Today and the Days Ahead

After much diligent preparation Thomas will be preaching today.  Should you happen to read this before 7 am EST or 6 am CST or 8 pm Saturday PST (did that catch everyone? and correctly?), then please pray for him.  Having not preached in Russian myself, I don’t completely understand the difficulties that Thomas faces as he prepares a sermon, but I can imagine the limitations that he feels when trying to express the beautiful truths of God’s Word in his second language.  God has greatly helped him every time in the past, and we pray for His continued help today.

So that’s today, what about the days ahead?

Tuesday evening Thomas will begin a 2-week trip to Siberia.  He will be meeting our field director Jim Capaldo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia before they start treking all over the place, far east of here.  Please pray for his safety, health, Russian abilities, sleep, and whatever else you might think would be helpful.  And please also pray for Isaiah and me as we stay behind.  I’m sure that we’ll find plenty to do to keep us busy, but we will really miss Thomas!

A couple days after Thomas gets back, we will probably have a guest from Siberia with us for a few days.  She is the director of InterAct Russia (which is actually not part of InterAct Ministries, but its own entity).  She is planning a trip to the States this fall, therefore she must apply in person at an American consulate.  There’s not an American consulate in Tuva where she lives, so she will be traveling to St. Petersburg.  At least, that’s the plan for now.

July 13 we are anticipating a very special treat!  Thomas’ older brother and his family (all 6 of them!) are coming for a 9 day visit!  We could not be more excited!  It really isn’t possible.  Even now, as I think about their arrival, I feel all sorts of happy, fluttery feelings inside.

As I said, they’ll be with us for 9 nine days, during which time we’ll whisk them around the city to see all the beautiful sites and to experience what life is like for us.  But we won’t make them go to a Russian lesson…I think.

After they leave us we’ll begin getting things ready for our own trip back to planet America.  Sometime around August 4 (depending on plane ticket prices) we’ll be flying the friendly skies towards NC and our traveling time around the US.  Look for more details to come soon about that trip.

So that’s what’s going on with us.  How are y’all doing?

Latest Update

The following is an update email we sent out a couple of days ago.  I thought I’d post it here for those who might not be on our email list.  

Greetings!
 


It’s been a while since we’ve sent out a general email update to everyone just filling you in on the details of our life.  I (Thomas) am writing this from the Siberian city of Novisibirsk, the third largest city in Russia.  Some of our InterAct team members are here, and my being here to visit them is now part of my responsibilities.
 
As always, there is so much to tell, and so little space to tell it.  On top of that, I’m sure all of you don’t just have endless hours to sit and read a miniature autobiography, so I’ll try to keep things brief, but clear.
 


PERSONAL LIFE:
 


Since January, things have been up and down for us, but our God never changes!  Before we left the States in January we found out that we were expecting.  But, sadly, about 9-10 weeks into the pregnancy we lost the baby.  And again, about a month ago we were excited again to learn that we were expecting once more.  But, sadly, we have lost this one too only about 4 weeks into the pregnancy.  While this has been tough for us, I can say honestly that the Lord is using this for his glory.  Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world.  The child in the womb is a “fetus” for most people, nothing more.  This has been a tremendous opportunity for us to testify to the value of human life, and the goodness of God through every trial.
 
Aside from the above we’ve had some relatively minor sniffles and coughs.  Isaiah had a mild urinary tract infection, his first in over a year and a half!  This is quite significant considering he had four the first four months we were in Russia.  Also, we are thankful to announce that he appears to no longer have fever seizures.  As some of you might know, in the past when he had UTIs his fever would jump up and he would have seizures as a result of this.  This, of course would add a lot of stress to the situation.  But during this past infection his fever on several occasions went up as high as 103 and he never once had a seizure!  Praise God!  We are still able to get very good health care, and we have yet to encounter a doctor here for Isaiah that has not just been taken with him, treating him so kind and gentle, and bearing with us when we do not understand medical terms in Russian.
 
Please thank God with us that he continues to keep us healthy, especially for his wonderful care of Isaiah.  And please pray that he would continue to keep Isaiah healthy and well.  Also, we pray that he would grant us more children in his time.
 


