Halloween is nearly here!

Can we just take a moment to notice how well update this blog has been?!?!  Lol  It is quite unusual for me to keep something like this updated regularly, but I don’t think I have gone more than a week without an update!!  J  I hope you have enjoyed reading these updates as much as I have enjoyed writing them!  I am so glad that I have a way to share what is on my heart and what God is teaching me here with all of you halfway across the world! 

This last week:

We had such a great time at English club Monday night!!!  We have a lot of fun every week, but there was something especially enjoyable about this week.  Shannon and I both absolutely love the friends we have made here!  They always make me smile and laugh. 

Somewhere around the halfway mark of my time here I started noticing a transitioning in my thinking from thinking about how much I miss my friends and family back home to realizing just how much I am going to miss this place and these people when I’m in the States.  Not that I don’t still miss all of you!! I miss you all so very much!  But now, this place and these people have a very special place in my heart as well, and I am going to miss them all so very much when I leave in December!  It is still a month and a half a way and I can already tell that a big piece of my heart will be left here when I leave.  God has been building in me a heart for Russian people for quite some time now, and it is going to be SO hard to leave.

We had a craft club at our apartment this last Wednesday.  We made some Halloween-themed crafts and decorations that we used to decorate the Carr’s apartment for our Women’s Club Halloween party.  It was a great evening.  We made plenty of decorations and had a great time or fellowship.  And I have to mention that we listened to Christmas music the whole time!  I have been in full Christmas music mode for about a month now.  I just love it!! (side note: Thanks to my favorite sister for the heads up on David Crowder Band’s Christmas album coming out!  It’s awesome!)

Women’s club this month was Halloween-themed! We had a ton of Halloween-themed food and played some games like Pumpkin Bowling and making mummies with toilet paper.  We had so much fun. There was a great turn out of women. Eileen used an example of carving a pumpkin as a way to tell the Gospel.  It was a great evening of fellowship!

Shannon and I will be heading to Moscow Wednesday night!  We are both SO excited!  I won’t be able to update until I get back, but you can expect to hear all about it sometime Sunday or Monday. J

Rachel has a Happy Heart!

Ok, I realize I JUST posted and update a few minutes ago, but 2 very exciting and happy things just happened in the last 20-30 minutes that I feel are worthy of a quick update of their own!

Just now, our landlady came by to collect our rent for the month, and her grandmother came with her.  This lady can speak a tiny bit of English and Shannon and I were talking to her about where we were from and how much Russian we know.  She was so sweet and happy and even invited us over for tea!!  So, basically, Shannon and I have a Russian babushka(this is how you pronounce the word for grandmother in Russian) now!! 

Secondly, and even more importantly, Heather Carr (one of the kids of the Ms that we are here serving with who has basically become a little sister for Shannon and I)  just accepted Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Words cannot describe how excited I am right now!!!  Shannon and I have both been praying for Heather and we have so very much enjoyed hanging out with her and getting to know her (as well as the other Carr kids by the way) and we fully claim her as our little sister.  It makes me so very happy to know that she is now my little sister in Christ!

Needless to say, my heart is extremely happy right now!! 
Thanks for letting my share my happiness with you!  :)

Language Progress Thus Far

So, several of you have asked me how the language learning is progressing.  So I thought I would dedicate a blog update to how the whole process has gone up to this point…

Before arriving in Russia, I had completed Level 1 of Rosetta Stone for Russian and had started Level 2.  Through this, I gained a fair amount of vocabulary knowledge, but I had almost no grammar background. 

Something I completely did not expect began happening when we first arrived.  Shannon and I both were constantly remembering Spanish words while trying to understand or speak Russian…. I guess our brains were in foreign language mode so we just skipped to the only other language we know more of than English.  I was quite surprised at how much Spanish I could remember seeing as it has been 5 and a half years since I’ve studied Spanish. 

