and some more randoms...

     We still get our drinking water from the village well. On this day these boys had 3 puppies with them- one each for our kids to hold. :)

     The kids are in their swimming suits in the picture above because we discovered there's a lake just FOUR MINUTES away from our house!!  It's man-made (by some tractors that hit a spring) and has been here a few decades.  There are fish in the lake, and lots of people swim here, so we figured it can't be too unhealthy.  This is especially a dream-come-true for me because I find that there are very few hot summer days here, and when there are I dream of a calm place for the kids to swim.  There are several drownings each year in the river because of the current, so this naturally makes me uncomfortable.  And when we go to Lake Baikal, it's about 10-15 degrees colder there (in the air), so we don't have the strong desire to just "jump in" (plus Baikal is practically freezing!).  I had verbalized these things to Leif and then we discovered this lake.  It's one of our gifts from God this summer.  We've been working long days this summer, and on this day we declared it a rest day and called Bruce to join us for a swim.  It was just what we all needed and happened to be the last hot swimming day of the summer.

Ella's son, Wolfy, went swimming, too.  He has his own personal life jacket.

     A very sad part of the summer was saying goodbye to two dear friends on the same day.  Sveta's husband was offered a job in Moscow, and they very quickly accepted and decided to move there.  I took them to the train station to see them off.  We will miss their family very much.

    Our other dear friend, Larisa, got married and will be moving away.  She doesn't return from her honeymoon until after we leave for the States, so we had to say goodbye to her already, too.  This wedding was very sudden, and our kids are crushed.  Larisa is their art teacher, and they can't imagine life without her.  They didn't get to meet her husband or say goodbye as it was when they had the stomach flu, so this was heart-breaking.

     

     Something we've been wanting to do for awhile is make cookies for the neighbors and take them to them.  One evening, we decided that it was the perfect time.  Anneka and I whipped up a few dozen and had fun delivering them (with Ella, Ike, and other neighbor kids).  People were very friendly, and the cookies were well-received.  I met a few people on our street that I didn't yet know.  It seems that our kids already knew everyone!  ;)

     Probably our biggest challenge this summer has been discovering mold in our house (the wood is still not dry).  In all of the places that were covered or had shelves or cupboards up against them, we have been finding mold.  The hugest place was the ceiling- in some rooms on EVERY BOARD.  We spend days tearing apart the ceilings, cutting new boards, treating boards that weren't as bad, scraping, etc, etc.  On one day, Leif and I had been treating all day and we stood, looking up at the ceiling, wondering what to do next.  We prayed for wisdom, and the moment we were done praying, we heard our neighbor, Sasha's voice outside.  He came to help and had an electric sander.  We knew this was from the Lord and felt very encouraged by how He showed his care for us in a difficult situation. 

Leif, up in the rafters, taking out boards.

     ...bringing boards out to treat and coat in antiseptic to prevent future mold.  I was soooo thankful for nice sunny days (not normal for August here!!) for drying the boards.  With the combination of the mold treatment solution and the sunshine, we could see it fading before our eyes.

Katie and Renta came out one day to help with treating boards.  What a blessing!

     Up until last week, this is what Nettie and our bathrooms looked like!  No walls, no doors.  But now we have walls!!  Hooray for progress even in the middle of setbacks!

     I'm so thankful the kids have friends and have been able to play outside, away from the mold and treatments.

     We've had a lot of work, and it's been neat to see the kids pitching in around the house.  On this day I needed to make pizzas for our home group, but I didn't have time to make them.  I asked Anneka if she thought she could do it, and she jumped in with both feet and made them from start to finish, all by herself!  After this, she's been making other meals and desserts for us and for guests.

     We have a ladies' group that we recently started.  Ella is so good with little ones and helped watch after the son of one of the moms.   Two of our neighbors came last week, which was really encouraging.

Our friend, Elaine, sent us Cheerios in a package.  SUCH JOY was in our house!!!

