“Our task force members helped us develop a research tool that would, hopefully, work cross-culturally to illicit the information we needed to gather. Ruth and I began planning the first of our research trips. Given the recent collapse of Communism in the U.S.S.R. and the other Eastern European nations and the world documented religious oppression in that part of the world for most of the 20th century, we concluded that Russia and some of its neighbors would be a logical and productive place to begin. …”~Nik Ripken