We have been learning so much in our classes at the university as well as while hanging out with our new friends.  It has been so much easier to learn here, being immersed in the language, than it was to try to learn in the States.  Our teachers only speak to us in Russian (a couple of them know a tiny bit of English, so they will throw in an English word every once in a while, but not very often.)  Before starting classes, I was rather worried about this, but it has been surprisingly easy to pick up. (Thanks SO SO much to everyone who was praying about this!!!!)  Side note: We absolutely love our teachers and classmates!  

Now, even when I try, I usually can’t think of the Spanish words, because the Russian words are so fresh on my mind.

Russian is creeping into my mind bit by bit.  There are some words/phrases that now sound weird in English.  A lot of the examples and stories in our textbook are related to some of the famous sights in Moscow, so now that I’ve spent so much time studying about them in Russian, I can’t bring myself to talk about them using the English words.  (This also makes me so much more excited to visit Moscow in 1 week!! J)  Also, when I get back to the States, you will probably hear me call a “scarf” a “sharf” all the time.  This is how it is pronounced in Russian.  Because it is so close to the same sound, I had to focus really hard at first to say “sharf” instead of “scarf” in class so, now it has become natural to me. 

At this point, I know a lot of vocabulary and individual words.  Now I need to practice making sentences and learn more grammar rules!  We are learning more and more grammar in our classes.  Right now, I understand the rules we have learned and I can conjugate the verbs we’ve learned, and change the endings for adjectives correctly, but I have to think through each word for a while before speaking.  I can formulate a sentence correctly, it just takes me some time to think through it first.  

I am now able to understand a lot of what is said in everyday conversations.  I can usually understand the general idea of a normal conversation.  Shannon and I are also trying to integrate what little we do know into our daily conversations.

I am loving this language SO much!  I so very badly want to be fluent!  (Side note: if you would like to make me Incredibly happy, you should learn how to say a few simple phrases (hello, how are you?, thank you, please/you’re welcome, bye… etc) in Russian!  I know I am going to miss hearing Russian all the time when I get back to the States.  Just sayin’…I already know it will make my heart happy to hear it again.)

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When applying for a student visa, we were given 90 day visas that we could renew to stay for a longer period of time once in Russia.  A part of this renewal process involves being tested for HIV.  So, Tuesday morning Shannon and I set out to take care of this on our own. Went to the clinic and had probably the most major communication problem we have had yet.  The whole experience probably would not have been nearly as frustrating for us had there not been a room full of people staring at us during the whole process of trying to figure out what we were supposed to do, where to go, and when to be there.  (Side note: the fact that someone is not able to speak your language very well does not mean that they can’t tell when you are talking about them/making fun of them… just so ya know!)  Eventually, we found out that we would need to come back the next day because they were no longer accepting patients for blood testing that day.  Needless to say, this experience put us in a not very good mood. 

After this lovely experience, however, we were able to get our pictures taken (along with the HIV test, we had to have 5 b&w passport style pictures) and explain how many and what size and color we needed.  Then we treated ourselves to McDonalds for lunch.  When we had calmed down enough and regained some confidence in our ability to accomplish anything, we were able to put money on our tram cards by ourselves… and this lady was SO nice and happy.  We were able to explain how much we wanted to put on each card and she was smiling and being so very nice.  Shannon and I were almost ready to cry tears of joy at this point.  She completely made my day!  And then later that evening Eileen taught us how to make bleeny!  I can hardly wait to try this out with my family in a couple of months! 

A day that began with such discouragement ended in such a great way!  Yes, we had a great deal of difficulty in the beginning, but God then allowed us to have a successful rest of the day and get quite a bit accomplished!

… the next day we went back and were able to get our blood drawn for the test with only a little bit of confusion (nothing like the day before!) and 2 days later we were able to pick up our results with no confusion.  All of our paperwork and such is turned in, so now we will wait for the international office to get our visas renewed.

