Happy Father's Day!

We celebrated a nice Father's Day today. Anneka and I let Leif sleep in while we made him breakfast. Then we went and cuddled with him, while Anneka gave him a present- the book "Daddy and Me". They had a great time reading it together.


Leif shared from Malachi at church today, as our pastor was out of town. He and Anneka dressed in their Buryat attire. He did a really good job, and it seemed like people were following along (some were rapidly taking notes).



After Anneka's nap, they had a great time playing together- building a fort in the living room. Later we all went outside to the playground (the weather turned nice again this evening!)

Leif is such a good Dad to Anneka. On days when he knows he'll be gone until after she goes to bed, he gets up early with her just so that he'll have time to play with her. He participates fully in every way- from changing her diapers to feeding her meals to playing with her. I love to watch them enjoy each other. Anneka always like to keep tabs on her papa... it's important to know where he is at all times.

The Wickers gave us these pictures from last week when we went to Baikal, and I love them:


Leif is a comforting presence if Anneka is sad or scared.



He's always introducing her to new adventures and encouraging her to grow in all kinds of ways.



And he's always nice to just sit and be with.

Leif and I are so blessed to have wonderful fathers who invested in us and did fun things with us growing up. They gave us both discipline and love and are great friends now. We also have wonderful grandfathers who have passed on a legacy of loving God. We love each of you so much!

Snow and a Curious Plant

It's June 19th and we awoke to snow today. It's all melted now, though. We anticipate nice weather again soon!

Last night the Wickers took all of the SEND kids for a sleepover (Anneka just stayed for the evening). Leif and I went on a date and also plant shopping. I meant to ask the florist if a certain plant was "high-maintenance", but instead I asked if it was "curious". She gave me the funniest look.

A Trip To The Dentist (part way, anyways)

I've had a tooth that's hurt on and off for awhile. When it hurts, I think "I should go to the dentist". It'll be awhile until we're back in the States again and it's not good to let that sort of thing go. But just about when I'm about to actually go and do it, the pain goes away. I'm definitely a chicken when it comes to going to the dentist here. It's WAY cheaper than in the States (a definite plus), but I see far too many people with gold teeth, that it makes me want to steer clear. Also, I've asked some of my friends here about the dentist and I've heard everything from "I have a great dentist and he doesn't even use an anesthetic" to stories about cutting nerves. I definitely want an anesthetic!! And I'd like to keep my nerves! I decided that the trick was finding the right dentist. Inka found one that is she thinks is great- she just doesn't do X-rays. Yesterday I decided that I would go and get an X-ray at the dentist downtown and then I could take it to this other dentist. Inka gave me instructions on where to go.



Once we arrived, they had these little booties for sale that we used to cover our feet. There were many people waiting to see the dentist, and most of them looked as though they were in a lot of pain (holding ice packs on their cheeks, etc) And there was loud, constant drilling. I finally found the right room and found which person I was behind in line. I had Anneka with me and realized, "She can't go into the X-ray room with me!" I just started praying about this, when I was called into the room. A nice babushka volunteered to watch Anneka. Hooray! However, it wasn't so wonderful for Anneka. She cried SO hard, as though I'd deserted her. Thankfully the X-ray took only 3 minutes. The lady had me hold the little film-thing up against my tooth with my thumb and she had me hold the X-ray machine up against my face with the other hand. Then she wrote me a paper that I took (now with a sniffling Anneka) to a room to pay and then I returned to pick up my X-ray. It was only 68 rubles- a little over $2!!! Now I just have to get up the gumption to go to the real dentist!

This 'N That

Last week our whole team met for a day of vision casting and planning for ministry here in Buryatia. It was really encouraging to reflect upon what God has done and to have hope for Him to do amazing things in the future. While we were meeting, Matthew and Heidi watched Anneka and the Kerin kids. They had a fun day together, playing outside and making creations out of their snacks.



Anneka loves to hang out on the balcony (always supervised, of course). I love to watch her watch others.

I realize that most of my pictures revolve around Anneka. This is for a number of reasons:
1. This is how I spend the majority of my time- with her! I see being a wife and mom as the most important things that I can be doing right now. Even in a ministry sense, I know that God is a light through our family as many people don't have role models.
2. We don't usually take our camera to the things that happen every week (because we've already taken pics in the past, we don't think of it, etc.)
3. Our families want to see pictures of her!
So, sorry if it's overkill. =)



I taught Anneka last week how to blow the seeds out of a dandelion. She loved it! I'm all about spreading dandelions here. Flowers are few and far between and these yellow flowers are always a welcome sight!



