Special Visitors

When Thomas first became interested in being a missionary to Russia, one family was quite influential. On his several trips to Russia he often spent time with the Harris family who ministered in Siberia and St. Petersburg.

At last we have been able to return the favor of their wonderful hospitality by having Robin and Katherine stay with us! Katherine was only able to stay a short time, but we got Robin for almost a week! We enjoyed having both of them, of course. This was really the first time that I got to spend lots of one-on-one time with Robin and get to know her better. She’s quite a lady! She was very helpful with lots of Russian language questions for both of us, which was great. But also, being able to spend time with someone who understands exactly what we are doing right now, having experienced it herself, was really special. She was able to help me in particular get the proper perspective on language learning and being a mom on the mission field. I felt quite refreshed but also very sad to see her go.

Come back anytime ladies!

Friday Mornings

Three days a week Thomas walks to International Academy to teach 8th grade Bible. However, on Friday mornings he gets to stay a little longer, and Isaiah and I join him to sing with the Jr. High/Sr. High Choir. Thomas does a great job teaching them new songs. He’s had several people ask him, “How did you get the GUYS to sing?!” The choir does seem to respond to him well (no surprise to me, of course), and they follow him and sing well.

Isaiah and I love to be included in this activity. In fact, Isaiah has developed quite the fan club. We were able to get some pictures the last couple of weeks, and I thought you might enjoy seeing another part of what we are doing here.

Here’s Isaiah with some of his fan club.

Thomas encouraging the guys to sing out because they’ve got the right notes!

The Jr. High/Sr.High Choir at International Academy (complete with playmates for Isaiah)

Gotta Love Clarity

As you might recall, we have been on the lookout for a new apartment. Some friends of ours, another missionary family, are going on furlough for at least a year, and they let us look at their apartment. We liked what we saw, so Thomas called the landlady who lives in Germany. This apartment would give us more space and put us out of the middle of the city.

Well, Thomas called last night. As he was preparing to make the call, I was in the kitchen praying that God would make it very clear to us where He wanted us to live.  Thomas did a great job communicating to our potential landlady in Russian. I understood part of the conversation, but I must admit that I caught my breath when I heard the word 1000 and Euros. Ummm, that didn’t sound so good. When Thomas got off the phone he told me that the landlady was asking for 1400 Euros, which with the current exchange would be around $2100. This was way above our limit of $1000. For Thomas’ excellent first-hand account of this conversation, click here.

So, we clearly know that we should stay where we are for the time being. We are comfortable where we are, and we have wonderful landlords, we were just hoping for a little more space and such. But God answered my prayer for clear direction, that’s for sure!