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.

Getting Close

It seems every time I write a title, I think of another meaning to the words!  When I typed "Getting Close" above, of course I meant that we are getting close to our departure date.  When I started to type though, another meaning popped into my head: getting close to the Lord.  We are at the end of the preparation time for this trip, and honestly, I don't feel very prepared!  I only know a few words in Russian, we don't have a very solid itinerary of activities, and I know I need to pray more.  Work has been as busy as ever (go figure!), there have been some cool things happening with the children's ministry at church, and there is always a list of things to do around here (and even some projects elsewhere).  

Basically, I've not been able to focus on this trip as much as I would have liked.  But you know what?  That's the story of my life.  I know I need to learn to say no more often, let some things go, and spend more "Mary" time at the feet of Jesus.  I had a wonderful conversation with a brother at the church last week, where he said something that struck me: "We all seem to be able to handle different levels of 'busyness'."  My life is busy, and this next little while will be no exception as we finish preparing for this trip.  However, I think the Lord created me this way, and even if I find myself down a side road He didn't necessarily intend, He always is willing to take me back as I turn around.  

In the midst of work this morning, I paused for a moment because I realized there was a number that kept popping up lately: 360.  I asked the Lord what it meant, and He led me to Hebrews 10:36 (36 x 10 = 360...I know, I'm a geek). I shared this with my wife, and she thought it meant that we are just going in circles! :)

For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: "For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him." --Hebrews 10:36-38

For yet a little while...  Lord us help us remember that all of this life is very temporary, and of all we do, only what's done for You will remain.  Help us to draw close, and stay close to You.