Photos!

A couple of large photo albums - complete with captions - from our time in Russia:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2168314&id=1315254&l=048c69ea76

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2166262&id=1315254&l=17526c7bac

We'll each post in the next week with our biggest impression / favorite moments of the summer. Thanks for following along & praying for us!

Blessings,
Lucy

Back Home!

We are back in America, adjusting to the time difference and trying to get caught up on life. Lucy and I will both be posting later with thoughts on how the summer went. A couple of quick updates in the meantime:

• On our last day in Russia, we got the final documents for our new apartment in the city of Chelyabinsk. Ilya and Anna Sluzin (the pastor and his wife who will be living in this apartment) are now busy putting in carpeting, floors, wallpaper, and new room doors. We are very thankful for God's help in moving this process along
• Lucy and I both spoke in Church last Sunday. It went well. I got to preach in the morning service, Lucy preached in the afternoon youth lead service.
• The last few days were spent packing, saying goodbyes, and praying with friends. Our last nights in both Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg were spent having "shashlik" (Russian barbeque) with old friends.
  
• Lucy and I both have lots to catch upon back home. Lucy with here studies, Dan with new ministries at church. Please pray that God will help us to get over bad colds and adjust to the change in time zones.

Tomorrow's plans

Dan and I are both still recovering from pretty bad colds. We're both sniffling less and coughing more now. Tomorrow is a long day at church - Dan will preach in the morning service (10am-noon) and then I will speak at the afternoon youth service (2-4pm). Services here tend to run longer and involve quite a bit more standing than services in America, which added to the fact that everything is in a second language makes for a tiring day when you're feeling under the weather. It's also our last Sunday in Russia this year, which is always a very bittersweet feeling.

As always, time has flown by. We have found that while we really missed having our own apartment to live in, it was also a gift to spend so much time with both Kostya & Luda, here in Ekaterinburg, and Ilya & Anya and their children in Chelyabinsk. Living for several weeks with people leads either to bonding or a severe case of getting on one another's nerves - or both. I hope - and trust - we had more of the former than the latter. Living with people also means you learn a lot more about the ins and outs of daily life in a different culture. I know much more about how Russians handle babies than I did before, for example, after living with Ilya & Anya last month. Or, perhaps I just know more about how Ilya & Anya handle their baby... which is, of course, the problem - distinguishing cultural norms from individual idiosyncrecies. Which should make you wonder... what do people here think is "normal" for Americans after spending so much time with Dan & Lucy!

I digress, though. Please pray that tomorrow goes well, our voices hold out, our translators understand us, and that we have enough energy to say our goodbyes well.

As an update - our documents for the new apartment should be in on Monday morning, according to our lawyer in Chelyabinsk. We pray there are no more mistakes! Ilya plans to travel to Ekaterinburg on Tuesday so that he and Dan can go to the notary and get a formal power of attorney for him. We leave very, very early Wednesday morning. As always, we're cutting it close!

Pictures are harder here in Ekaterinburg because our internet connection is slower. But many more will be posted on Facebook and here when we get home, if not before.

Thanks for praying!

Sunday at Heaven's Open Church

Praying for us as we head back to America.

The congregation praying for us.

With Blana after the service. When we first met Blana 2 years ago she was a non-believer with lots and lots of questions. Now not only has she become a Christian, several of her friends are now investigating God.


Pasha, Masha, Nadia & Edik man the "book store".

Pastors - Dan & Ilya

Edik's younger sister and a non-Christian friend who came to camp with us and was at church Sunday - her first ever church service, I believe.

Please pray...

Long story short - somewhere, someone has made another mistake and the documents we need to finalize our purchase of the apartment in Chelyabinsk are not yet finished. This is bad news because we need these documents before we can go to a notary and do a power of attorney for Ilya to take care of anything official relating to the apartment - which would include the electical work that needs to be done after the vandalism of the last couple of weeks and getting the building company to pay for some of the damage that was done while the apartment was still under their care. We are supposed to be headed back to Ekaterinburg any day now and then back to the States on the 12th (a week from Wednesday). Imagine if you will how much more of a headache it would be to try and do all of this from America - if even possible. So please pray that the documents would be completed in record time and with no more mistakes! Our current plan is to go back to Ekaterinburg and once Ilya has picked up the documents - hopefully Friday or Monday - he will come to us there.

More pictures tomorrow - there are plenty to share!

Some Stories From Russia

Weighed down by guilt……

Recently I (Dan) sat down with an old friend to catch up on life etc.... After a while the conversation took an unexpected turn. My friend began to talk about how guilt has shaped him as a person.

