Sunday, 21 February 2010 23:06
Getting back into the swing of our lives here means there’s never a dull moment. Take tonight for example: Had you been a fly on the wall of our spare bedroom, you would have seen our family sprawled all over the floor in front of our rabbit-ears TV set, wildly cheering on the Russian women’s Olympic curling team as they trounced the Japanese 6-0. That’s a once-in-four-years’ level of excitement: That’s the pace of our lives here. Don’t try to keep up: you’ll only wear yourself out.
Seriously though, we are once again in the thick of things, ministry-wise.
This week, Tim drove a group of pastors on an overnight trip 7 hours to a nearby city (Russia is so vast that 7 hours really is “nearby.”) They went to confer with church leaders there about registering a church in the city of WCSTNBIIASA. WCSTNBIIASA stands for “We Can’t Say the Name Because It’s in a Sensitive Area:” sensitive because of both Muslim-Christian hostilities, and also because of the raft of political tensions that abound these-a-days where Russia borders Central Asia. (I won’t go into the whys and wherefores of “registering a church” here. Believe me, it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds, unless you happen to be unregistered and therefore in danger of having your church dissolved.)
Tim got home around midnight on Saturday, long after I’d gone to bed. Imagine my pleasure and surprise then, when I went downstairs early Saturday morning, and discovered a pair of wooly [unidentified] animal hides and these two hats airing out on the backs of my kitchen chairs:
They look prettier than they smell. Try recalling the last time you were in a stable, or a sheep barn, or a pen of goats. Now imagine that odor in your kitchen and ask yourself how you like it. It’s nicer when it’s outside, isn’t it? After this picture, our hair smelled like goat for the next 24 hours. Still, it’s not every day that you get to own a Georgian-style fur hat, and they do make fun souvenirs. Tim thinks the white one would look nice if we dyed it red and blue and wore it to a New York Giants’ football game.
This week, I’ll be meeting with the principal of a local private school to discuss plans for running an English camp this summer. Native English speakers who can teach continue to have plenty of open doors here. You only have to travel outside America a short time to realize what a hot commodity English is the world over. More and more it’s becoming a universal language: certainly it’s already that in the business sphere. I suppose it’s the Latin of a thousand years ago. Everyone who wants to succeed in business wants to learn English. In any case, it’s certainly been and continues to be a key for opening doors that would otherwise be closed to us. In March, we hope to start an English club in our home for local university students. Pray for us as we start these two projects, that they’ll be fruitful and that all the details would work out as God wants them to.
One more thing to pray for: You know we are part of a small church (50 or so people), the majority of which are young families. These people are extremely poor. I can hardly think of one family in our church that isn’t in constant, often dire financial need. Not a Sunday goes by that someone—often more than one person—doesn’t ask us for money. They need it for medicine, for personal debts, for car repairs, for emergencies, for groceries. Once in awhile the request seems frivolous to us, but on the whole these are real, serious needs that people have. We don’t have ministry funds allotted for this type of thing, so we can only say yes to a certain number of people each month. It’s very hard to say no. What I’m asking is that you’ll pray for your struggling brothers and sisters here in Russia. Don’t forget that they’re your family.
We know that you’re faithful to pray for us, and we’re grateful for it. Please keep at it as we start laying the foundation for the work ahead of us this year!
