The CEC Staff Christmas!

The entire staff of the Cultural Center (plus 5 Americans) gathered together to celebrate the reason for the season in style - wow. Look at this spread:

We talked, played games, sang karaoke (in Russian) and ate and ate and ate and ate. It was delicious. Amy & I contributed 8 lbs of Olivier (it's a traditional Russian New Year's salad - perhaps call it a very fancy potato salad). We wandered home hours later, very satisfied and in need of sleep, rest, and a LONG holiday.

Check out this incredible salad. Lena, our interpreter created it. She calls it, "Paris Fire"

Amy's Russian acting debut!

Yes, I was bursting with pride. On Christmas day, we had a Christmas Spectacular at ch^rch. It was really fun. Mostly the youth pulled everything together, but many participated. Amy even got to jump in and play the role of a snooty farm animal making fun of the lame sheep chosen to keep the baby Jes^s warm. Here's a photo of Amy and Nastya mocking Daniil.

didn't realize it was blurry - bummer. you get the idea though

Merry Christmas! My new Backpack!!!

Check out my sweet gift from Amy's parents! I got a new backpack. I'm gonna be able to carry all the books that I need to take to lessons and the CEC and to Russian lessons and D-Club, and interpreters, and and and... I know I'm the slickest dude in town now.... look how awesome it matches my coat!

rear view

front view

the World's greatest wife

Well guys, this isn't a knock on your wife - and ladies you're doing a great job, but I have the world's greatest wife!

I got home from work at 10:30pm. The house smells incredible. And then I realized what it was. Aunt Debbie's infamous Ricotta cookies! Amy found Ricotta here in Tyumen and made my favorite cookies.

They are incredible and still warm. We're in the kitchen baking and enjoying the holiday spirit.

G0d bless the Christmas!

It's finally beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! Here everything is already Happy New Year - so it's been a hard adjustment. We're keeping traditions alive and I've been sharing a lot with my students about the origin and reason for the holiday.

Merry Pre-Christmas - how about a flood?

So, our washer broke. Seems like it somehow broke two times. The first time, Amy came home to water ALL OVER the bathroom floor. Everywhere. Deep. It took almost every towel we have to clean up the mess. She's a champ though and had the whole thing cleaned up before I even got home from teaching!

We thought we had overloaded the washer... turns out:


not so much that we had overloaded the washer, but that it wasn't draining properly. You can see from this picture that we did have to drain it by hand.

A repair man did come over one week later, and uh - fixed it. The motor had burned out. Life is ever an adventure here. The key to solving any problem is pr@yer. A friend of a friend repairs washers and he was able to get a new motor for us and fix it in a jiffy.

Another day, another adventure.

Russians often say, "every day - something to overcome."

I'm glad we have the victory.

Hey all,

Several new posts, some dating back to 11/26/08 -- mostly just updated photos. So take a look back if you'd like to be completely caught up!

And even more funny occurrences

So today as Amy and I planned to take our day off and do some Christmas shopping - we set an alarm to get ourselves up and around. I went into the bathroom and realized that I hadn't taken out the laundry. So I opened the door.

And before I knew what was happening, I called, "Amy! Help me." And the flood began. Apparently, our washer is broken and no longer has a spin cycle. So... we stopped the water. We decided to deal with it later. It's our day off.

As we started to leave the apartment, we realized that we couldn't lock the outer door. We share this door with our neighbors. We have new neighbors and they apparently thought it was okay to change the lock on that door and not tell us... so we can't even lock all of our doors right now!

On my way to teach tonight, Amy and I waited for the bus for almost 20 minutes - and then when it arrived, it was VERY full. We tried to get on anyway, but we were literally pushed off the bus! I arrived with 1 minute until I was supposed to teach.

Yes! I was on-time! And able to teach with almost no preparation. Phew.

Medical encouragement

Yesterday Amy was speaking with our staff interpreter, Lena.  Lena is really busy with two jobs and the life of a single woman in Russia who doesn't live in her hometown.  (She rents a room from someone in their apartment).

