Safe in Russia

I Have arrived safely in Russia. It was an uneventful trip. Right now I am trying to get over jet-lag (it is an 11 hour time difference here) and organize a few things for the summer. Many of you know that Lucy and I recently sold our apartment in Yekaterinburg and are in the process of buying a new one in the city of Chelyabinsk Russia. There were some snafu's that have held up the process, I will be working through a lot of those issues on Thursday when I travel to Chelyabinsk (I am staying with friends in Yekaterinburg right now).

Today's agenda involves
• Getting a local sim card so that our cell phone will work.
• Getting my passport and visa registered.
• Figuring out how I can connect to the internet.
• Seeing old friends
• Trying not to fall asleep until 10:00 PM tonight
• Observing all the changes that have taken place in the past year. It is amazing how it seems like it can take forever to see change happen, and then tons of change comes along seemingly overnight.

Thanks for all your prayers.

Dan

And he's off...

Dan's plane should be in the air by now - he's flying overnight tonight to London, from there he'll fly to Frankfurt and finally to Ekaterinburg, arriving eary Sunday morning local time (around dinner time Saturday night here in Chicago).

It was harder to say goodbye than I would have expected - I think partly because the recent Air France crash brings up all my irrational fears about flying and because I just haven't gotten enough sleep lately so I'm extra emotional! Dan will spend the two weeks between now & when I arrive figuring out our schedule for the summer, reconnecting with church leaders in both Ekat. and Chelyabinsk, spending time with good friends from both churches and generally getting the "lay of the land". As many of you know, our apartment in Ekat. was just recently sold (yay!) and we now own an apartment we've never seen in Chelyabinsk, so Dan is hoping to get a chance to go and check that out, though we don't expect we'll be able to live in it at all over the summer. We might be able to help get it live-in ready for the fall so Pr. Ilya & his family can move in. We'll see! I have to finish up my last week of summer classes (Greek Exegesis) and then I make a quick trip to Nebraska to see my family over the 4th of July holiday (all of my siblings will be there -a highly unusual occurence!). I leave the evening of July 8th for Russia. Hopefully I'll be able to give you an update once Dan arrives & gets settled in. Thanks for praying!