Anneka's my laundry helper, too.  =)

     Ella has been inspired by Anneka's recent cooking.  She found a couple of recipes in a kids' cookbook and has made them for us (scrambled eggs and smoothies).  It's fun to see her joy to help.

      Ella and Ike on a little boat ride on Baikal during our church camping trip

Playing in the sand together!

     Our family is too big for our tent now.  This means Leif and I get our own tent, and our kids slept with their friends.  Such fun for all!

     I hope to still do a blog about our our week of "English Club on Baikal". There was a team of 5 Canadians who came to help us put it on.  We all went out for pozie a few days after the camp to introduce them to this Buryat national food.  There were was lots of laughter over the process of eating them!

      One day, right as Nettie and I were getting ready to tackle more mold treatment on the ceiling beams, this neighbor came to the door with a big bag of cottage cheese.  She wanted to teach us how to make Bovi (Buryat donuts).  While the task-oriented part of me was a bit worried about time, the people-oriented part of me was delighted.  She stayed for almost four hours, and it was a really sweet time with her.  When she learned that I'd be cooking for the team that was putting on a children's day camp the next day, she made over 100 more bovi and she offered to come and help me cook, too.  It was so nice to have her help and company.  Since then, God has been growing our friendship.


     I'll have to get more day camp pictures from Leif.  I snapped this on the day I dropped everyone off.  It was raining, and they had to set up a tarp.  This didn't prevent people from coming, though.  There were over 100 kids who came throughout the week!



     Tuyana and I made lunch for 30 people (day camp workers).

...and we can't forget the kids!

     Ella cares for this little neighbor boy.  She only learned to ride her bike this summer, and yet she totes him around on the back of her bike with ease.  She buys him chocolate at the store, too, with her allowance.  =)  On one day she came back and told me she'd lost her bike.  She couldn't ride up a certain bumpy hill with him on the back, so she got off and walked him home.  She'd layed her bike in the grass, but it wasn't there when she went back for it.  We prayed about it together and started searching.  Then, from a ways off, a lady at the local store was waving us over.  She had taken the bike in to protect it.  While we were there, she introduced us to a 10 year old girl that she thinks would be a good friend for our girls (also an answer to prayer).  And then she said that she and her husband would like to have our family over for tea.  What a delightful surprise and another reminder of God's loving hand in everything.

      We got our ceilings put back together and cleaned the whole upstairs.  But what I forgot was that we still needed to install insulation in the attic!  Leif began getting everything ready for that and the "rain" of sawdust began pouring down!!

Anneka's bed, the day after we'd washed everything so well!!  Ella's bed looked just the same.

     Thankfully, even amidst frustrations, God brings his encouragement.  This week it has been in the form of help from others!  Ella dumped several buckets of sawdust outside after sweeping.

     This week has almost felt like a big work party every day with friends and neighbors.  Here, friends are painting our front door and putting anticeptic on the wood.

      Tuyana has cooked us several meals, and it's so great because she uses up little dabs of things in our refrigerator and freezer that need to be used up before we go.

      We moved the desk to anticeptic the wall in the office, but we were too late!  Mold was there, too!


     So then we took all of the cupboards down in our kitchen.  Yep, more mold.



     Once again, I was feeling discouraged by the setbacks (especially when there is so much we need to do before we go to the States!).  But once again, God brought encouragement in friends.  Adriana and Ioana totally brought organization to our kitchen with makeshift shelves to that we can treat that wall and let it dry out for a long time.  The kids had good friends to play with during all of this.  In one day we got so much accomplished.  I was so tired, so felt so blessed by God and his goodness and provision for us!  I also have to say that Leif is AMAZING!!!  I helped him for part of a day with fiberglass in the attic, and I seriously thought it would take us four days to finish.  It was such a huge job.  But somehow BY HIMSELF the next day, he completed it all!!

      We don't have heating yet, and it's already down into the 40's at night.   We're supposed to get frost tonight.  We enjoy morning cuddles before we get out into the cold house!!

