Blessed by the Christ while in Russia
By Debbie Wood

From the October 5, 2015 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel

Recently, as I watched the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church through a live Internet feed, I was happily reminded of my trip to Scandinavia and Russia in the 1980s. On this trip, I met a tour director who expressed a great deal of tenderness and humility. These qualities were foreign to me, and I discovered that she was a student of Christian Science, which I knew nothing about.

During our group’s travel to Russia, she told me that The Mother Church in Boston was presenting a live videoconference throughout the world. She was so inspired that this global outreach was happening. Because Russia was “closed” at the time, however, the satellite transmission did not reach that country.

Throughout the trip, this new friend started to explain Christian Science to me. While in Russia, she showed me a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I opened the book and read one sentence, “The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by Mind’s mastery of the body” (p. 406). I completely turned my thought over to this statement and to the fact that divine Mind had total control of my being. I felt my thought yielding to this truth. It was on that day that I had a healing of extreme alcohol dependency.

For a few months prior to my trip, I had known I was in trouble with alcohol. I drank heavily every day and experienced blackouts. I felt the only thing that could help me was a Bible, but I did not have any idea where to purchase one. At this time, I remembered a small store in my area that sold religious items and felt I could get a Bible there. I had gone to visit the store but did not have the courage to go in. I later learned that this was a Christian Science Reading Room.

I bought my own copy of Science and Health after I returned home and became a serious student of Christian Science. My practice of Christian Science lapsed for a few years some time after this experience in Russia, and I did consume alcohol occasionally during this break. However, I knew that I truly had been healed of that desperate need to drink through reading a single line in Science and Health. I fully returned to my study of Christian Science about a year ago. I don’t drink at all, and I feel no urge to do so. I am back to studying Christian Science for good.

All those years ago, my tour director had been disappointed that she couldn’t participate in The Mother Church’s global satellite feed. But the Christ message is always present in human consciousness, and it did reach Russia—it reached me!
My heart overflows with gratitude for all that I have learned about God and the healings I’ve had through my study of this wonderful Science of the Christ, including healings of a knee injury, of difficult relationships, and of grief over the passing of loved ones.

I am grateful, too, for the technological advances of today, including the online version of TheChristian Science Monitor and the website christianscience.com. When asked about “modern material inventions,” Mrs. Eddy responded: “Oh, we cannot oppose them. They all tend to newer, finer, more etherealized ways of living. They seek the finer essences. They light the way to the Church of Christ. We use them, we make them our figures of speech. They are preparing the way for us” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 345).

With every global transmission of Christian Science, people all over the world are being reached, perhaps for the first time. I believe divine Love had a hand in this truth reaching me. And even though I’m from California, I like to say that I had to go to Russia to find Christian Science! For this discovery I will be forever grateful.
Debbie Wood
Chico, California, US