STUDIES:
 

Our Russian languages continue to progress by God’s grace.  We still take lessons each week, and on top of that we strive to fellowship in Russian-speaking situations as much as possible.  Some weeks we literally get 30+ hours of solid Russian time.  It has helped us greatly.  I have been able to preach on average once a month, and this has been a great blessing allowing me to improve these skills.  When I started doing this at the end of last year I would always completely write out my sermon and basically read it, making very few extemporaneous comments.  But, by God’s grace, in April I preached my first real extemporaneous sermon in Russia.  There were, of course, some mistakes but we were greatly encouraged.
 
For Cristy, her skills have become evident in her being able to talk more and more with her Russian friends.  Also, during our most recent pregnancy we decided to try a different clinic.  While they have a high standard of medicine at this clinic, the doctors do not speak English.  But I watched (proud husband moment here) as Cristy talked with the doctor completely in Russian!  Her skills continue to grow.  
 
Please thank God with us that he continues to open our minds to grasp this language, and please continue to pray for more and more understanding and conversational abilities.
 


MINISTRY:
 


It seems as of late that “Studies” and “Ministry” overlap more and more.  While we do have actually Russian lessons, and while we do continue on a daily basis to review vocabulary, learn new grammar, and do exercises, so much of what we do in ministry gives us opportunities to practice our Russian.  As I said above, I’m preaching on average once a month.  Also, we have begun to more actively participate in a weekly small group meeting for the “youth” at our church (”youth” in Russia means young singles, usually 18 years and older).  The group normally meets twice a month at our apartment and twice at another lady’s apartment.  There is too much to say about this, but suffice it to say that the Lord has provided us with numerous opportunities to minister to young singles, almost all of who are first generation believers, not having been raised in Christian homes.  On numerous occasions issues about marriage, family and child-rearing have come up, and we’ve had opportunities to comment on these things.  
 


My duties with InterAct are expanding, and I’ve been given a few leadership roles within the organization to help out our current Russia field director.  As some of you already know there are some very exciting projects going on amongst some of the native people groups of Siberia with whom we work.  This includes the Bibles for Tuva project (www.biblesfortuva.com), and other projects that involve us helping to develop indigenous church leaders amongst both the Tuvan and Yakut peoples of Siberia.  Watch for more about this in the coming months.  But in summary let me say that the church in these two places continues to grow and native leaders continue to be raised up.  As a result InterAct’s role is gradually becoming more like a “partnership” with these native churches, having progressed from a “parenting” stage.  There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done though, and the needs are many.  We are by no means done!
 
Please thank God with us that he is growing our ministry and service in his kingdom, and please pray that these opportunities would continue to grow.  Please pray specifically for the Bibles for Tuva project (please visit the website listed above to read more about the project itself and the needs).

OTHER NEEDS:

-There are some good possibilities on the horizon for us to receive more permanent visas to
stay in the country.  Please pray that these would come through for us, potentially as early
as this fall.

-Please pray for wisdom in regards to us purchasing a car in Russia.  We are currently waiting to see if we receive a more permanent visa this fall.  Currently we are able to manage with Isaiah on public transportation, but it is getting a little bit harder as time goes on.  We are beginning to see that in the not too distant future we will need to get a vehicle of our own.  Vehicles here are a good bit more expensive than in the U.S.  Good used vehicles start at about $8000.  
 
MISC:
 
So there’s a general update of what’s going on in our lives.  We thank you greatly for your support and prayers.  We’d love to hear from you sometime.  You can, of course, email us at this address, or even call us (but please keep in mind the time difference).  We have a great little system setup where you can dial a Mississippi telephone number and it reroutes to Russia, costing you nothing more than if you were calling Mississippi.  If you have unlimited long distance then it’s free.  That number is 601-620-4567.  Also we have a
“Twitter” site.  For those of you who know about Twitter, our site is found at www.twitter.com/theslawsons. 
We’ll be back in the States for a few weeks starting in August.  We hope to see all of you if the Lord allows.

In Christ,


The Slawsons

A Couple Weeks in Review

Well, I think that this is the best we’ve done in a while as far as updating posts! We’re determined to get better at updating here with more of our ministry opportunities, but we appreciate your patience.

We were able to enjoy some special family time before heading off to Novgorod together.  We spent one day in Pushkin visiting Katherine the Great’s Palace, which at one point had been all but destroyed by the Nazis.

