Housing questions

Hi all,
We're thinking about the future. In just over a year we'll be headed back to the US for our scheduled home assignment. With that in our sights, we've begun to look for housing near Eugene, Oregon, so that we can all be together. (Parker has not started applying for colleges yet but one possibility is University of Oregon in Eugene and another is George Fox near Portland).

As it turns out there is a Christian camp right in Eugene with housing available for international workers. We have our names in the hopper for one of the places there but it's not clear yet if there will be room for us.

Would you pray with us that this might work out? Thanks. It seems too perfect to not work but what looks good from one direction may not be that good.

Sunday Morning

We got up this morning...early enough to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee and some peace before the day got started.

Last night we agreed to leave our apartment at 9:15am. Well, at 8:45 the doorbell rang...we thought that maybe Galina decided not to come with us to church. I answered the door and there she stood, all ready to go. She said..."Kimmach~ka, I woke up early and was just siting around, waiting and couldn't wait any longer, so I here I am!" Yahoo, how encouraging is that? Jerry and I quickly finished getting ready for church and we were off.

We arrived early and sat, talking while we waited for the service to start. It was a great service, complete with a skit performed by the youth about God's perfect love for us. Galina stood with us trying to sing songs she didn't know and clapped her hands with everyone, seeming to take it all in. Then came the preaching time. The pastor of this church is one of the best we have heard anywhere.
She said that she liked the whole thing and will come back with us again.

Please remember Galina, that the words she heard would come to her mind throughout the week.

Rhubarb, the food that keeps on giving....

Today was a good day....
This afternoon our neighbor Marie called and invited us to her place for lunch. I had a few hours, so I quickly made another rhubarb custard kuchen...(you can never eat too much of a good thing)...
She fixed a feast of delicious, homemade Ukranian dishes.
We had a really good time of getting to know each other.

After we had been home a while, our good friend Galina, came by.
I made a pot of coffee and we ate some more of the rhubarb kuchen.
Last week we had invited her to come to church with us, but it didn't work out. She said she would come with us the next time. So, this evening we asked her if she would come with us tomorrow. She said ok. We are so happy. Keep us in mind, we are going together tomorrow, Sunday the 24th.

Tea Party Picnic

well, I made a custard kuchen with the rhubarb...and...it turned out perfectly. Ok, it was just about the best thing I have eaten for a while...(even if I say so myself.)

I went outside this afternoon to talk to my little grandma friends. I bought some green onions, chervil (an herb that you add to green borsh) and more rhubarb. I told them about the custard kuchen I made and that I wanted to share a piece with them. Halya asked me to bring some tea too. So, I went upstairs and gathered together a little tea party picnic.

As I was bringing down my little teapot of tea and bag of dessert dishes and forks, I thought to myself..."this may be just a bit too strange to do here". I wondered what they would think, but they seemed to be anxious to try what I made. So, I gave them each a piece of rhubarb pie and a cup of tea. Maybe it wasn't too strange. We had a little tea party picnic.

Pasha tells us that Ivan is feeling so well these days that he has gone to the store and runs errands. Praise God! one of these days we are going to get together with both of them.

I am trying to be a better friend to Halya.

Rhubarb

ok, this is really quite trivial, but...I just can't help it.

I was outside talking to our little grandma friends this afternoon. We were enjoying the beautiful weather here in Kiev, it has turned into a lovely spring...talking and laughing...when I looked over at one of the gals and what should I see but RHUBARB!!!

Ok, I told you it was trivial, but in Russia in all of the years we lived there, I never saw any.

I love rhubarb, it reminds me of wonderful times as a child at my Grandma's house. We would go with her and a tea cup full of sugar and pick a stalk of rhubarb. We would play house under a big weeping willow in the middle of her garden, all the while crunching on our rhubarb. I love rhubarb.

I told one of my friends, Halya, how excited I was about seeing the rhubarb, I am sure she thought I was a silly gal. She told me that she has some growing in her yard and would bring me a bunch tomorrow.

As we talked, she told me about how her husband has been dead for 20 years, her son loves to drink too much and how she is all alone.

I had prayed just this morning that God would show us how to go to the next level of friendship with her. I also had prayed that God would encourage me, I have been feeling down lately, kind of all alone here too.

Can God use rhubarb to encourage someone? Can He use rhubarb to inspire deeper conversation? Well, He is God after all and I will have to say a big, 'yes He can!'

I'll let you know what I make with it!!!

Beyond Pain

Hey, back again already. Yep, it’s some sort of a record.

We have new neighbors. Out of our kitchen window we have a ring-side seat to a nest of crows. There are four chicks, if you can still call them chicks; they’re adolescents in crow-years already, judging by their size.

It was a while back that I saw a murder (that’s what a crow ‘flock’ is called, in case you didn’t know) of crows out of our bedroom window. There were so many crows that they literally blocked the sky. It was a black, undulating cloud.

