The article is an experience of systematic commentary on diary entries made by the author of the article, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, during a long missionary trip to Yamal in 2015-2016. It is noted that modern Christian anthropology is a certain ensemble of interdisciplinary research, the methodological repertoire of which is still being established in Russia. After the Soviet historical period, when studies of the world of Christian life and culture often took place on positivist or atheistic grounds, hermeneutic corrections become relevant – attention to the researcher's encounters with the Christian tradition in its vital, "field" concreteness. These amendments, according to the author of the article, allow us to verify the already accumulated cognitive experience and contribute to solving practical issues that arise in the communities of the Russian Orthodox Church (about the organization of parish life, conscious catechism, superstitions and ritual purity, the speech sphere of worship, teleology of charitable activities, missionary work with young people and educated, but not church-educated people etc.). The open questions of the article are about the forms and practices of the Orthodox presence in modern Russia, current methodological approaches to the study of this presence in modern Orthodox philosophy, cultural anthropology and theological and anthropological research.