Sauna Day

Well, it's Sauna Day, like every Tuesday and I'm back here to continue some of the story: As you read below, Yura had said, last week, "I want to believe. How come you're not telling me?"
I told him, "Well, Yura, I did give you that book about how you can know God even exists and I do try to invite you over but you're always at your cabin." [The Russian word for 'cabin' is 'dacha']
"Oh, ok, well then we'll come over..."

And you already read my last entry about how they were all ready to come. Then Yura called me the next morning to say Luda was very sick, (she's better now) so they didn't come. That was supposed to be Wednesday. Yura and I played tennis on Friday and then they were headed to the dacha again.
So, bummer, they didn't come and though we made tentative plans for tomorrow night I don't know if they'll come.

Part of the reason I don't know if they'll come is Sasha.

Sasha is a sauna pal also, and probably Yura's best friend. He is an orthodox believer, which he interprets to mean he can live any way he wants to. Yet he does have quite an interest in spiritual things. I invited him to church Sunday and Kim and I met him at the metro stop then we walked to the church. We really like this church- good music and great preaching. I even told Sasha on the way there that the preacher is one of the best we've ever heard in any language, and that's saying something since we usually listen to him when he preaches the Ukrainian service; the fact that we still get a lot out of it shows what a good preacher he is.

Anyway, what we hoped for was an enthusiastic embracing of the message by Sasha but the opposite result seems to be what we got. So while I'm saying, "This guy is going to be great, Sasha!" He thought, "I don't like this guy".
Now, every person has their time and their path and God works in mysterious ways but in this case God will have to use Sasha's negative advertising at the sauna- which is what I expect to hear today -to get guys like Yura interested.

How can that work? I don't know. We're trying to trust and not be afraid, here.

Well, at least the good news is that Sasha JUST NOW called to confirm our sauna time and to confirm our pre-sauna tennis time [on the court I call "New York, New York", because if you can play there you can play anywhere] so I was glad to hear his voice and it didn't seem he'd blown me off as a hopeless fanatic because the preacher got a little fiery at the church I'd recommended.

We'll let you know what happens.