A Little R&R

We have enjoyed our time in California–resting, laughing, eating, chatting, etc. Monday morning at 6:15 we take off (literally) for MS. Please pray for our journey home. Cristy has caught a cold, so we are praying that she will not have the pain that air travel can sometimes bring with colds. We are also praying that Thomas and Isaiah will continue to stay free from any cold symptoms.
Thanks for your prayers for our time here. The Lord has blessed. When we return, we will fill you on more details of this trip and Thomas’ time at Moody Bible College.
May you have a blessed Lord’s Day tomorrow!

Change of Plans

If you follow us on Twitter, then you might have realized that Thomas had a bit of a shock last night!  Yesterday I told you that he would be leaving for Chicago tomorrow, the same day Isaiah and I head for California.  Well, it seems that for about a month we’ve had the wrong day in our heads.  His flight was actually this morning not tomorrow!  In about 15 minutes his plane should be taking off.  Thankfully we did realize this last night and not this morning.

So please pray for traveling safety for Thomas today and for us tomorrow.  Thanks!

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

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

Fun with Russian

The longer we live here in Russia the more certain Russian words become permanently ingrained in our vocabulary to such a degree that we sometimes even forget the English word. Before we moved here I had heard of that happening and often thought it such a strange thing. “How could someone actually forget a common word in his or her own native tongue?” I would ask myself. Now I’m beginning to understand. Take for instance around our house. We go to the store about every other day for food, and so a grocery list is constantly being added to. Here’s a sample of what a typical list might look like.

-Milk
-Eggs
-Farsh
-Vegetables
-Smetana
-Diapers
-Slivki

Now, unless you speak Russian, I’m certain that some of those words were unfamiliar to you, particularly the words “farsh, smetana” and “slivki.” What make it even more interesting is that these words are normally written using the Russian letters, so the list actually looks like…

-Milk
-Eggs
-фарш
-Vegetables
-сметана
-Diapers
-сливки

So what are these mysterious objects? Well, they’re really nothing strange. “Farsh” (фарш) is simply ground meat. It can be any kind of ground meat like ground beef, pork or even chicken and turkey. Yet the word has become ingrained into our vocabulary to such a degree that the other day when I was talking to a friend back in the States I couldn’t think of what to call it in English. To us it’s just “Farsh.”

“Smetana” (сметана) is simply sour cream. Over here it tends to be a bit more soupy than typical sour cream one finds in the States, but it can be bought in different percentages, and most people prefer it in the liquidly 15% form. If one buys it in the 40% it’s basically identical to American sour cream. But again, for some reason we’ve simply come to call this substance by it’s Russian name.

Finally there’s “slivki” (сливки). This is simply cream, very similar to “half-and-half.” It is sold in different percentages of creaminess also. The 11% kind is basically identical to half-and-half, and the 44% is pretty much like heavy whipping cream. I’m still clueless as to why the smetana comes in increments of 5% creaminess and slivki in increments of 11%. I’m sure there’s a reason for this, but as a friend warned me, “Don’t ask such questions, you’ll live longer.”

There are lots more words that have entered the word bank that I could describe here if I had time. But here’s just a few more…

chai (чай) – tea (chai is simply regular tea, not the Starbucks version of chai)
shkaf (шкаф) – a closet or cabinet
syr (сыр) – cheese
yolka (ёлка) – Christmas tree
kolyaska (коляска) – baby stroller
shapka (шапка) – cap or hat
probka (пробка) – a traffic jam or blockage

So one of these days if we’re ever talking to you and suddenly a strange and unusual word slips out you’ll know why.

We’re Legaler

Great news.  We officially received the extensions on our student visas for one year today!  For those of you who either don’t know or don’t remember if I told you, when you come to Russia on a student visa they only grant you a conditional three-month visa at the beginning.  If, after the first 2 months of your studies, you’re fulfilling the requirements of your program, they will begin the process to extend your visa for another year.  So today we finally got those magic documents.  Each one is a rather large piece of paper that we must carefully fold up and put inside of our passports.