“I feel weighed down by Guilt. Sometimes it feels as if all my life I have had this incredible burden that presses down on me,” he said.

When I asked how this effected his life he responded. “It makes me doubt myself in all kinds of situations. My culture, my parents, my in-laws, everyone seems to criticize me on a regular basis. I don’t know what to do about it. It is not just me by the way, many of my friends feel the same way. It feels as if guilt is a big chain weighing everyone down.”

This man had been a Christian for well over 10 years, so I was surprised to hear this. I inquired about forgiveness from God and the freedom from guilt that Jesus brings into our lives, but he just looked at me dejectedly and said “forgiveness and freedom- those are just words to me.”

Based on this conversation I incorporated some teachings on guilt and freedom in Christ into one of my sermons this past week, repeating some of what my friend had said. Afterwards several other people come up to me and said that they could easily identify with those feelings - they feel the same way.

Talking to people about guilt and its influence is something that seems to keep popping up in my conversations. One thing I have learned is that I can never assume just because someone goes to church, reads their Bible, and prays along side of me, that they have experienced the freedom that comes with knowing Jesus. My friend is a mature Christian, yet he feels trapped. The Biblical truths that I shared with him had no magical effect, they did not free him immediately from the trappings of guilt. I am not sure exactly why. I am sure that the reasons are complex. One thing that he did emphasize is that these feelings began as a child, and have been reinforced over and over again all throughout his life, via most of the key relationships he has ever had.

Drunken Interruptions…

As Lucy mentioned earlier, last week I was preaching in church on spiritual warfare when a drunk man started to interrupt me by shouting out various questions. When, after being politely asked to stop he kept shouting out his questions, he was forcefully removed from the sanctuary. To be honest, I am not used to being heckled during one of my sermons. I was rattled by the scene and had a difficult time concentrating further as my thought kept going back to the man. This proved to be a good object lesson as to the creative ways that the devil wants to distract us from what God calls us to do. This was not a random person that wandered into the congregation. This is a man whose wife and children are church members and who were present. I felt for her and the shame that she endured throughout the rest of the service. The church was well aware of her situation, many had confronted this man in the past on how he treated/abused his family. At the end of the service the Pastor Ilya got up and said “I am not sure that we handled this the right way today. But I want you to know (and he turned to the wife) that we are your family, that we want to support you. We also want to love [this man] as Christ loves him. I do not know how we do that, but part of it has to do with what Dan spoke about today when he said that our battle is not against flesh and blood.” This was an example to us about how a congregation faces the struggles and pain that confront them, not sure how to go forward, but acknowledging that they must do it together rather than as individuals. It was also a vivid reminder that alcoholism is a real force for evil and destruction in this country.

Remaining hopeful…..

Lucy and I recently had a long conversation with Ilya and Anya over dinner that stretched into the evening. After discussing for quite awhile about the mistakes the church makes, Lucy asked us “So how do we remain hopeful about the church?” My first response was “Our hope is not in ourselves or the church, it is in Christ. He has a plan and we need to trust that it (his plan) is moving forward. Even if the Christian institutions that we help to form fail or disappear, that will never change the fact that lives were changed, people were saved by what Christ has already done through us.” This lead Ilya to comment on how recently he has noticed and felt deeply the brokenness and suffering around him; he has prayed “God why have you shown me all this brokenness if I can’t seem to do anything about it?” He felt the response he got from God was this: “I have called you to be a Pastor; to teach, equip, and train people to be Christian doctors, artists, musicians, school teachers, factory workers and business managers. So that my light can shine through them and I can heal the brokenness in the world.” Ilya went onto comment how God had helped to deepen his love for his congregation, these particular people who are the people God has chosen for him to shepherd and lead (regardless of whether he would have chosen them!).

Here are some ways you can join in on these conversations and pray:

• Pray that our friends will experience the freedom from guilt that Christ offers. Pray that God’s truth will overcome all of the false ideas that have been ingrained in their identities.
  
• Pray for the man who interrupted the sermon and for his family. Pray that God will invade this man’s life and free him from his addiction. Pray that his actions will not isolate this women and her children from the congregation but rather they would find the help and encouragement they need in this community. Pray that God will help the whole church understand how they can be a family for this women and her kids. Pray for healing and protection for this family - and for Russia - from the effects of alcoholism.
  
• Pray that God will strengthen Ilya and Anya to be shepherd’s for the people God has given them. Pray that God will use this small group of believers to have a huge healing effect on the city of Chelyabinsk.

Dan