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Rick and Natasha are as unlikely a couple as you’d ever want to meet. She’s a big-town girl from Izhevsk, Russia. He’s a small-town boy from Amherst, Virginia. In Rick’s words: “She’s young and pretty; I am older and have a good face for radio.” But what they have in common has led them on an incredible journey.

Rick grew up in a loving, yet legalistic, church that had more don’ts than Lynchburg has restaurants. Natasha grew up as a Communist Pioneer, believing “Grandpa Lenin” had all the answers for the world. Although the church Rick attended was legalistic, he still heard the good news about Jesus. And who knows—maybe because of the legalism, the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers sounded really good to him.

It wasn’t until Rick attended a new church called Blue Ridge Community Church that he really felt challenged in his faith and excited about going to church. Very soon he was directing and acting in BRCC dramas and growing in the new freedom he found in Christ. (It was about that time that Natasha was starting high school.)

One day Pastor Woody invited Rick to be part of a short-term missions team to Russia. Woody knew that Rick was about the most anti-missions persons he’d ever met. What Woody didn’t know was that Rick, a teacher, had been considering a trip to Russia during his summer break. What Woody offered was a free trip to where Rick wanted to go anyway!

Despite that less-than-spiritual start, Rick fell in love with the Russian people during that short trip. So the next summer, he went back again as a part of a PIONEERS summer missions team. And the next summer he went back again. That clinched it. Rick left his 18 years as a teacher behind and went into full-time missions with PIONEERS in Izhevsk, Russia.

About the time Rick went on his short-term trip to Russia, Natasha was attending a Bible study in English led by a missionary. She did not attend in order to learn about God or the Bible; she just wanted to get some English practice. But as she listened, she found herself hearing less of how things were said and more of the actual message itself: that Jesus Christ offered a way out of the mess we’re in. Not through politics and world revolution, but a spiritual revolution that changes us from the inside out.

So a few years before Rick went to Russia full-time, Natasha accepted Christ. A year or so later, she started working in the PIONEERS office in Izhevsk and that’s where they first met.

Years later, Rick and Natasha figured out that they were more than just friends. After a civil ceremony in Russia and a big, over-the-top wedding celebration that BRCC gave them in Lynchburg, the couple settled in to working in Glazov, an industrial city with one of the highest cancer rates in Russia. And that’s bad.

What’s good is that they were able to work on a church there that is now a full-fledged church and, among other things, work on projects such as a Christian puppet show for kids, a humanitarian aid project for Christians called Breadline of Love, and a partnership with Campus Crusade to follow up Crusade’s showing of the Jesus film with Bible studies led by trained Russian workers.

Later, at the direction of PIONEERS, the two went to Bible school in Krasnodar, Russia, and after that, Kazan, Tatarstan, where Rick had a day job as an assistant professor of English, teaching American Studies and Drama, and an evening job working with a young pastor as well as trying to get two Christian associations to work together.

Natasha worked in women’s ministry, starting the first women’s conference ever held in Tatarstan. She did that on top of trying to keep Rick straight, which by itself would be a full-time job for most people.

Rick was not allowed to return to Russia since the government considered his activities there a “danger to Russia.” Now Rick and Natasha work in Montenegro, the youngest country in the world. Rick teaches essay writing at the University of Montenegro, and Natasha and Rick both work in their Montenegrin crafts business, Golden Hands. The plan is to use the business as an outreach tool as well as to provide extra income to the small number of Christians in the country.

Right now there are just three evangelical churches in the whole country. Rick and Natasha have a dream of seeing ten church plants started in the next five years.

It’s been a pretty incredible journey for Rick and Natasha so far. But in some ways, they feel like the journey has only just begun.