In other news…

One of our classmates, Peter, came to English Club this last Monday!  Shannon and I were quite excited!  We were able to help him meet a bunch of new people.  Peter knows a fair amount of English already, but wants to continue to improve and he doesn’t have a whole lot to do outside of school right now because he doesn’t have a way to communicate very well with most of the people here.  He told us that he had a lot of fun.  He is going to be here for 6 years getting a degree, so he needs to have plenty of friends to hang out with.  Hopefully he will make some lasting relationships through English Club. He said that he is going to try to make it every week! J  This was quite encouraging to Shannon and I! 

Every Thursday night, Shannon and I have been trying to have a study night at McDonalds.  Until last Thursday, no one had shown up.  But last week, Mirena, a woman from Serbia came!  We did do some homework and study a little, but then we talked a little and walked around for a while.  We were able to build on our friendship with her.  It was so good.  I am hoping that eventually she will feel comfortable enough to come to English club as well and meet some of the believers there. 

Shannon and are making a point to get the people we’ve met so far plugged in with some of the groups of believers here before we have to leave in December.

Shannon and I made chocolate chip muffins for our class on Monday.  It was so much fun and everyone seemed to enjoy a little treat in the middle of our 3 and a half hour class.

A new Chinese student has joined our class now.  Again, we have had some communication problems due to the fact that neither of us knows enough Russian to hold a decent conversation, but Shannon and I will continue to pray and watch for God to open a door in some way.

Coming up in the next week:

·         Craft night at our apartment next Wed. we will be making Halloween-themed crafts that we will use to decorate Chris and Eileen’s apartment for Women’s Club which will be next Friday!

·         Women’s Club this month will be Halloween-themed and Eileen will be using the process of making a jack-o-lantern as a way to demonstrate how God wants to dig out all the junk inside of us and shine His light through us. 

Prayer Requests:

·         Getting our new friends plugged in with believers somewhere

·         We would be able to continue to build relationships with our friends

·         More and more opportunities to discuss the Gospel and our testimonies

·         Shannon, Kelly, and I will be saying good bye to one of our good friends here Saturday, because she will be heading to America to work in Minnesota for a year.  We are excited for her, but we are also going to miss her.  She is not yet a believer, but we have seen signs that she is searching.  We are praying that she will get connected with some believers in America. 

·         Health- I’m still feeling a bit under the weather… so far it isn’t bad enough to keep me from participating in anything, but just enough to wear me out faster.  It also looks like Shannon may be catching what I have (the joys of living in a small apartment and sharing everything...)

Answered Prayers:

·         Peter coming to English Club

·         Building a relationship with Mirena

Changing our thinking patterns

I have been sharing with you about what all God is teaching me here and how we as Christians should see God’s purpose for our lives as spreading the Gospel.  We should be making that our constant focus. 

This takes work.  We have to change the way we think so that we can change the way we react to situations and people.

Whether we have wanted them to or not, American materialism and conveniences have affected our lives in many ways.  As I talked about in an earlier blog, modern conveniences have made our lives so much easier, and we are constantly trying to figure out new ways to make life easier still.  Nearly everyone is looking for the newest gadget that will simplify their life or allow for more entertainment, and then those gadgets become something we can’t imagine living without.  If this is what we’ve been surrounded with all your life, of course it is going to affect the way we think.  This mentality may very well be affecting our spiritual lives as well and making us think that the Christian life could also be easy and that we can come up with ways that make it easier or more comfortable, but that’s not how God intended for us to follow Him.  When we are following Him, we should not be looking for the easiest way, or the way that would least disrupt our comfortable lives.  And if our sole purpose is to follow God, than we should be living everyday of our lives looking for how He wants us to serve, no matter how painful, uncomfortable, or inconvenient.  Naturally, this is not how our minds will want to operate, because of how they have been trained to think up to this point in our lives.  We have to retrain our minds (Romans 12:2) to think about God’s purpose in each situation first rather than our comfort.   