The beginning of this month we had the chance to go to Novgorod in good weather. For pictures of our first trip there, read this post on Cristy’s blog. While the trip was sort of planned for us, as you might recall from the last post, we did start to look forward to it as the time drew nearer. Two young ladies from our church and our pastor joined us early on a Friday morning to take the bus to Novgorod, thankfully a much newer bus than one we had previously ridden. Isaiah had a great time playing with Oksana and Marta, who were sweet to let Thomas and me have a little respite in our tight quarters.

We were met at the bus station by a friend of Mikhail Mikhailovich Polubaryarenov’s, who is a pastor in Novgorod. The main point of our trip was to get to know this pastor and further develop relationships between our two churches. Our host Mikhail Gregorovich (I don’t remember his family name, unfortunately) and his family were wonderful to be around! Much to Isaiah’s delight, they have 2 little boys, 5 and 3, and a little girl, 5 months, and another little one on the way! The size of their family is a ministry and a testimony to other Russians!

We spent the day seeing some sites, which we had previously seen covered in snow and ice. The day was beautiful! If you would like to see pictures, again please visit Cristy’s blog, as putting pictures on WordPress has become a pain for some reason.

Unfortunately, Cristy started getting sick late in the afternoon on Friday, which meant she couldn’t attend the service that evening, and that we had to return early on Saturday. However, Thomas was able to go to the service on Friday, and felt very encouraged! He was able to tell about InterAct and the goals that we have for missions. One of those goals is to increase in Russians the desire to minister to people in other parts of Russia.

He was encouraged at this meeting to learn that this church has an active ministry to homeless people and people who are wanting to end their drug addictions. The pastor has started a program in which he helps people find a place to live and trains them to do a job. This is the first time that we have met someone involved in this work. We know that it takes place, but it is still rare in Russia.

We look forward to continued contact with this pastor, his family and his church.

The rest of the time until now has mainly been filled with sickness, I’m afraid. Thomas and Cristy have both had bad colds, though thankfully Isaiah has been spared! We’ve pressed on and continued with language lessons. Thankfully we improved sufficiently to celebrate День Победы or VE Day in the States. We really enjoyed this holiday last year, and we were not disappointed this year as we enjoyed a wonderful day together.

Ahem, We’re Still Here, I promise

Well, folks, we really are still in St. P and still working. If you follow Cristy’s blog, or receive our newsletter, then you probably believe this statement.

We have been remarkably busy since returning from the States in early February. Our business is in large part due to the fact that God is providing more and more opportunities for ministry as our language skills increase. For example, Thomas preached this past Sunday. For the first time, the majority of his sermon was NOT written out in manuscript form. He had an extensive outline, of course, but he was able to speak freely in Russian while preaching! We praise God for this progress, and we thank you for your prayers!

This week we are taking a semi-break. Neither of us have language lessons, which means no specific homework to complete this week, a nice break! We found out on Sunday, though that we are going to Novgorod on Friday morning and coming back Saturday night. I say “found out” because that’s pretty much the way it happened. Maybe 2 months ago at our small group, the idea was presented for our young people to take a trip and for us to go with them. Thomas and I forgot about the conversation because nothing further was said about it to us. Then Sunday our pastor told Thomas that “the plans are all set, and we’ll be leaving very early Friday morning.” Thomas then asked, “what are you talking about?”. Mikhail Mikhailovich reminded him of the trip to Novgorod, but then he still had to explain what in the world was going on. I heard about the trip during the announcements and looked with bewilderment to Thomas, who hadn’t had time to tell me about it before church started.

This is actually not unusual for Russia. You know the expression, “blessed are the flexible, for they shall not break”? Well, we’re learning that in new and exciting ways while living here. Sometimes we bend pretty well, but sometimes it hurts a little more. God is helping us to continue to learn how to live in this culture, and it is getting easier!

When we get back from our weekend, I’ll do my best to let you know as soon as possible how it went, but if a post isn’t up until next weekend, don’t panic, I’m sure everything is fine!

Oh, and here’s a bonus: Today is Thomas’ birthday! We’re going to attempt barbequed ribs in the the slow cooker with some homemade barbeque sauce! I’ll let you know how that turns out, too.

