One Thing...

And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one word of them has failed. --Joshua 23:14

Joshua followed this reminder with a warning, that just as all the good things had come to pass according to the Lord's promises, all the bad would come to pass for their disobedience and adultery.  If we indeed remember the one thing--that none of the Lord's good promises will ever fail us--then our hearts will be less likely to disobey and turn away from God.  I was reminded by a dear brother in the Lord this morning that our standing before the Lord never changes!  If we could only walk in that truth all the time, always knowing, never doubting, never deceived, never discouraged, and always full of the joy of the Lord!  Perhaps we can...  

The psalmist says, "One thing I have desired of the LORD, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD All the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD, And to inquire in His temple." --Psalm 27:4

I love that the psalmist here is clear that we are able to behold the beauty of the Lord daily, to dwell with Him every day, not just sometimes, but "all the days of my life!" His love for us is permanent, and He is always available, even when our love for Him is so fickle.  How great is our God?  When I find that I have been desiring anything other than the Lord (even if that something is answers or His will for my life), I need to simply repent, go boldly to His throne of grace, behold His beauty, and remember the "One thing" I should desire.

Jesus also affirms all this, in addressing Martha's accusations against her sister, "...One thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her." --Luke 10:42

Isn't it amazing to think of how true it is that Mary's choice could never be taken away from her?  No matter what is happening in our lives, no matter how lost we feel, no matter how overwhelmed our hearts may get, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ!  When we don't know the answers, when we don't feel the love, when we are broken down and empty, we need to recognize that there is nothing to keep us--ever--from coming to Jesus and sitting at His feet!  Even better, Hebrews 4:15 reminds us that He even understands all of what we go through.  What a wonderful High Priest we have: One that was willing to set aside all He had to come here and get dirty, be despised, and pay the ultimate price for my sins...and all for what?  One thing: that I (and you!) may spend eternity (starting today) with Him.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. --Romans 8:38-39

Update: Our house and our rental house have been on the market for a couple of months now, but nothing seems to be happening.  Please pray for us during this time of waiting...that we would simply seek to sit at the feet of Jesus, the one thing that's needed.  Thank you all for your prayers.

Moscow, Day 1 (cont.)

Well, I said I would write again soon, but it appears that I've been a little sidetracked lately.  Blogging consistently is actually a very difficult thing...it seems to be yet one more commitment that is difficult to make time for!  Anyway, my apologies for keeping you all waiting for over two months for the continuation on this one!  Here's the rest of the story for our first day in Moscow. Don't worry, the memories live on strong in our minds so we'll still be able to tell you the rest of the story... :)  We pray you are all doing well.

Building where ICF meets on Sundays

Our first stop on the trip into Moscow that first day (besides the bathroom break at McDonalds!), was at ICF (International Christian Fellowship).  Of course the building looked nothing like a church, but after we went past the security guards and made our way up to the third floor, we found ourselves walking into a pretty good-sized auditorium.  We arrived a few minutes late for service, but were there for most of the worship and sermon.  Overall, the service was much like a typical evangelical church service in America, not surprisingly since many of the people attending and serving were Americans!  In fact, the elder that gave the sermon that day was also from South Dakota...can you believe it?!?  There we also met people from Ireland, Australia, and a former CNN news correspondent returning from Afghanistan who ended up joining us for the rest of the afternoon.  

Beautiful decor, great food, all at a place called "Rake"!

We enjoyed a delicious lunch at a place called "грабли" (gra`-blay), which we came to find out means "rake" in English!  Interesting name...all I could figure is that it had something to do with being garden fresh food (which it was!), or maybe that it "raked" you in, or possibly they were hoping to "rake" in some cash (although it was quite a bit cheaper than the airport meal we had!).  It was very elegantly decorated, with one floor serving all kinds of different foods cafeteria-style, and two floors of dining above that.  It was an exercise in looking for what appeared "safe" for us, and then pointing and hoping the servers picked the right thing, as we couldn't read any of the signs, and none of the servers could speak English!

Typical building...outside

Not-so-typical...inside!

After lunch we walked towards the main attraction in Moscow, Red Square.  But along the way, we stopped by the apartment where Francis (our new friend, the former CNN correspondent) was staying.  That was very interesting to us too.  What appeared on the outside to be a very normal, simple-looking building, turned out to be very "not-normal" on the inside!  Her friend had bought the flat about 12 years ago for about $1 million.  Most likely, it was a few Soviet-era apartments that had been combined into one and beautifully remodeled.  I was a little surprised to notice that it wasn't the carefully crafted, everything-done-by-hand kind of remodeling job, but rather a recent, American-style remodeling job, complete with laminate flooring.  Don't get me wrong though, it was far and away the most lavishly decorated home we witnessed on our trip...