What does this look like in real life?  Well I don’t have a sure-fire method, but I do know what has been working for me.  First, I have been reading verses about God’s heart for the nations (I’ll post some of the references of a few of these at the end of this blog, but really you can find them throughout the Bible, if you are looking for them with that mindset).  This is somewhat like surrounding your mind with thoughts of how God feels about taking His Word to the nations, a step in changing what you are surrounding yourself with or changing what you are putting into your mind.  Second, I have made a larger priority of praying for the nations.  I am spending some time every day praying for workers to be sent out into God’s harvest field and for the unreached people groups.  This is also a step in changing my thinking patterns.  Making a priority of thinking about the importance of taking the Gospel to the nations and praying for God’s plan to be put into action each day is helping me to see more and more of God’s heart and less  and less of my own selfishness.  Going along with praying for the nations, I have also made it a priority of learning more about people from those nations.  This is helping me to know more of what to pray for, and in the process also helping me to see more of God’s heart for each people group.  The more I learn about a new people group, the more I desire to see them reached with the Gospel.

I think that the process of retraining my mind is following a track that seems to be going something like this:

Reading about God’s heart for the nations, and His purpose for our lives

Understanding more and more about that purpose

Beginning to implement what I am learning

Full implementation (I definitely have not reached this stage, but this is what I am straining towards!)

Here is a short list of verses from all throughout the Bible that show God’s heart for the nations and examples of how we should be seeing our purpose in God’s plan for reaching the nations:

Psalm 9:11-12, 17, Psalm 33:13-14, Psalm 46:10, Psalm 96:11-13, Isaiah 49:6, Habakkuk 1:5, Malachi 1:11, I Sam. 17: 46-47(According to David, why did God help him kill Goliath?), Mark 16:15, Acts 1:8, Romans 10:14 &Romans 15:20-21 (What was Paul's ministry philosophy?), Revelation 7:9-10

The Bible reveals to us that Jesus was also passionate about praying for workers to be sent into the harvest field. In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus proclaims: "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest."

I would like to challenge you to grow in your conviction that apart from prayer we can do nothing. The first step is to memorize Matthew 9:37-38. The next step is to begin to pray Jesus’ prayer daily for workers to be sent out to the unreached people groups of the world.

There is a vast amount of things going on in the world right now that need prayer, but, for the most part, we are unaware of 99.9% of them. We must open a door for information about the needs in the world to flow consistently into our life so that we can have a consistent diet of things to pray for. Information is like the food that a Christian needs to have a healthy prayer life. If you are starved for information your prayer life could look sickly and weak. Here are some practical ideas and resources to “beef-up” your prayer life:

1) Buy a world map and have it laminated and hung up in your room. This way you can write prayer requests directly on the map as they arise and erase and write new ones all the time!  I have done this and also added short bios for m’s that I know are serving in certain areas of the world so that I am reminded more often to pray for them. For a free map go to www.ehc.org  or www.imb.com/resources  has some good ones as well.

2) Subscribe to a free weekly email, Compassion Net is the IMB’s daily prayer update for needs of people groups and field personnel around the world. www.imb.org/compassionnet  (you can even look for specific prayer requests from here in Ufa!)

3) www.joshuaproject.net highlights a new unreached people group each day to pray for. You can also add this feature as an application to your Facebook homepage!

4) Both www.cnn.com and www.bbc.com are great websites that cover world news that will enable you to know the latest happenings around the world.

5) Finally, here are fifteen general prayer requests. Try adding one of these suggestions each day by posting it on a mirror so that you are reminded often to pray for this request.

·         Ask God to glorify Himself throughout the earth, among all peoples everywhere. Tell Him you want this to happen and tell Him what it will mean to you personally when it does.

·         Pray that God would receive greater praise in the earth for what He is presently doing in the Church, and especially for all He will do through the Church to reach, save and fulfill unreached peoples around the world.

·         Pray John 17:11-18 for a missionary family that you know.

·         Pray for churches to be planted within every people group on our planet within the lifetime of this student generation.

·         Pray for specific mission teams in your country of service who are working among the unreached.