If you do not receive our newsletters via email or snail mail, and you would like to, please leave a comment or email us to let me know, and I’ll put you on whichever list you would like! Have a blessed day!

We Twitter Now

We stay rather busy these days, and I’m sorry to say that we’ve slacked off posting here. But we’ve found a new and fun way to hopefully keep you all up-to-date, actually up to the minute with what’s going on in our lives. Check out our “twitter” page at http://www.twitter.com/theslawsons. There we’ll post short “what we’re doing now” messages along with a link to a simple picture you can click on and view. So enjoy!

The Reason My Back Went Out

Greetings everyone. Yes I know it’s been a long time since we’ve posted here, and please forgive us. As you may or may not know my wife keeps up fairly regular posts over at cristyslawson.blogspot.com. I’ve realized as of late that I need to be better about keeping everyone updated here.

I won’t go into all of the details of the last 2 months, I simply wanted to relate a funny cultural story. About 2 weeks ago we all few out to Siberia for a conference with the other members of InterAct’s Russia team. It was a great time, and we really enjoyed the fellowship and enlightening talks and discussions. But the last night we were there I threw my back out worse than I have ever done before. We flew back to St. Petersburg the next day, and I was pretty miserable on the 5 hour flight. When we got back I was flat for almost 3 solid days.

Now here’s the funny part. Yesterday after my language lesson I walked into the kitchen at the language institute where we study. The director and several of the other ladies were all sitting around eating a late lunch. I chatted for a minute and told them what had happened with my back. Now I’m fairly certain that the mattress that we slept on when we were at the conference was the culprit, or at least got the ball rolling. I could feel the springs all the way through, it sank in the middle and offered little to no support. So I proceeded to bring this up to the ladies as we chatted. Well, you would have thought I had just said the most ignorant thing known to man because they looked at me like I had monkeys flying out of my ears. One of the ladies spoke up and said “No that can’t be the problem. A mattress can’t hurt your back.” I was speechless. I was totally at a loss for words.

Now, here’s the funny part. You want to know what the REAL reason was? Cold. Yes, that’s right, cold air. You see, where we were was significantly colder than St. Petersburg, and that was the reason.

So now I know better. All you people out there spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on high quality mattresses and pillows for your back problems, you’ve got it all wrong. Go ahead, sleep on rocks, it won’t hurt you one bit. You just need to move to Florida. =)

“Home”

We’re back in St. Petersburg safe and sound. Our flight landed about 3:30PM local time yesterday, just 20 minutes behind schedule. Overall I think I’d have to say that it was one of our easiest overseas travels ever. Security lines were very short and as a result it wasn’t as stressful getting through. We had a full 3 1/2 hour layover in Paris so we didn’t fell rushed to get to our connection. So now we can tell everyone that we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in Paris! Ah the glamor of missionary life =).

Isaiah slept a lot on the plane. Cristy and I dozed a little. As soon as we got back to our apartment I ran out to get a little food. We laid Isaiah down to sleep about 7:15 and we laid down about 8. Overall we all slept well last night.

Please pray for us over the next few days as we jump straight back into our routine with very little break. Today I’m going to get us registered (S.O.P), and then tomorrow I start my lessons again. Cristy’s begin on Saturday. Please keep her in your prayers specifically as she will have to deal with a pregnancy in addition to all of her other work.

For all of you we got to see these past three weeks, it was great. For those of you we didn’t, we hope to see you the next time around.

-Thomas

Travels

We’ve come to our final week of journey on planet America.  Our travels have taken us to Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and now North Carolina.  We flew out of New Orleans bright and early yesterday morning into Charlotte, North Carolina.  The flight was uneventful which is exactly the way you want it when you fly.

Thus far our trip has been great.  Here are the highlights.