The north entrance into Red Square

The mall that forms one border of Red Square

Lenin's Tomb...the Kremlin in the background

Selling souvenirs in the rain outside Red Square

The rows of souvenir stands just outside the square, and the brightly-colored ice rink inside Red Square seemed to sharply contrast the seriousness of the place.

I guess that's one thing we noticed about the culture: you just don't see much public "goofing around" like you might here in the U.S.  Everyone seemed very busy, and always seemed to be moving with purpose.  Even in the downtime (on the metro, train, etc.) people seemed to dive right into reading on an e-reader or something.  However, I do recognize that my perspective on all this is probably limited.  We aren't familiar with big cities...maybe they are much the same in the U.S.?  We also didn't speak the language, so maybe they were joking and goofing around more than we thought, without us even knowing it!  After all, everyone likes to have fun, and people are the same all over the world, right?  

Since coming home, I've noticed more of that here too.  We all have our lives, our habits, our comfort zones, and different levels of willingness to be stretched out of that.


Lord please give us understanding of others, and help us to see them with Your eyes, rather than with our eyes which so often see nothing but differences and difficulties.  Your eyes always look upon all of us with love.

Moscow, Day 1

I suppose it's a given: if you are going to travel to Russia, you can't leave without seeing Moscow!  This city of somewhere between 11-15 million people is big, especially to us li'l ole Midwesterners!  We ventured into town on Sunday with Natasha as our guide.  Our plan was to attend church at International Christian Fellowship (ICF) because it was right near the center of the city, and they had service in English!  All the Calvary Chapels around Moscow have service in Russian only. We were already feeling the effects of not being able to understand or talk to others...the greatest cultural barrier (in my mind).

Train station at Snegiri

The journey began with a 25-minute walk to the train station from the dorm.  The train ride cost about $3.50 per person (100 rub) round-trip, and took about 35 minutes each way.  The trains weren't too full on Sunday (not so on other days!).  We also began to notice that Russians typically keep to themselves.  In fact, even eye contact with strangers was scarce, and if they were "caught" looking at the Americans, they quickly looked away. 

Lady shoveling snow at McDonalds

After exiting the train, we needed to make a quick bathroom break at the McDonalds.  It was the only place in the area with a free public restroom!  It also might have been the cleanest McDonalds I've ever been too!  It was snowing out, so there was a lady clearing the sidewalk outside, and a couple more mopping up after almost every customer would walk inside with dirty snow on their shoes!  

Into the Moscow metro

A little intimidating...

 

We backtracked a couple blocks and descended into the metro station.  The metro system in Moscow is amazing!  We aren't well traveled as far as larger cities around the world (or even the US for that matter), so we were pretty amazed at what we saw under the streets of Moscow.  There were giant escalators that seemed far steeper than normal, and it seemed as though they were carrying us five or six stories deeper underground.  

The longest escalator I ever saw...

Every station we saw had unique decor (different types of stone construction, different carvings in the walls, different layout and design). 

Ornate carvings inside the metro system

Everyone staring at nothing, reading or looking at smart phones on the metro

I'll post more about Moscow soon...

Apologies...

Dear Family,

I just wanted to apologize for the extended delay on updating the blog about the trip!  We had high hopes of updating as we went along, but it seemed internet access was always agonizingly slow or non-existent at the moments we had time.  As for the almost two weeks we've been home now, we don't have that excuse!  We still haven't finished sorting through the hundreds upon hundreds of pictures we took, and we still haven't sorted through all the things in our hearts and our brains in an effort to be able to relay the stories back to you!

I would ask for your prayers.  We've discovered it is a difficult thing returning from a trip like this, where we've learned so much, but yet know so little.  Of course we also recognize the flesh is weak and the enemy has been working hard at discouraging us from what the Lord wants for us.  Right now, I would just ask that you pray for us for strength through this time...the time of waiting and working towards next steps. 

I hope to post more about the trip soon...very soon!

Thanks for caring and thanks for praying.

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers.  --1 Thes 1:2

Snegiri

As you might have guessed, and as we should have known, the trip so far has been a whirlwind!  Our time seems to fly by, and each day we thought we would have plenty of time to pause, reflect, and write, always seems to be over before we know it.  Overall, we have been very well.  We are beginning to be able to read the words (some of them), pick sounds out of the spoken language (although not enough to do us any good yet!), and overall we have felt very welcomed and safe.  The Russian culture is definitely different: much more direct, no-nonsense, and possibly even impolite (from our American perspective). 