·         Ask God to give a spiritual hunger to the billions of lost peoples (such as Muslims, Chinese, Hindus, Buddhists and secularists) who have yet to clearly learn of Christ, that they may have a new sense of the reality of God and an unavoidable desire to seek Him. Jesus promised that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

·         Pray for international students in Western countries, particularly in the USA, to hear the Gospel and return to their homelands with the Good News of salvation through Christ.

·         Pray for world leaders and governments and for the outcome of world events. All of these can directly affect the free course of the Gospel within a nation and within a people group

·         Pray for major global issues which interrupt a world-mission thrust. These issues are part of the moral darkness which must be pressed back by the planting of responsible communities of disciples among the billions who have yet to hear. Such issues may include: global hunger, nuclear proliferation, political and economic oppression, and terrorism

·         Pray for God's people everywhere to see and reach out to those peoples nearby whose ways of living differ from them enough to cut them off from the regular witness of the Gospel.

·         Pray for God to move among specific people groups who are beyond the reach of the Gospel. Ask God to give to churches world-wide the wisdom to know how to reach them

·         Ask that God would raise up hundreds of thousands of new cross-cultural messengers of the Gospel to be sent out in a variety of roles, by churches around the world (i.e. sending laborers into the harvest fields)

·         Pray a passage of Scripture that has to do with God’s promises toward the world. (like Ps 2:8, 46:10, Ps 67, Ps 86 or 96, Hab 2:14, Rev 5:9)

·         Pray for all current efforts to research and formulate mission strategy, so as to effectively train and deploy a new generation of missionaries.

·         Pray for God to raise up a new movement of "senders" world-wide people who know God has called them to send a new force of cross-cultural witnesses and who embrace that assignment with the same vision and sacrifices as those who go.

-              List taken from IMB “Grow” Bible study material.

I hope you will take a minute to evaluate your personal prayer life. Is it as strong as you want it to be? Think about what hindrances are keep you from praying for the world.  Will you make a plan as to how you are going to incorporate praying for the world in your daily routine? 

If you do, I hope you will share with me about how God speaks to you in your prayer time and how you see Him answering your prayers!

What a busy and Amazing week!

So much has happened in the last week!  I’m sorry if this update is a bit scattered and choppy.  As I am writing this, I am hoping to get to bed before midnight and therefore, I probably won’t take the time to mess with transitions from each subject J  Hope you don’t mind! 

October 11^th was a holiday here in Bashkortostan.  Republic Day is a holiday to celebrate the day that the Declaration of state sovereignty was signed in 1990.  (Side note: this means that the rest of Russia does not have this holiday, so we got a very special experience by living in the Republic of Bashkortostan! J)  It was such a great day!!  We did not have school, some of our transportation was free, we were able to celebrate with our Russian friends and play games at a friend’s apartment, and then go see an AMAZING fireworks show.  This was definitely the best fireworks show I have ever seen!  The fireworks were SO close to us!  You probably would never see an organized fireworks show this close in the States (partially because of safety regulations… )  But because they were so close, it seemed like they covered the entire sky!  It was SO much fun!  This day brought me some much needed emotional rest, and was overall a truly great day! 

We held our bi-weekly cooking/craft class last Wednesday.  We cooked an enchilada casserole and cheesecake brownies.  It was fun and the food was Wonderful!  We had a great time building relationships with the women that came.

Saturday night, Shannon and I were able to see the ballet Swan Lake performed!  The international department at the university helped us get tickets and we saw some of our classmates there.  It was so AMAZING! I absolutely loved it!  I still cannot believe that I was able to see Swan Lake in Russia!  Definitely had a “I can’t believe I live in Russia” moment on this one. 

Shannon and I are planning a trip to Moscow!!  With the HandsOn program, we are allowed 5 vacation days, so we are going to visit Moscow on those days.  I am SO unbelievably excited!!  I have wanted to see Moscow for so long!  We are going to meet up with some of the m’s that are serving there and spend 3 days sightseeing and souvenir shopping.  Shannon and I are planning to visit at least 48 of the 52 Starbucks that are in Moscow. (Side note: Be on the lookout for info about a video that we will be making that will be related to Starbucks!  It is going to be life-changing, I promise!) 