Our neighborhood has SEVERAL sandboxes (well, "dirt boxes") for kids. I love it. It's so perfect for Anneka's age right now. She likes it when other kids are in the dirt with her.

My friend, Erin, sent us an awesome care package that we received last week. This Pampered Chef wooden spoon was inside, and I'm so excited to use it! The funny thing, though, is that Anneka thinks it's HERS. She wants to eat her cereal with it, use it as a drum stick, uses it to organize things, etc. I've washed it several times, but each time I take it out of the drying rack to put it away, she spots it and asks to play with it. I need to remember to hide it the next time she's napping so that I can try it out!!

Birthday Party At The Lake

It was SUCH a nice day yesterday, and the Wickers invited us to go with them to Lake Baikal and celebrate Heidi's birthday. It was about 20 degrees cooler at the lake, but it was still wonderful. I made us ridiculous hats with our pictures and little sayings to Heidi on them to add to the festivities.



We stopped for a potty break, and Anneka enjoyed walking along the road. She loved being outside all day!



At the beginning of July we'll be back at Lake Baikal for a camp. I think it'll be really fun. I'm already praying for good weather, though. We'll be at a place that has NOTHING except for trees and our tents. If it's rainy, it could be pretty miserable. But if the weather is nice, it will be delightful.


For lunch, we had shashleek. It's really popular here in Siberia... it's marinated pork that's roasted on a skewer. Mmmmm!


Happy birthday, Heidi! Thanks for such a fun day and for letting us celebrate with you!

Ten Years Ago

I found this picture the other day and marveled that it was taken almost TEN YEARS ago!! That makes me feel so old. This was before Leif and I were dating. We were at a banquet at Disney World with a group of friends and decided to play in the fountain afterwards. I'm so thankful for these past ten years. I've been blessed with the world's best husband and such a sweet little daughter.

When I look at this picture in ten more years (which will be the day after tomorrow) I'll really feel old!

A Morning At The River

A bunch of us spent the morning at the river. It was SUCH a nice day. I should've brought Anneka's swimming suit! She got her feet wet immediately, so I just let her wade in with her shoes on (and later with them off).




A little clip of Anneka and Heidi with water and rocks... two of the worlds' best elements.

I'd write more, but we're off on a date night!

Varvara

Our friends Valia and Sergei had a new baby a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Varvara. Here she is!

Contextualization!?!

"Con-text-tu-al-iz-ation, I learned a new word for something I was already trying to do," said a man from on of the native people groups of Siberia. The word was difficult to say, but the idea was so freeing for the people that came to the conference. As you all know we are serving here in Russia because we have a heart to see all peoples know and love and praise the one, wonderful and amazing God. We have a special place in our heart for the Buryat people on whose land we live now. Living in Buryatia we see an amazing mix of the Buryat culture and the Russian culture as well as other groups of people that are represented here. We believe that God is praised best when He is praised in the unique way that people from each culture can do that. The worship of God comes from the context in which that worship comes from. In other words, Americans worship God in the unique way Americans do, Russians in the unique way Russians do and Buryats in the unique way Buryats do. The problem is that as we share the love of God we sometimes bring our cultural baggage with us and make people think that they need to act just like us and use the forms we use to love God instead of just sharing the principles of loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and letting that be expressed within the local context. Unfortunately all to often because of this, peoples like the Buryats are afraid that they have to give up all their culture, and in that all their identity, and become like Europeans to be in the church. This week our conference brought up questions about how we can help the different peoples of Siberia understand how to take what God has given them in their culture (in their context), to worship the God that made and loves them, and to think through ways of better passing on the good news that God loves all people in a way that makes sense to each person that hears this good news. It was great to think through these issues with different people from all of Russia. I was particularly blessed to have the pastor of the church I work with at the conference, and have some opportunity to talk and think through this issue with him as we look at making our church a church that blesses the Buryat people. We really feel like there will be a greater unity as people understand who they are and come together in love with their differences.


One great part of the conference is that we put on a festival of ethnic Christian music. There were people for many different regions of Russia that shared their own ethnic music in praise to God. It was a wonderful celebration and so beautiful to see and hear some of the different ways people are praising God here in Siberia.


One highlight was to see these two men who are brothers from the Altai region of Russia. Both brothers have been blessed with songs of their own for praising God, and one is even using throat singing. This is something that Jami and I have dreamed about, especially because of her heart for the Tuvan people (famous for throat singing), among whom she lived for a year, but had not heard yet.

