and the Epic conclusion of the Toilet Saga/Epic

Zhenya (the plumber) came back! And he brought a friend. Who said that they had improperly installed the toilet in the first place. The took the whole back end of it apart and fixed it!

I only scrubbed the rust stains (from our water) off for an hour. With lemons. It smelled (and still smells) lovely.

I can't believe it. We have a working toilet and a working bathtub! (THREE WEEKS). Still no hot water until August 18. That'll be a total of 14 weeks give or take.

And they just told us that we won't have hot or cold water from Friday - Monday.

um... Amy's special birthday dinner is on Saturday night. We'll have company who will need to flush the toilet and wash their hands.... not to mention that I'll need to cook and do dishes.

Well, we'll figure that one out later on this week.

The 2012 Toilet Epic... to be continued

Well, the plumber came today. Completely forgot about us. And he camp about 2 hours after I fixed the leaking in the bathtub MYSELF. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I just used about 1/2 cup of silicon gel to fix it, but it worked. That's all he was going to do anyway.

When I asked Zhenya (the plumber) if he was going to stop the toilet (brand NEW toilet) from constantly running, he told me that most Russians wouldn't even worry about that. No big deal.

Well, I asked if we could change the guts anyway. He said we'd need to buy new guts, so I said, let's. But he said only a specialist would know which one to buy. He'd come back tomorrow and I could pay for new guts.

Well, see you tomorrow...

FIREWORKS!

I shot this with my new (well, March) camera. It's an ENTIRE fireworks presentation. This one by the city of Tyumen!

http://youtu.be/tC2-dfamNXI

so it sounds so cool that Amy is speaking to Tanya in Russian... and then I ask if it's Katy Perry... and it turns out to be Michael Jackson... well, I don't think either of them will mind.  PS this is my first embedded video.

Tyumen's birthday!!!!

Wow - Russian's know how to celebrate a city's birthday. Amy & I went with Tanya (from church) to the city's birthday. Video link.

Toilet Saga becomes an Epic

well, it's been an entire week since we've heard from our plumbers. We'll be calling again, it might be time to take things into our own hands...

Helping out with HTPC

One of the mom's from our church has these awesome little guys. And surprise! Now there's a fourth one. FOUR BOYS! Better get her a copy of "Bringing up Boys" right now! Well, she had a C-section and getting around from the fourth floor apartment to the first floor with no elevator and four boys, a bicycle, and a carriage isn't so easy. The boys are Dima (6 yrs old), Lyosha (4 yrs old), Slava (2 yrs old) and Roma (1 mnth). You may remember about a year ago, Slava fell from their fourth floor apartment to the ground. It was a miracle that he missed the pavement and only broke his arm. Well, he's a real handful now and loves to run around. Amy and I spent the day with the boys and took some pictures to make into photos for mom.

Lyosha IN the jungle gym. It's a complete sphere (really scared me when he went over the top!

Dima on TOP of the jungle gym. Yikes, but who thought of these crazy playground items?

Dima running races for time with Amy. He LOVED being timed.

Slava on his bicycle.

Lyosha spent about 40 minutes going up and sliding back down this curvy pole.

Dima wanted me to time how fast he could climb this, but he was a bit shaky,
so we just counted together.

Dima just had to show us that he knows how to somersault.

The 2012 Toilet saga

As we returned from camp we were notified that the gentle leak in our neighbor's toilet room had become more of a problem and we would be visited by some plumbers...

On Monday they called to let us know they would be coming.

They came on Tuesday. They needed to remove the stack (the huge pipe that takes gray water out of the building). Well, the way our landlord put together our toilet in the toilet (room), meant that they needed to remove the actual toilet. But the landlord had CEMENTED it to the floor. So they had to break it out with a hammer. (no joking).

original toilet

jackhammering the toilet & the wall

This took the entire day, but they were able to replace the pipes and others in our entrance had full access to water in both their toilet (rooms) and bathrooms. They even had to call in a welder to cut out the old stack! We had a big hole in our toilet (room) letting noxious fumes into the apartment. Nothing a plastic grocery bag can't fix.

cutting out the stack

On Tuesday night in a mad dash to buy a new toilet, I had the pleasure of selecting, transporting, and delivering our new pristine, white toilet to the apartment. This was it's own adventure as I ended up in Jim's old giguli (a Russian car) during rush hour and it had to break down because of the heat and waiting for a 100+ wagon train that stopped traffic. So 2.5-3 hours after the adventure began, the toilet was safely in our apartment.

On Wednesday, no plumbers showed up... at all. So we went 36 hours with a hole in the toilet (room).

the resulting destruction

Thursday they graced us with their presence all day and after nearly 11 hours we had a working toilet (brand new and already constantly running and stained from the metals in the water).

the new toilet

In the process of installing the toilet, the plumbers informed me that the landlord's poor building skills, led them to puncture a silicone covered hose under the bathtub. So the bathtub is off limits as it pours water unto the floor.

On Friday (after calling several times), Zhenya the plumber came over on his day off to fix the bathtub. One of the rubber gaskets was too old and is to blame for our continued leaking.

So after literally a week of plumbers, we have a new toilet that runs constantly and a bathtub that we cannot use. All of this with only cold water as our hot water has been turned off for nearly 3 months already!

We are smiling and absolutely thankful for the supernatural patience that God has given to us. It is really amazing that Jim and Sally's apartment is a five minute walk from ours. Otherwise, we'd be quite stinky.

