January 31, 2002

Hello to our friends and family!

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying the beginning of a new year.  We've certainly been busy!  We had two weeks off from school, and we used every minute of it.  Christmas here is celebrated on January 7, but for us the holidays went from December 25, right through Russian Christmas. It was a special blessing to have cards from friends and family...and even presents! That added a touch of home and reminded us of all of you who are praying for us.

We took part in a Christmas play at church, and one thing about that was particularly exciting.  The play was about an unsaved grandmother whose granddaughter is praying for her.  The granddaughter's prayers are answered, and the grandmother accepts Christ.  Ira, the girl who played the grandmother, was not a believer when everyone started working on getting the play ready.  We were all praying for her.  Then, before Christmas, she understood the gospel and accepted it during a youth service.  After that, it was especially wonderful to see her act in the play.  Please pray for Ira!

The first week of January we rested some, worked on lessons plans for this term, and spent some time with new friends and old.  Also, we were able to visit an orphanage outside of Moscow with several Russian and American friends. We had a Christmas celebration for the children there, with songs and skits, tea together and presents for them. The personal testimonies of our Russian friends impacted the children as much as anything else. That was a special highlight of our holidays. That particular orphanage has a small, new church started by Russian missionaries very close by. The young pastors there want to visit this orphanage as much as possible.  Please be praying for the kids in the many orphanages here, for the church in that town, for the people who minister to the orphans on a regular basis, and for us to have more opportunities to be involved.

We started back to school on January 14.  I'm still teaching the same after school classes, three days a week to the youngest kids.  Will's schedule has changed completely, though.  He's now teaching various subjects to fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth grade classes.  (As he says,"My unprofessional teaching skills are being put to the test of a professional work load...and barely holding up!")  All his new classes are a direct answer to our prayers, and we're very grateful for them, but they're also hard at times. Working so closely with these teachers and children, as wonderful as so many of them are, just brings home the realization of how spiritually needy each and every person is without God.  At times that we truly feel that we are in a "dry and thirsty land where there is no water."  It's not that things are so different in the States, but most of us can gloss it over or just overlook the hurts and needs of so many around us (at least more easily than here). We desperately need the Lord's grace and mercy to be a light in the darkness each and every day.  Please keep praying for both as we teach and live here, and especially for Will, with his full schedule!

We're continuing to be as involved as we can at Resurrection Church.  I'm still working in the preschool Sunday school class, and thoroughly enjoying it.  I'm also getting to where I know most of the faces and many of the names of the people and feel at home at church, and that's a special blessing.  Will sings in the choir, and spends quite a bit of time practicing for that. He has also volunteered, or been volunteered, to preach at the next youth service. This has been something he has wanted to do, and yet not felt comfortable trying because of the difficulty of communicating thoughts and ideas, as well as the words needed to express them!  We have been here long enough for him to be more active speaking and sharing in the church services.  Pray that he can make the most of this opportunity and speak as clearly as possible.

Please pray for us as we desire to be faithful to the opportunities the Lord gives us here, especially in developing closer relationships with friends.  There are so many people that we could get know better and minister to in so many ways: our landlord, teaching colleagues, youth at church, old friends of Will's, and many others.  One particular person you could pray for is our friend Hans. We met him in a market a while back, and Will kept in touch with him, trying to help him find an apartment in this area. One night in December we got a call from him, asking if he could stay with us overnight.  He had to leave the one-room apartment he was sharing with someone else temporarily.  Temporarily turned out to be three days or so.  It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know Hans and meet a basic need for him. He is a fascinating man of German-Turkish descent, a nominal Muslim, and a true entrepreneur.  We were able to meet his Russian wife, learn about Turkish culture, pick up a few words of German, discuss Islam and Christianity...and of course, compare notes on living in Russia!  =) Please pray for our continued friendship with Hans and his wife, Oksana. They don't know many people outside of business contacts and don't live too far from us now.

It's hard to believe that our first anniversary is coming up soon and almost half of our first year in Russia has already gone by.  In many ways this year is an experimental one.  Lately we've been praying, thinking, and talking about what we're learning and where we should go from here.  Please pray with us for wisdom and direction.  Several specific things that we're thinking about are taking some time for formal language study; possibly moving away from teaching so much and into more full-time, "traditional" ministry; and just looking at different possibilities that could be open to us. There's nothing definite or concrete yet, but we do want to be open to whatever. There are so very many opportunities here.  We might be back at the same school next year, or we might be doing something completely different. It is exciting to say with the Psalmist, "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me and Your right hand shall hold me."  It is a wonderful blessing to know that in whatever we end up doing, the Lord will lead and protect and provide for us.