Anna/Anya

Whenever Anneka talks about herself, she says Anya or Anna. These are the Russian forms of her name, and they're easier to say. We like both.

Around the Apartment

My friend, Rachel, has posted a few pictures on her blog of her daughter at the playground in the States . Each time, I marvel at how clean and safe everything looks! The slides have wide, shallow steps leading up to them with enclosed railings and the slides themselves have sides so that you can't fly off the side. Here, the ladder to the slide is just that- a ladder. And if you don't watch, your kid can go flying off the side. I hope it's okay, Rachel, I just HAD to post a picture to show the difference....



It's a strange phenomenon here because kids really are honored. The local grandmothers are always watching out for the kids of the neighborhood. There are several little playgrounds within sight of our building. The equipment in these playgrounds is freshly painted every year and there are people who have the job of cleaning the grounds frequently. BUT the paint fades and chips quickly and there is broken glass EVERYWHERE. This is no exaggeration. Yesterday, Anneka found a 2 liter beer bottle that had a little beer left in it. It got all over her hands before she proceeded to pick up some garbage. Yuck. But thankfully she's updated on her tetanus shot and I figure this is all just really good for her immune system. And there are a lot fewer creepy things that happen to kids in Russia (abductions, etc)... so I suppose I'll take broken glass over that.




Anneka LOVES books and she LOVES Inka. Combine the two together and she is in heaven. Anneka calls Inka "Itty". I think it's such a cute name for her.



Today I was in the living room with Anneka and all of a sudden she left, as though she was on a mission. A couple of minutes later, she returned with her arms full of clean, wet laundry for me to hang out to dry. Apparently the wash cycle had ended, but I hadn't noticed. It's a good thing she keeps track of these things for me!

She's also very into choosing what she wants to wear and layering with strange combinations. She got some Dora pajamas in the mail from her great grandparents and she wore them almost all day over her clothes.




Last week it was raining and I was trying to think of a fun activity for Anneka. I thought, "she likes water and she's fascinated with money. Why not put the two together?" She was so enthralled that she played for an hour with the coins. I had a little vinegar in the water to act as a cleaning agent. We sorted coins by size and color and number.

I really don't like kopecs. These are the Russian coins that are smaller than a ruble. It takes 100 kopecs to equal a ruble and a ruble is only worth about 3 cents. So a kopec is worth .03 cents! I don't even understand why they're still in circulation. Sometimes I'll feel like I have so much change (and I do) and it is worth nothing. Yesterday Leif picked up money on his way to a conference about Shamanism. I didn't want to go to an ATM also since he'd be home that night with money, so I made it a challenge to pay for everything with change. Anneka and I made two trips to the store and a trip downtown on the bus and we used up SO many kopecs. It was wonderful!!



I recently washed all of our winter stuff (hats, gloves, scarves) and I hid away the things that are too small for Anneka. She found the hats, though, and has been wearing them around. It's warm now, so her head gets all sweaty (I'll have to re-wash them). She loves to wear hats. And whenever we're on the bus, I'll take her hat off if it's hot and she always cries because she really wants to keep wearing her hat. Yesterday it was about 80 degrees outside and the heat was ON on the bus (right by our feet) and she still wanted to wear her hat. Silly girl.

Cleaner or Dirtier?

It's pipe-fixing season. This means that for much of the summer we won't have hot water... and when we do, it looks like this. I wonder if Anneka is cleaner or dirtier after her bath? Either way, we're thankful for hot water right now!

He didn't look like an animal this time.

Leif got his hair cut last week, and Anneka and I went with him as a little "field trip". I was all ready to take a poll and see which animal you all thought Leif looked like this time, but he didn't look like an animal! I was so disappointed. Maybe next time!!

The Potato Lady

I love it when the potato lady comes to our neighborhood. Potatoes are so heavy to get at the grocery store and lug home. She sits out there all day and looks bored. Anneka and I wave at her when we go outside to play and she smiles. I asked Leif to take a picture this week when I went out to make a purchase. Right now she's selling last years potatoes, so they're really cheap- about 15 cents a pound. You can't beat that!

Making Muffins

Anneka helped me make banana muffins today. She put all of the paper liners neatly into the cups all by herself. I only needed to show her how to do the first one.

