I found out that after I had left Ludmilla, her sons, Wolfgang and the daughter-in-law all went back to Andres’ house and they had a wonderful session and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior so it was a heartfelt wonderful day and ended very happily.