A hot summer

It's Monday morning here in Ekaterinburg and Dan and I are taking stock of the weekend behind us and the week & a half ahead of us.

We are living with our friends Kostya & Luda while we're here in Ekaterinburg. Kostya owns a small Christian book store (that's housed in their church, though Christians from all over the region shop there since it's the only Christian bookstore around) and Luda stays home with their 2 small children, breeding and selling rabbits to earn some extra money for the family. Together with them we hosted a bbq get-together on Saturday for good friends from their church, Living Word Church. It was a great time to catch up on people's lives (and catch them up on ours).

One thing that has become clear in the short time we've been here is what a difficult year it has been for our friends here. Last winter was a very, very cold one and now, as some of you have heard, the summer is scorching hot. Russia is experiencing a terrible drought and fighting forest fires in several regions. While the worst fires are closer to Moscow (2 times zones to the west of us), yesterday and today a hazy smog and the smell of smoke have been hanging in the air here. One of our close friends, Masha, suffered a family tragedy a month ago when her childhood home burned to the ground (unrelated to the forest fires - the fire started in the neighbor's house). She is an architect without much work at the moment and so she has drawn up plans for a small house to be built in place of the home that burned. She is anxious to get it built before the winter so that her mother can have a safe, warm place to live. She will have to take out credit to pay for it and doesn't know where the money will come from to pay back the debt - she's trusting God will take care of them. Please pray for Masha and for many others who are affected by fires this summer.

The drought is also causing people to worry about the possibility of food shortages in the near future. Russia has recently banned exports of certain grains to guard against this but people are anticipating rising costs of food in an already expensive economy. A few friends here are buying up things like rice, flour and sugar in bulk to prepare for the winter ahead. Pray especially for those who don't have the resources to buy ahead and would be most hurt by food shortages - people like the couple who run the Family Rehabilitation Center we bought a refrigerator for last year. They feed dozens of street children on a small budget and any increase in cost would be difficult for their ministry.

Dan's sermon and our time with people at Living Word Church went well yesterday. Dan will write an update in the next day or two. We head south to the city of Chelyabinsk tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for reading and praying!

Lucy & Dan

We've arrived!

After a few delays and setbacks, Lucy and I have arrived safely in Russia. Immediately it feels like returning home; our brains have switched to Russian (I am always amazed how quickly I can begin to remember and understand what people are saying to me) and we have begun meeting up with old friends. This trip will be a shorter one than usual - only 14 days in Russia. I am sure it will feel rushed at the end, but for now Lucy and I are just enjoying the good feelings connected with having returned to our second home.

I (Dan) learned today that I will be preaching this Sunday in church. Please pray for the service, that God will inspire me and speak clearly through me, jet lag and language differences notwithstanding. Pray too for God's blessing on all the interactions we have with peple over the next two weeks. We want to make the most of our time here, especially investing in maintaining the strong friendships and ministry partnerships we have. Those are our two biggest requests at the moment.

Thank you once again to everyone who encouraged us to go and to all who remain faithful in supporting this ministry. We feel so privileged to get to be the "goers" and don't take for granted that you have made that possible by being "senders" - thank you!

God Bless

Dan & Lucy

Summer 2010

Welcome (back)! For those of you who are new to our blog, this is where we record our experiences, post pictures and give prayer updates while we are in Russia each summer. While you're here feel free to look back, check out the photos and read some stories from the last couple of years. The names and places we mention will become familiar if you drop by enough!

We hope you'll follow us this year and pray for us and our friends in Russia. We leave June 27th, arriving in Ekaterinburg, Russia on June 29th. While we're there we'll spend time with friends at Living Word Church in Ekaterinburg and Heaven's Open/Church of God in Chelyabinsk (the two churches have unified this year - more on that in a future post!). Our summers always involve camping, preaching, teaching, and lots of food and fun with our Russian friends.

Before we go, please pray:

• For generous gifts to come in (the money we raise not only pays our way but enables the churches we partner with to do a number of summer ministries they otherwise couldn't afford)
• For Dan and I as we prepare for the preaching/teaching we'll be doing
• For safe travels - and for me to be calm and unafraid (I *really* hate flying!)
• For wisdom as we decide how to spend our time and energy while we're there
• And thank God for giving us these wonderful, mutually encouraging relationships!
  

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.