Leif has put up Buryat vocabulary words all over the kitchen to help with learning them. You can see some of them on the wall here. But they're on food items, cupboards, the refrigerator, etc, etc. Today Anneka said her first Buryat word: "hoon" (milk)




After Anneka got all of the liners in there, she started crumpling and playing. Her mom was just taking too long in mixing the batter. It's hard for a toddler to sit still, you know.

That reminds me of a story from yesterday. When we got to church, one of the babushkas started telling me that children need to sit quietly and calmly in church, etc, etc. I was a little like "oh no" in my head because- while I agree that kids shouldn't be unruly and disruptive, how do you keep a 19 month old still for 1.5 hours?? Well, Anneka chose to sit behind us, right between this babushka and another lady. And she sat there very quietly for SO LONG. It was a miracle. Seriously. Then another little boy came and grabbed her face and she started crying and I had to take her out. But she almost made it through the whole service!




Eating our yummy muffins (and a sweet little "thank you")

Yo-Yo Weather

On Friday it was in the high 80s and yesterday it was in the 40s outside. Today it's predicted to be in the 60s. When there is a warm day, we take advantage of it. A group of us met on the city's main walking street on Friday evening to enjoy the nice weather.



Anneka loved the fountain. I supposed it's time for her to stop wearing her fur-lined winter boots! I took them off of her yesterday and she cried because she loves them so much. But if the Russian and Buryat children aren't in their boots anymore (and they are normally very bundled) I think it's a good sign that Anneka doesn't need hers!

Before and After

This was the reading on the thermometer in Anneka's room while the heat was still on:



And this is what it says now that the heat is off for the summer:


It feels so much colder in our apartment than it actually is because we had adjusted to the heat. Yesterday it was warmer outside than inside! Summer has come.

A Visit To The Eye Doctor

I've had my glasses for almost 4 years and am just plain sick of them. It's funny how your tastes change when you're in a different culture with people who have a totally different style. You start to want to fit in more. I didn't want to wait until the next time we're in the States to get new ones. So I went to the eye doctor here. Inka took me and Anneka came along, too. And it was great! I didn't have to have an appointment. I didn't have to wait in any lines. And I only paid the equivalent of $8 for the exam!! (We have great medical insurance, but it doesn't cover vision, so this is wonderful). The optometrist had a leather chest that held different glass lenses that fit into this funny apparatus (pictured above) that I wore on my face. I had an embarrassing moment reading the chart when I realized that I don't know how to say all the Russian letters. (of course I know all my letters and the sounds they make, but there is no "ABC song" here to learn the names of them). Anyways, I did just fine... the lady knew what I meant. And my eyes have apparently gotten better since my last prescription. Hopefully, anyways. I'll get my new glasses tomorrow(another plus), so we'll see how they work!

Women's Retreat

The last couple of days I went on a little retreat with the women on my team (six others) to Lake Baikal. It was so relaxing, rejuvenating, and fun! We spent time walking and talking on the beach, playing games, eating good food, praying together, reading, watching movies, sleeping in, and enjoying God, His creation, and one another. I'm so thankful for these friends. We are all so unique- but I was reminded how BEAUTIFUL each lady is. What a blessing!!



Sweet Leif stayed home with Anneka while I was gone. He gave her a little picture of me that she slept with and talked to. They had a good time together. Leif even managed to have men from the church over one night and make pizza and cupcakes for the Bible study tonight. What a champion!! I love him so much (and little Anneka, too!)

Sickos

Leif and Anneka have been sick this week with colds and I've had two migraines. Leif has been really tired from jetlag, too, and it was a challenge for him to prepare a talk for Sunday amidst his other responsibilities this week. Here's a picture of Leif holding Anneka in front of balcony door so that the cold outside air would help her breathing. The last time she had the croup it was -40F, so we are thankful for nighttime air of +35F this time around!


On Friday evening we had Heidi and Matthew stay the night with us, as it was their parents' anniversary. And we all celebrated Inka's birthday together with dinner, cake and a game called KUDUUK. It was a lot of fun.

Hopefully we'll all be feeling better soon and will more to share about!

The Goats Are Out Again!

Every spring the goats are let loose in our neighborhood to munch on the grass. Anneka thinks they're delightful. She's very good at "meh-ing" like the goats. We didn't go outside today, though, because little Anneka is sick. I know that it's normal for kids her age to be sick 6 times a year (and it's been about three months since she was last sick) but I don't want her to be sick EVER! She has the croup again and at 3:30 in the morning we sat in front of the open balcony door so that she could breathe. I just love that little girl so much and want her to be back to goat chasing here soon!