As I watched them I began to wonder about the character of crows and about the account of Elijah. Remember? God used crows to bring him food as he hid in the desert. But are crows really generous? Would they, by nature, be inclined to bring to food to something other than their big-mouthed, red-mouthed, babies?
The answer is in the nest, I think. It’s made of everything they could find. Most prominent are the electrical wires and strips of metal that they couldn’t quite weave into the nest and so hang down and swing in the wind: feathered dumpster divers, that’s what these birds are.
Now, what I’ve done is to substitute ‘circumstance’ for ‘crow’ in the account of Elijah. What this then tells me is that God can use the circumstances of this world- circumstances that, by nature, have no inclination to work for me- God can use those very circumstances to provide for me.

It would be a massively disappointing application of this truth to say that this means mainly material provision. In fact hardly any of us are in material need, but what about the need for encouragement, love, patience? How about all of those other non-material needs? Those are the things that get me, that cause pain day in and out.
And so, out of all of this I have to conclude that while God can use circumstances to provide for me, he doesn’t always…Why…?

Well…I don’t know…But in this I AM confident: The circumstance that he could use to make my life easier, but doesn't, is itself a circumstance he’s using to make me better in all the other circumstances in which I find myself.

In this I find freedom from pain: His promise to complete the work he’s started in me includes his promise to use whatever difficulty I face for an eternally valuable result.
Oh, by the way, crows don’t carry food in their beaks, or talons; they’re regurgitators- trust me, I’ve been observing.
Poor Elijah? No, and in the eternal picture not ‘Poor Me’ either.

Long range

Well, we're back.

I know, we said that two weeks ago in our last blog. To tell the whole truth I have to be in the mood to update the blog and we came back from our time in Russia needing a good un-wind before we got back to work. Finally, after some rest and a return to a schedule it feels like time to write again.

So, what's new...
We were back at the University again this week. It was good to see students and teachers that we know and it always feels good to be busy doing something measurable (numbers of hours and numbers of students) again. School is winding down for the year so our summer will be free-ish. The director is asking us to participate in an intensive program of English teaching so we'll see how that works out.
I got back to the sauna with the guys this week. Our Sunday afternoon sports times are done with the coming of summer heat so, needing some other way to keep contact with these guys, I suggested golf. (This idea came from meeting the golf pro, an American, at church on Sunday).
Today Sasha Mazarski, who owns two auto parts stores and has his afternoons free, went with me to the driving range. When I hit a couple 200+ yard drives I could see in his eyes a whole new level of respect for me, which might lend a little more credibilty to the things I say on other topics.
"We have to come back here with Yura", Sasha said. "Yes, let's do it!" was an easy reply from me. Yura is the guy who I originally met skiing and who invited me to the sauna the first time. The whole pile of guys I've met between sauna and Sunday sports have been a really decent, uh, pile. Even so Yura stands out for his ability to like and be likeable so I hope work will let him get away.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for continuing to look in even though we've let this whole blog thing go for so long.

The Road Home

Our coupe on the train with our stuff!

Our colleagues Leo, Roni and girls.

Dinner with our good friends the Fedotovs.

And...we're back.

There's nothing like a long time away from home to make coming home sweet. But that said, we had a good time in Russia, first with our CMA colleagues and then with our Russian friends.
After our Field Forum, which was, as it always is, a good time to reconnect with our co-workers, we spent one night with the Fedotovs in their home (which is also their church building) in Slavyansk-on-Kuban. One night we stayed at the camp, where we put in so much ministry time during our years in Russia, and were able to also meet with some pastors that we worked with in Novorossisk.
We returned to Krasnodar to gather more of our household goods from storage. We also prepared the rest of our things for travel to our home here in Kiev! Yippee! soon we will have all of our things here with us! While in K-town, we visited our Brazilian colleagues, Leo and Roni. It was very good to spend some time catching up with them. Their daughters missed Uncle "Jelly" and Aunt Kim. We also had the privilege of staying with Jeff, Rebecca and daughters.
A good trip in all.

We returned to Kiev on a 23 hour train, feeling like the Beverly Hillbillies with all of our extra luggage. It was somewhat relaxing on the train, we played ROOK and drank cup o soups. The Ukrainian Customs officer hassled us about our things, telling us that we'd probably have to get off the train with all of our bags so that they could check everything...This is code for "Get out your wallet and make me an offer to go away". The key here is not to get uppity but to just wait them out. In the end he was satisfied to look through our suitcases, make a few jokes about us bringing things like extension cords to Ukraine, and then he let us go without gratituties.

As we drove to our door, we saw our friend Pasha standing outside. We got our things in our apartment and hurried out to see her.
As you know, we have been praying for her husband Ivan for many weeks now, and we were anxious to hear how he was doing. We were VERY happy to hear that he is out of the hospital and feeling better than he's felt in a long time. Pasha said she went to an orthodox church and paid for them to read a prayer for him. This is common in the Orthodox world with the topics of prayers and the prices listed at the door of many churches. Anyway, he's better, which is great.

And that's about it.
Thanks for reading along with us.