Our first walk to the grocery store

During our first visit to the grocery in the village where we stayed outside Moscow, a man actually took my shoulders and moved me to the side as we debated over what kind of milk (or rather, which bottle was actually milk) to buy!  He wasn’t rough or rude about it, but I think he just realized we were going to be a minute, and that I wouldn’t understand anyway if he had asked me to move.  

The market...not quite a Hy-Vee!

In and around Moscow, everyone is definitely in a hurry.  I don’t think you can get away from that in any culture when you put 15 million people together!  We definitely aren't used to that, being from South Dakota.  In fact, when we tell people here the size of our city, and that our whole state only has 800,000 people, it kind of blows their mind!  Even with all the hustle and bustle (we'll tell more about Moscow next post), we have been well taken care of every step of the way.  God is good.  We are so thankful for the Body of Christ…all over the world!

The "Boys' Dorm"

Top floor - "The Office"

The CCCPM dorm is pretty cool...it was actually built as a hotel in this little village outside Moscow, back when it was illegal to build a large house.  You can see that many of the houses in the village started out as very small, but have since been added to, many of them multiple times!  Like I said earlier, the people are very no-nonsense, and the buildings show it.  Whatever works is what they do.  

The village from the top floor of the dorm

Train station at Snegiri

There's an electric train that runs from the village every 45 minutes or so, that costs about $3.50 per person, but it will take you into the city pretty quickly compared to driving.  I guess the dorm is about a 20-minute walk from the train station (and the grocery store), and that is about as inconvenient as you can get around here.  Apparently many of the people in the village now are weekenders that want to get out of the city regularly, so most of them can afford cars.  Still, there always seem to be people walking on the roads, carrying groceries or walking dogs.  We have walked more in the few days here than we probably did in the last couple months back home!  It's been good though, and I think our bodies are taking it pretty well. Not too sore of feet, not too much pain, not too bad for lazy Americans!

Crystal cooking in the dorm kitchen

She made me a birthday cake from scratch!  It was great...

Village house on the way to the market

Car buried in snow...old water tower in the background

Arrival

Now that we finally have a moment to stop and think, we'll back up a few days and try to fill you in on the journey so far...starting with the beginning of course!

Domodedovo Airport, Moscow, Russia

The flights over were rather uneventful.  Arriving in Moscow proved to be quite interesting however.  We immediately felt lost as we were unable to read a single sign in the Moscow airport, Domodedovo (DME). 

More of DME

Due to a good tailwind, we arrived almost an hour early, which immediately caused us to wonder if our contact here would be there yet.  After following the crowds to the baggage claim and then through customs, which really went quite smoothly, we found ourselves standing among a crowd in Russia looking for a tall, young man named Anton.  Trouble was, everyone was tall, most of them were young men, and I suspect several of them were named Anton!  We just camped out off to the side of the crowds, pulled out the laptop and went to the CCCPM website, and looked for a picture of Anton (just to be sure we didn’t get in a vehicle with the wrong Anton!).  Almost as soon as we found his picture, he came walking right by us! 

Does this (x5) look like a $60 lunch?

After exchanging some money, spending almost $60 on lunch at the airport (yikes!), we, well actually Anton, found our taxi driver outside and began the almost two hour drive towards the village of Snegiri (which is named for the beautiful little birds that live there).  The DME airport is on the southeast edge of Moscow, and Snegiri is on the northwest outskirts, in case you were wondering about the two hour drive.

The drive was long, and we pretty much sat in the back of the "marshrutka" and tried to stay awake!  Anton isn't real confident with his English, and he and the driver appeared to be good friends. We've definitely noticed that not many people here speak English at all, and even many of those that do have some difficulty with it. 

Seems like they use tractors alot for snow removal, and drive them down the freeway!

Somewhere along the drive, we noticed it was snowing, and it seems to have snowed some just about every day since we have been here.  I'll close out for now with some more pictures of the scenery along the way...

A Tale of Three Cities

Please be in prayer specifically for these three cities as we journey across Russia for the first time (see the map below for a visual reference):

• Moscow - Capital and largest city (11.5 million people)
• Novosibirsk - Largest city in Siberia (1.5 million people)
• Irkutsk - Siberian city near Lake Baikal (600,000 people)

Pray the Lord would set up divine appointments...things only He can do, and that we would be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit (so as not to miss any of these appointments!).  Pray He would show us and teach us much about the people and this country.  Pray He would give us safe travel and favor with the government and officials in each place.  Here's the map showing our plane and train routes across this vast country:

We will attempt to keep you posted as we journey, and look forward to see what the Lord will do through your prayers.  Thank you all for praying.