As an aside, perhaps you would find it interesting to know the documents that we must carry with us around Russia just in order to be legal.  Well, here’s the list.

Passport - This is probably a no-brainer, but we actually must carry either our passports or a copy of our passports with us at all times in case we get randomly stopped by the police.  Thankfully it’s never happened, but if it did and we didn’t have these documents we could be in a lot of trouble.

Visa - Unless you’re from one of the former Soviet Republics (not including Georgia now), or Israel and a handful of other countries, you must have a visa in order to enter Russia.  No, we’re not talking about the credit card visa.  The visa is a special stamp in your passport that you receive from a Russian embassy stating that you have been granted the privilege to enter the Russian Federation for a specific period of time.  In order to get a visa you must have an inviting agency.  For tourist visas, most people simply go through tourist visa services that handle all the hoopla.  Tourist visas are issued for no longer than a month.  For all other doings you must have some organization,(i.e. business, school or other institution) who is inviting you to do something specific.  This organization issues a request to the local Federal Migration Services office in Russia asking them to grant you a letter of invitation.  One month later, if all goes well, the FMS grants the letter invitation.  The letter of invitation is then sent to you and you send that letter in with your passport and a bunch of other stuff to the Russian embassy or one of the Russian consulates in the United States (or in your home country).  They then issue you this visa by stamping a big sticker in your passport.  In our case we now have an extension on our visas, so we must have this neatly folded large piece of paper inside of our passports as well.

Migration Card – Think going through all of the steps to get a visa is a hassle?  That’s the easy part.  The fun part is when you arrive in Russia.  That’s when the real fun begins.  Before you can go through passport control and be allowed to officially enter the country you must fill out a migration card.  The migration card consists of two parts that are identical.  You fill out a card for every member of your family with identical information on each side of the cards.  When you go through passport control to enter the country the control officer takes one side of the card for records.  You must keep the other side with you at all times and give it to the passport control officer when you exit the country.  Losing this card can also get you in big trouble.  This also is a loose piece of paper that must be folded and kept with the passport at all times in case you’re stopped and checked, or if you want to buy train tickets.

Registration - Now, here’s where the fun begins.  Think everything above is sufficient?  There’s one last major step you must take, and it’s a doozy.  You don’t just get a visa to enter Russia.  You don’t just fill out and keep a migration card with you at all times with your visa and passport.  You must also be registered. “What’s registration?” you ask.  Well I’ll tell you.  Registration is when the party who issued your letter of invitation must take a copy of your passport, visa and migration down to the dreaded OVIR office in the city in which you’re residing and stand in line for the better part of a day and let the most unreasonable and angry people known to man know that you’re in the country.  This all must be done within three days of your arrival in Russia or you and your inviting agency risk getting heavily fined, and you risk getting deported. As a foreigner, the Russian Federation wants to know where you are and what you’re doing. Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with these people personally, our inviting agency does.  But each time we register we must pay our inviting agency about $120, and there’s no way around it.  When the registration is completed we are given an official copy of the registration slip which, of course, must be folded up and kept inside of our passports.  If and when we get ready to leave the country we must notify our inviting agency who must, before we actually leave the country, go back down to the local OVIR office and turn in our original registration slip to the unreasonable and angry people.  We must then turn in our official copy to the passport control officer as we exit the Russian federation.  If our inviting agency fails to turn in our registration slips before we leave the country they could be heavily fined and we could risk being blacklisted from entering the Russian Federation for up to five years.

By now your head ought to be hurting, and that’s as it should be.  I haven’t even touched upon things like what would happen if we actually lost any of these little pieces of paper.  Furthermore, if I were to describe to you what is required for someone trying to get permanent residency in Russia you’d probably cry.  Maybe I’ll reference a link here one day and you can read about it at night to scare your kids.

So that’s what we carry around with us.  I sometimes feel like I’ve got a filing cabinet in my coat pocket as I walk around.  So remember all of this if you ever ask one of us, “What did you do today?” and one of us answers “I was working on visa stuff.”  Now you’ll know.