Baptisms at HTPC

Dima praying at the start of the ceremony

Today we were all up bright and early for three baptisms. Here's a little bio about each of the ladies who were baptized today.

Vera - has been attending HTPC for several months having been invited by a church member. About 2 months ago she started attending the women's ministry meetings that Amy leads and has really started to understand and seek more and more. It's really cool to see her inquisitive mind and desire to know more.

Vera's baptism

Marina - is from one of the Eskimo tribes in the North. Her tribe is called Nentsi. She grew up in a chum (a cold weather teepee) and has been in Tyumen studying to be a doctor (she's an intensive care / anesthesiologist specialist). She came to faith through the Thursday evening home group led by Dima and wanted to be baptized before her job starts in the North. She leaves on Tuesday this week.

a special song in Nentsi for Marina (they used reindeer hooves for rhythm)

Dasha - is the daughter of one of the elders of our church and has attended our summer camps, English club and teen club. She has wanted to be baptized for over a year, and was really overwhelmed with emotion and joy at the events today.

from left to right: Marina, Vera, Dasha

Amazing Bible Study

We really had a fascinating Bible study this week. Oleg (in orange below) helped us to outline passages in a new method. It was kind of like inductive Bible study, but really amazing. Maybe more like sentence diagramming (which was a real nice trip for us as it was in Russian... it's a bit different, but we knew the parts of speech better than anyone else!)

at this point we all started to read with our heads tilted, it was like a great comedy sketch.

Camp 2012 - highlights

Camp was quite a bit different this year. We were all in tents. 18 of them to be exact. It was an amazing experience (especially during the loudest, hugest, biggest, brightest thunderstorms I've ever seen!!!)

Highlights along with photos:

Amy with our church tent (we actually stayed in a different tent).

Setting up camp was actually quite a lot of fun with all the camp staff working together. It was actually interesting to teach a bunch of the teenagers how to put up a tent. Seems like I don't have a whole lot of technical Russian vocabulary for things like, 'push that pole through that hole' and 'tug that along the fabric there!'

Amy at crafts

Amy was not only working with me and the older boys, but she was also in charge of crafts. Here you see her working with the kids to make picture frames.

Learning teamwork. Only one team made it through the spider's web.

During a thunderstorm, we bowled inside our tent with our team.

All those years of leadership training and teambuilding has paid off

Reading the Bible with the team before bedtime.

Building friendships while the blind lead the blind...

Bible study with the guys.

Amy, a well-earned break

Vova, far left. Came to faith at camp as a part of our group!

the price of maple syrup.... seriously.

That's 538 rubles for this lovely little bottle (from Maine I believe). $18.55

We don't eat pancakes very much :(

Camp Crafts!

Well, I know that you all know this already. But Amy is phenomenal and always ready to step in and help. Even though she doesn't consider herself the craftiest of all people, Amy stepped up when asked if she'd lead the craft time at camp.

Not only did she come up with awesome crafts, not only did she find all the materials here in Tyumen, the crafts were all linked to the daily themes! Everything was so organized it was unbelievable. She did an amazing job. Take a look at the example crafts:

Treasure chests - the theme for Day 1

Picture frames - Day 2 Friendship

Day 3 - Crosses from seashells and rocks - Reconciliation

Japanese lanterns for Day 4 - Wisdom

Bracelets for Day 5 - to remember camp

paperwork

Really not much more needs to be said. The kitchen has become my office. And there is a growing plague of paper and receipts. I did survive (although the table looks much the same).

btw - don't you love our wallpaper and tablecloth? They go so well together... and we seriously try, we try...

Preparing for camp

Well, we set up the tent today to see if we had all the parts for tent camp! Here we go. Amy and I spent the night in it at the CEC!

Passport heroes

Amy is so wonderful sometimes, I can hardly stand it. Really she's just incredible. Today on a run she found someone's passport in the middle of the road. She picked it up and brought it home.

We found out where the woman worked from her insurance card and called the company. She came by to pick it up. She actually tried to GIVE us for doing the right thing. When I didn't take it, she burst out crying.

Yesterday her husband died. She had to go to the registration office to register his death so he can be buried.

She arrived at the office without her documents and they wouldn't help her.

She just couldn't believe our kindness and that we would help out.

I promised that we would pray for her in her difficult time and made sure that she had family to help her out.

Man, I am so thankful to God that I have Amy and I'm praying for a lot of years together and that neither of us has to go through such a difficult time.

The new CEC awning!

The construction crew has still been working quite a bit and as you can see here, the new awning is up over the main entrance to the Cultural Center!!!!

Fix it up

Well, don't we all need a tune up once in a while? Today I've been working on a couple of tune ups. Both computers are up and running well - anti-virus, degragged, etc. Door is FINALLY hung back on the living room closet (we're talking 1.5 - 2 years of trying to find the right hinges and getting that project finished... talk about your DIY nightmare). And the spiritual tune-up is underway as well.

I'm reading The Great House of God by Max Lucado. Recommended by Tom Robinson. So far, very good and I like thinking about life as if it were a house.

My landlord was here today (he is a bit creepy and chatty in strange ways) He wanted to talk with me about the end of the world (in a superstitious way). He's certain that yellowstone's super volcano will take us all out. As well as the alignment of the planets and that the moon is floating away from the Earth. Well, I'm glad that I have everything in order for the end of the world.

I'll keep you posted on further theories of how the end will come.