It is beginning to get a bit on the cold side now.  I actually had to break out my heavy coat for the first time a couple of days ago, and this morning we saw snowflakes for the first time! 

Prayer requests:

·         I am feeling a bit sick right now.  I had a slight fever earlier today (though I think that may have lessened by now)

·         Shannon and I would be able to see exactly where God would have us focus our time and energy in serving here

Answered Prayers:

·         Some of you knew that I had been feeling a bit drained and in need of rest.  Thank you so much for your prayers!  They have definitely been answered!  I am feeling much more revived! J

I have another opportunity for any of you to get involved with the work that is going on here.  If you would like to be praying for a specific person or group of people here, I can give you names and a little info about some people so that you can pray more specifically.  Eileen already has connections with people and groups in the States that pray for specific women who she knows here in Ufa.  I can facilitate getting some info and then periodic updates on specific people to you for now and then when I head back to the States, I can get you connected with Eileen so she can keep you updated on the same person(s) or give you info/updates on another person(s).  Just let me know if you are interested!

Forgiveness List and Offensive Prayer

2 blog updates in the same week!! WOW!! :)

Well I am just a few days away from the halfway mark of this semster, and God has taught me so much, but recently He has been teaching me more and more about dealing with trying circumstances.  Trust me, I still have MUCH to learn, but I read a story and a blog by Leslie Ludy a few weeks ago that have helped me tremendously in this area so I thought I would share them with all of you.

First the story: (fyi this is paraphrased so it doesn’t sound quite as eloquent, but the point is still there)

A woman and her husband were celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary and had all of their kids and grandkids over for a party.  One of the grandkids asked this woman what their secret was for such a long-lasting happy marriage.  The woman told the children that when they got married she made a list of 10 things that she would overlook in her husband’s personality and actions.  One of the kids asked if they could see the list.  The woman’s response was “well, I never actually wrote the list down.  Whenever he would do something that could have upset me I would just think ‘well he’s lucky that’s one of the 10 things on my list.’”

-          Applying this concept to each of my relationships has been so helpful for me.  Everytime someone does something that could be hurtful or could upset me, I think “they’re just lucky that is one of the 10 things I already decided to forgive them for.”  This has given me so much peace!  I am able to love those around me so much more because I’m not constantly judging their actions based on how it affects me.  Deciding ahead of time that I will forgive those around me for the things they do that could hurt me has actually lifted a weight off of my shoulders.

Now about the blog by Leslie Ludy:

I posted a link to this blog on Facebook a while back, so some of you may have read it already.  The gist of the blog was that rather than being defensive with our prayer life, when satan is attacking, we should be praying powerfully offensive prayers.  There is nothing satan hates more than people committing to follow Christ.  So, this blog gave the idea that when satan is attacking, rather than praying for God to help us through that particular situation (which is not necessarily a wrong prayer), maybe we should be praying for the salvation of a non-Christian we know.  … Here is a segment of the blog to explain better:

“…we are not defenseless against [satan’s] tactics. Our heroic Prince is on our side, and He is always victorious over our enemy. Our Prince has provided us with many weapons to use against our enemy, and one of the most effective of these weapons is prayer. I’m not talking about just praying defensively, asking our Prince to give us strength to flee from temptation. I’m also talking about praying offensively, asking that our Prince, in His amazing, heroic strength and power, would wreak havoc on the enemy of our souls. There is nothing Satan hates more than seeing a lost sinner come to know Jesus Christ. When our enemy is attacking us, one of the very best ways to hit him below the belt is to pray specifically for unsaved people in our lives to discover Jesus Christ.

