So by now most you of you know about Cristy’s wonderful blog that she keeps. Well, I’ve decided to get in on the fun to. My “serious” blog can be found at hereticmugcollection.blogspot.com. The blog has a very specific purpose, as you will see. Give it a looksee and enjoy. -Thomas
Archive for January, 2008
We wanted to pass along to you one of our latest projects we’ve been working on. As many of you already know, one of our main desires is to minister to children with disabilities here in Russia. Thus we have started a ministry called “Isaiah International Christian Ministries.” The first little bit of the website can be found at http://www.isaiahinternational.org.
As you will see, our goal is not to start a para-church ministry, but a ministry that serves local churches, enabling them to carry out the work of ministry. The vast majority of people here in Russia, including Christians, know very little about things such as congenial birth defects, down syndrome, debilitating diseases, etc. During the Soviet days, people who parents were often encouraged to abort children if it was known before hand that they would be born with special needs. If the discovery was made after birth, the parents were “highly advised” to either keep the child indoors all of the time or put him in a hospital for the rest of his life. The main reason for this is that the Soviet government wanted to be able to tell the world “We have no disabled among our people.”
So our goal is to provide education and resources for Churches that they may then use that information to begin a ministry of outreach to the children and their families, their caretakers, their doctors, etc.
The site only provides basic information right now in both English and Russian. Our hope, over the next few months, is to begin adding some basic articles (bi-lingual also). Our friend Luda is excited about helping us make sure all of the Russian is nice and clean.
Wednesday afternoon we are heading to Germany! We have to leave Russia every 6 months for registration purposes, which is something that doesn’t really make sense to those of us who grew up in the West where no papers were required for traveling and such. Anyway, our first 6 months are nearly complete. In some ways this is hard to believe. Sometimes we feel like we’ve been here much longer, and sometimes we think we just got here. But no matter how we feel, we know that we have already learned a lot, but also realize how much more we have to learn!
We love being in Russia, but we are looking forward to a bit of a break. And in case you haven’t heard yet, we’ll be having a little bit of home in Berlin. My parents will be meeting us in Berlin! We’ll get to spend the whole week with them resting and recreating.
So our next post will either be from Berlin, Germany or from St. Petersburg after we return from our break with some great pictures!