      One night the kids played a prank on Nettie (who is now officially moved next door!)  Anneka made this sign that says "Ella and Ike are here to keep you warm tonight, Nettie".  When Nettie got home, she found Ella and Ike asleep in her bed.  She even contemplated sleeping with them, but there wasn't enough room!  =)  We will all be glad when our heating system is all into place!

 Ike and Bogdan both happened to wear twin shirts on the same day.

     We have a few days of overlap where the Hoffstetters are here after their home service and before we go on ours.  We hosted a welcome breakfast for them (we live near the airport!)  It was so wonderful to see their faces and get a bit of time with them.

randoms

     I want to do a blog about our recent English Club camping trip, but I realized that I have these random pictures on my phone that I want to post first.  Here are our kids in front of the "I Love Ulan-Ude" sign.




     We enjoyed having these two friends come.  They talked with a lot of people from a lot of different churches to find out what is being done already and to learn what kinds of needs there are for reaching the unreached of Siberia.  We tried out a new restaurant downtown together.



       We enjoyed going to a different church with our guests, who gave the message.  I peeked in on the kids and loved seeing them hanging out on the windowsill.



     Our neighbor from our old apartment misses us so much!  She called us two days after we moved and said she felt so sad.  She looked over at a painted fish Ike had made her and she said it looked like it was crying, and then she started crying, too.  We went and visited her a few weeks later, and she had gotten a kitten and named it Ike.  She said she didn't think we'd ever come back, so she thought the cat might keep her company.  She was so happy to see us however, that after a couple of nights of the cat jumping on her in the night, she got rid of it.



     The girls had a piano recital and each did very well.  In this song, Ella played some bells while Anneka played the piano.



     Sveta is an excellent teacher!  Here she is with each of her students and the flowers they all got for her.

     

     Ike had missed his buddy Rostik, as they don't go to our church any more.  Imagine his delight and surprise when Rostik came one week!

     We've known Sasha since he was an early teenager, and now he's married!  It's been so amazing to watch him grow and to become more and more a man of God.

Ella and Ike caught a fly at the wedding in this bottle.

     This summer has been full of challenges, too.  I don't have as many pictures of those because I don't think to pull out my phone and take a picture!  We found mold in our bathroom and had to take apart all of the walls.  Our bathtub was moved into the office and the cabinets into the girls room.  We scrubbed all of the panels to kill the mold and scraped and treated all of the walls.  It was a bit tricky to have no bathtub or washing machine while so dirty (and after camp when we all had the stomach flu)!

     Ike's best friend, Vadim, chose our family to invite to his birthday party.  Here, his dad dressed up as a detective.  It was a really cute and fun party.

They had a friend there who painted the kids' faces.  Ella and Ike chose not to get their faces painted.

     We had our annual church family camp.  The kids went on a special scavenger hunt one day.

     I hadn't wanted to go with all going on this summer, but it was truly a blessing to be there!

     Matthew had to go be in the hospital for an appendectomy.  Ella and Ike made him this sign to bring him cheer.

     We've had lots of people come out to see our house and to ask us questions about our lives and ministry.  This day a team from Krasniarsk came out.

     ... and the leader's name is Jamie!  She's been in Siberia about as long as us, has kids the exact ages as our kids (plus a baby) and we have a lot in common.  It was very fun to meet her!

     Anneka enjoyed a week at kids' camp by  herself.  She won an award for the best hairstyle.  It's hard to tell, but she had a bottle wrapped under her hair.  Her friend from our neighborhood also had a great time!

The week the Krasniarsk team was here we had 30 people at the home group!

     Taking pictures is not Leif's strong suit.  I found this lone picture from his TNT (Training National Trainers) course on his phone.  =)  It was the final course of eight.  They've had one every 6 months for the past 4 years.  It's cool to see the second generation groups that have come out of it and to see how the men have grown in their ability to accurately teach God's Word.