Lena was mentioning that she needs to go to the doctor for some routine checkups.  Natasha, the camp program coordinator, also needs to visit the doctor...

...and then the phone rang.  It was a surgeon at one of the local hospitals who wants to provide medical services for all of the staff at the center.  So Irina, the director, went there yesterday to put their names on a list for free services.

Isn't G0d incredible?  We've already seen so many amazing blessings, the obvious, practical ones we seem to notice the most.  How many have we not noticed?

Gaming Addiction

Well, it's been another hundred years since I've blogged.  I can only claim intense busyness.  Sorry.  It should be better come January.

Anyway - I want to share with you about Discussion Club tonight.  I arrive about 15 minutes late every week because I come straight from teaching.  It's really inconvenient, but helping Amy have more direct m!nistry time.

Tonight at D-club there were several new people (at least 4 or 5).  2 of the guys were 3rd year students with limited English ability.  We were discussing habits (good or bad) and they said something about drinking two beers a night.  Well, that was a 'couple times a week' issue -- but the real issue was computer gaming.  They are missing school, missing apointments, etc.  Well - it's a problem.

So they're going to come back next week - just pr@y that they come back and that we have an opportunity to talk with them even more on an individual level.  Pr@y for 'Doom' and 'VIP'

Hosting

We really do a LOT of hosting at the house. It's an unexpected pleasure and interesting aspect of ministry. So we are learning how to cook LOTS of Russian dishes and many American dishes from scratch. If the ingredients are available... we'll try it.

Look at this beautiful table that we arranged for our ministry staff meeting.

And the result afterward...

Christmas Packages

Well, it is SO wonderful to receive packages. We feel loved, cared for, and blessed. Well, care packages rock in general. Christmas packages are really awesome filled with presents and packages filled with cooking supplies for Christmas are an amazing surprise!

We received 5 packages over the course of about 3 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We had decorations for Thanksgiving and now for Christmas. We've already baked the no-bake cookies, and tonight we made the peanut butter blossoms.

We played Christmas music and baked for a couple of hours. It really feels like home. Thank you so much to all who've sent something for us! It really has been a HUGE encouragement.

package arrival
Take a look at all of these goodies
The contents displayed

Amy cookingJeff boiling chocolate

S'mores!

Well, when you receive packages from home, besides the joy flooding your soul, the realization that you are loved deeply (it's not all that simple to send a package all the way to SIBERIA) - it does come down to the excitement of a young child and what's in the box.

Check out how fun this evening was! S'Mores!!!

making S'Mores - mmm mmmm good!

explosions

well, Amy and I just had a moment in our living room. It's about 9:30am on Sunday morning and Amy just flicked on the light in the living room. The bulb literally exploded. It didn't just go out - it made such a noise that Amy covered her head and I found my self cowering in a chair.

it's not the first time that explosions have been an issue for us. seems that fireworks are completely legal for ANYONE here. So at all times of the night fireworks go off... especially we know that new year's will be big. So sometimes we're asleep in bed and we just hear an explosion. Now, we're mostly used to it.

a week and a half ago, as I was walking back from work - Amy was walking to meet me. We'd been invited to the birthday party of an instructor at Lingvo (where I used to teach). Well, turns out that some kids were having a fun time and they had those silly pop bombs. There's nothing to them. The ones that you throw and there's a small flash of light and a . Well, these don't have a blinding flash, but doesn't come close to describing the sound. It's more like

I certainly had a moment where I was not only seized by fear of the exploding bomb, but fear that I would shame myself to no end by losing control of bodily function.

All is well, we're okay --> just a little jumpy.

the beauty of mud season

Well, although the season we're affectionately calling "mud" here (between Fall and Winter) is really dirty, it has it's positive beautiful side.

Mud

Well, let's just say that the mud season is in full swing. I had the most interesting day ever as I was literally SPLASHED with mud on my face. So it's been another one of those days. A new pair of pressed pants and freshly shined shoes... we do shine our shoes and boots here... shoes should be clean - you know?

Here is some photo evidence.

Shining the boots

The muddy shoes

The muddy pants