Hope

     When people start shoveling snow off of roofs, there is HOPE that it will reach above freezing at some point in the next few weeks.  A lady at the swimming pool reprimanded me the other day for not wearing 3 layers of pants.  I told her that I was tired of wearing all of the clothes and that I had hope that it would be spring soon.  Basically, her reply was, "Oh, no, no, honey.  It's going to be winter for a LONG time yet".  But I saw the snow/roof shoveling.  So I can remove a layer.  I have hope.

Four Years Old!

     Our Ike is 4!  For his birthday we went to an indoor play place at a mall in Ulan Ude.  He invited his family and his buddy, Bogdan (and Bogdan's sister and mom).  The kids had a great time running around and playing.

Ike LOVES his friend Bogdan!

     After the play place, each person could choose 4 things that they did at the arcade.  Here they were hitting groundhogs.

... and we all had a wild and wonderful ride on the bumper cars!

     After all of the fun playing we headed over the food court for lunch.

Ike's lunch of choice was chicken nuggets, fries, and berry juice.

     The day before the party, Ike told me he wanted a Spiderman cake.  I found food coloring here in Ulan Ude (the first time ever!) and Leif and I made the cake together after the kids went to bed.  

     ... And as an extra special surprise, there was this transformer guy who greeted Ike on our way out of the building.  He must have known it was Ike's birthday!  ;)  

     Ike, we love you so much!  You are so sweet and funny.  We love how much you talk and the wonderful way you describe things with your words.  We also love how busy you are.  It is so fun to watch you creating and playing and putting things together.  You are so affectionate with your hugs and kisses and "I love you"'s . What a gift you are to us!  We thank God for giving us you!

Meat For Sale, Day of Prayer, and Other Snippets...

      I love how people pull up to the side of the road with their trunks full of meat for sale.  Ike and I were out the other day and bought a beef roast.  It didn't look that big when I bought it because it was small in comparison to the other slabs of meat, but when I brought it home to put it in the freezer, I realized it was HUGE!  It's nice to buy meat in the winter because we can be pretty sure it's safe/fresh.  It's also so nice to buy from local people, and to know that there aren't hormones or chemicals added.

 

     This weekend we had our annual team day of prayer.  We had times of worship and praying both inside and outside for each other, Buryatia, and also other fields of ministry around the world.  Daniela prepared songs that the kids were familiar with from the Thailand Conference.  They were so excited to sing and to do the motions to these special praise songs!

      This picture is a little washed out from the light coming in the window, but we enjoyed meals together during this day.  We have a really great team and praise God for one another!

      The girls have recently begun piano lessons, complete with Music Theory classes.  Their teacher is excellent and comes right to our home!  We are having a trial run for a month, but I think we'll continue because the girls are really liking it.  This week, we had to feed the girls at the beginning of their lesson because Anneka had been traveling (walking far in the cold) to a local school to put on a skit.  She got home just in time to start her lesson.  Here, Sveta was teaching them to write music notes on a staff.

     Leif has had a lot of late night Skype meetings this week.  To combine our time zone with people in western Russia and in Canada/America, it often means meetings until after midnight.  He's had a good attitude about it.  I don't think I could sit that long in front of the screen!  I took this picture through the glass door, so as not to disturb him.  =)

     Two weeks ago, we had a women's retreat with some materials that Martina was recently given on "soul care" for women.  We had a lot of time to pray, reflect, read, and go through questions.  We also had good times of fellowship.  It was nice because we were able to to do it before Nettie headed back to the States and right when Renata came back (there was only about a 6 day window there).  Leif was leading the Buryat Partnership that day and took all three kids with him.  It was also really cold that day!  (It's always quite the process to bundle everyone to go outside). He's pretty amazing!

     There are certain people who bring out the sillies in our kids.  Pastor Sasha is one of them.


     ...and Art is another.  Art is very creative and artistic.  He often makes fun animals out of paper and gives them to the kids.  They are their treasures!

     We've had a new boy and his mom come to our English Club a couple of weeks.  I got to teach him an English lesson one week.  He's blind, and he is so smart!  It was very fascinating to me to watch him learn and memorize new words and exceptions to rules in the English language. It was also a good challenge for me to think of ways to teach with only using sounds and the sense of touch.   I told him that I think God has given him a gift of language.  I'm not sure if he comes from a believing family or not.  But he is special, and I can see the Lord using him in amazing ways!

     My new favorite thing I'm a part of is an English discussion group with Christian ladies from different churches.  This picture was taken from the first week, but more ladies are coming.  I really love these ladies and feel very connected with them.  Sveta has three young kids, so Ike comes with me and likes to play with them.  It's good for my Russian, too, because they'll ask me how to say things and I'll discover more conversational ways of saying things in Russian that I had previously said more awkwardly.  These ladies like to talk about things that I like to talk about and have very interesting lives.  They also all want to grow, and we shared what's on our hearts and prayed together.  We each said that we felt joy in our hearts after meeting together!  =)  It will be interesting to see what becomes of this group.  For now it's just a really encouraging time that fills me up to have energy for other things.