…Identify the areas of your life where you are most vulnerable to temptation. Do you struggle with depression? Do you have a weakness in the area of sexual temptation? Whenever Satan tries to pounce on our vulnerable areas, we can use those opportunities to fight back by praying for the salvation of someone we know who is in need of Jesus Christ. It is important that we develop this technique as a habit in our lives rather than just as a one-time attempt. When our enemy sees the consistency with which we use this tactic, he will back off in a hurry, and we just might get to see another life eternally changed in the process! “

-          What a powerful thought this has been for me!  I have been trying to put this into practice daily.  Everytime I begin to feel discouraged or some problem arises (whether big or small) or something someone does begins to get on my nerves more than it should, I am trying to recognized that as an attack from the enemy and fight back by praying for the salvation of a few of the people I’ve met here.  It has been absolutely amazing how quickly my attitude will change in the midst of these circumstances.  Often, I instantly feel peace about the situation and my mood lightens.  And at the same time, I know my God is working on the hearts of several of my close friends.  This has really helped me put my circumstances in the proper perspective! 

P.S. Coming Soon:  a blog about what God is showing me about changing my thinking patterns to better see His heart for the nations!

Crafts, Life, and Giving Options...

On Wednesday of last week, Shannon and I(with Eileen’s help)had several women over to our apartment to fellowship while making some homemade cards.  A group that had come to serve in Ufa in the past had brought a bunch of scrapbooking supplies, and I happen to love scrapbooking and such like things.  So, we decided to use this as a way to build relationships with some of the women here.  It was a very fun evening!  Shannon and I enjoyed hosting and having people over to our apartment.  We are going to try to plan to do something like this every other week.  Right now, we are planning to alternate with a cooking lesson one Wednesday and a craft project the next.  So, we will be cooking something next Wednesday!  (if you have any ideas for an easy but fun craft let me know! J)

School is still going well.  Shannon and I are keeping up with everything very well and we are learning a TON of new words.  We are beginning to learn some grammar rules now and are starting to form sentences.  We can hold a few short conversations with our teachers.  And we are able to understand a lot more of what we hear in everyday Russian conversations.  Thank you to everyone who has been praying about our classes.  This was one of the main things that was stressful for me before coming here, but it has not been a problem at all.  Shannon and I love our teachers and they seem to like us as well. 

We have some awesome friends here!  We just love them so much!!  All of the people we have met so far are all so welcoming and sweet.  We have so much fun hanging out with them and have been able to continue to build relationships with them and share bits and pieces of the Gospel or our testimonies with many of them in one way or another. 

In general, life here is feeling pretty normal.  I am feeling pretty at home here.  I know enough Russian to get around pretty well, we have figured out the bus/tram routes for the main places we need to get to, we have so many friends to hang out with, and we are basically just enjoying our time here.  I am adapting to Russia pretty well I think.  Yes, some cultural differences still bother me, and yes some things I will probably never be able to understand, but God has given me a great feeling of peace in being here.  Walking around, it just feels right to be here.  Yes, I still miss my family and friends (love all of you!!) but for now, I know this is where I am supposed to be and I am loving it so much!

We are almost halfway through our time here.  I cannot believe how fast time has flown by! 

Prayer Requests:

·         Shannon and I are attempting to take pictures that will be used for Soularium sets (http://www.mysoularium.com/)

·         Relationships would be built with people we have already met so that we will be able to share more.

·         New relationships will be built as well.

Answered Prayers:

·         Homesickness has not been a problem thus far

·         School is going very well!

·         Shannon and I have been meeting more and more people

I know of Several options of ways to give to help further the Gospel in this area.  If you are interested, Please let me know and I can give you some more info, but here are a couple of options I have heard about:

There is an orphanage here that has several ministries in Ufa as well as in surrounding villages.  These orphanages have, in the pas,t tried to equip the kids with some sort of skill so that when they leave the orphanage they have a way to make money and won’t end up on the street.  However, since the economic downturn, they have been hurting financially and have had to scale back their ministry options.

Some of the believers and IMB workers here would love to open up a coffee shop here in Ufa that would be run by believers (giving them some steady income).  This coffee shop would hopefully be a place that people would feel comfortable hanging out at and believers could build relationships with those who come in.  They have started setting aside funds to get this coffee shop off the ground, but are a long ways away from having enough.