• All of Isaiah’s appointments went well.  No major concerns.  We have some things to work on as always, but nothing serious.  We’re thankful.
• We were able to catch up with a few friends while in Yazoo City.  On Sunday morning I preached at Second Presbyterian Church of Yazoo City and was able to speak with the elders and deacons afterwards about the Tuvan Bible Distribution Project (TBDP…more on that in a later post).  Sunday night I spoke to the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Yazoo City about what we’ve been doing in our work and also about the TBDP.
• Our time in Louisiana with my family (Thomas’) was very enjoyable.  I enjoyed doing a little woodworking and I got to play a Wii for the first time.  Cristy enjoyed some visiting and shopping with the other ladies and Isaiah enjoyed being able to spend a considerable amount of time outside in the mild weather, playing with grandmaw and granddaddy and all of his cousins, aunts and uncles.
• While in Louisiana I was able to speak to Riverdale Baptist Church about the TBDP.  Interest is high and many are eager to help.
• We woke up this morning here in North Carolina to snow covering the ground.  Being the south, everything here has basically shut down, so this will probably be a slow day.  My hope is to at some point and time talk with Beacon Baptist, Cristy’s old home church, about the TBDP.  

More to come.

-Thomas

The Wonders of Jetlag

I have a love/hate relationship with jetlag. On one hand you have the dizziness, lethargy, strange eating habits and of course the falling asleep in your pudding at 5:30PM when the dinner conversation is just getting interesting. But on the other hand there are some real benefits to jetlag. First, as one who regularly has trouble sleeping at night the jetlag tiredness that hits me about 5:30PM is so intense that I’m assured of having no trouble going to sleep when my head hits the pillow at night. I’ve crossed the Atlantic ocean roundtrip 12 times in my life, meaning on 24 separate occassions I’ve had to deal with extreme 7+ hour timezone difference jetlag. On every occassion the tiredness that hits me in the evening cannot be compared to anything else I’ve ever known in my life, not hard manual labor. Jetlag tiredness is total inability to function.

Another benefit of jetlag is the waking up early in the morning. Now most of you reading this might be asking “Are you crazy?” Well, perhaps, but that’s beside the point. What I mean is this; I’m not naturally a morning person. I usually force myself to be, but I prefer to see only one 5:30 per day. But at the same time I really like mornings. I like the peace and quiet of a still dark house when I get up. I like the gurgle of a brewing coffee pot as it puffs out those last bits of steam. I like grabbing a hot fresh cup of coffee, sitting in the stillness and reading. Normally, when I “force” myself to get up early I’m enjoying this time but with my eyes barely open and with me running into things. But with jetlag my eyes pop open at 4AM and I’m wide awake. No dragging, no running into walls. I wake up and get to enjoy the beauty of a still quiet morning without bodily harm. Now, again, I’m propped up against a wall drooling later in the day, but I consider it a reasonable compromise.

Another benefit is that I’ve found is that one can make the jetlag “last” a bit longer if he or she really works things right. This past summer when we flew back to Russia from the United States I “used” my jetlag to help get me on a schedule of getting to bed early and getting up early. For a little over two months we were faithfully going to bed between 9:30 and 10:00, and every morning I was getting up between 5 and 5:30. This worked fine until we had our first Bible study that went past 11PM. After that things just went down hill.

So right now at 9PM Central time I’m sitting here typing this about to fall face first onto the keyboard. I’m about to go lay down here in a few minutes and I’m looking forward to one of the few times in my life where I can lay down my head and almost assuredly be asleep within 5 minutes.

So the point of all this is two-fold. One, I thought it would be a fun way to let you know that we’re safely back in the U.S., and two, well, I forgot. But I’m sure it was something interesting. So don’t waste your jetlag.

-Thomas

Just So You Know…

We are still alive. We survived our own hectic (but greatly enjoyable) Christmas activities and the crazy Russian New Year. On Sunday we’ll be heading out to the family camp that many of you have read about. Thomas will be teaching some lessons and I will be helping with some crafts and a special activity for the girls. We’re looking forward to the 2 days that we’ll be spending with families like us–families with kids who have disabilities. Please pray for us to be an encouragement to the other parents and especially that we will point to Christ.

Tuesday morning we’ll be going to the airport to begin our trek to the States. We’re thankful to have the ability to return again so soon in order for Isaiah to see his doctors. Please pray for safe travels and good reports!

We hope to post again soon, but we also hope that you understand that with our traveling, it might be a while before we have a great big, fill you in on everything going on post. Thanks for your patience! We did recently send out a newsletter (Christmas Day, maybe?). If you didn’t receive this email, and you would like to, please leave us a comment or email us to let us know that you’d like to read our latest.

Happy New Year!