Gracie the Guinea Pig

   We recently had 1.5 weeks of love and excitement with our pet Gracie the guinea pig.  Anneka and I had been out shopping one day, and she asked if we could stop into the pet store for a few minutes and look at the animals (specifically, the fish).  Needless to say, we our eyes surpassed the fish and we both fell in love with a guinea pig.  She was so sweet and cuddly and let us hold and pet her.  How could we NOT bring her home?  In a moment of impulsiveness I texted Leif.  And he was very low key with it.  So, ta-da!  We had a new pet. 

     A lady who happened to be in the pet store offered to give us a ride home with our new pet if we'd pay her like a taxi.  So with our new guinea pig in Anneka's coat and the cage and supplies on my lap ,we were home within minutes.  We all came up with names we liked, voted them down to three options, and then let our new pet pick her own name (each name was written on a piece of paper with a little seed on top).  She first ran to Ike.  Then she chose the paper with the name Grace.

      Our kids were all very very excited about her!  Gracie never had a dull moment in our home.

      Had I known her life would be so short, I would have been more conscientious about taking more/better pictures!

      I loved coming out in the living room in the evening to see Leif holding and petting Gracie.

 

.... and I was caught cuddling with her a time or two myself.

 Ike was quite proud of Gracie
     


 

Here he is, showing her his new robot puzzle.

     But then, one sad day, Gracie was not doing well.  I called all around the city to find a vet who would come to our home (the things you do for kids and beloved pets!) and finally found a guy who would come.  But sadly, she died before he arrived.  Heidi was with us, and we all made a special box for Gracie together, each decorating one of the sides of the box.

 

     The next afternoon, we took her out by the river, where the ground is more sandy (everything is so hard and frozen right now!)  We had a nice little burial service for her.

 

 ... and talked about what a special pet our Gracie was, if even for a short time.

     Just a couple of days before Gracie died, we had a stairwell cat who started coming to our door.  The kids began feeding her and giving her water.  The timing was perfect, as this kitty friend (Savannah) brings joy and comfort during a sad time.  She comes now every day and has brought another cat friend (Rosietta).  Anneka said, "I don't think I can handle having another pet right now because I'm so busy with feeding the cats and the pigeons".  So for now, it looks like we'll wait before we think of getting a new pet.  =)

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.

A Good Start to 2016!

      It may seem kind of late to be writing another holiday blog, but the holidays last much longer here than in the States.  Our friend, Renata, just returned from her first Christmas in America in something like 9 years.  She said that it really struck her how right after Christmas, everything was just OVER.  Here, the celebrations seem to last for weeks.  Decorations are still up in most stores, and there is New Years on the 1st and Old New Years (on the 14th).  And Russian Christmas in between.  We just got a Christmas card in the mail today.  =) 

      Inka invited us out to the village to celebrate the coming of 2016 with a family that she's become friends with.  It was a special time for us all, and it was really nice to get to know this family better, talk with one another, and have fun!  Of course, it was a bonus to the kids that they got to pet Inka's dog and cat for 2 days straight!

      We ate a ton of food.  I didn't get any good pictures of our feast, but I think we had three dinners (of course, we had to have the traditional feast right after midnight, too) and a huge breakfast.  I was full for the next 3 days!!  We shared our new favorite game with everyone (it's called Mister X).

      Our friend, Lena, worked at a fireworks stand this year, so we picked up some sparklers, a couple of Roman candles and some confetti/bee things.  The kids loved it!  We did this earlier in the evening in case the kids went to bed.  But we they all ended up staying awake until almost 1:00 anyways.

      Because we did our little "fireworks" earlier, we were able to watch everyone elses' after the turn of the New Year.  I was amazed at how many there were!

      We came back in and played (and ate) some more.  We pray that this dear family will know the love of God in deep ways this year!


 
     A few days after the New Year we had a holiday dinner for our home group.


It was the night before Russian Christmas, so nobody had to leave early to get to bed for work the next day.  We enjoyed hanging out and playing games together.

           We had a play at our church on January 7th (Russian Christmas).

      Friends from our neighborhood came with us.  I thought it was cute that little Angelina (6 years) from our church came up and sat on our friend's lap for most of the play!

 And, of course, we ate together after the service.  Here's the kids' table.

In English Club we had a special week to talk about New Years, the ways we celebrate this holiday in our different cultures, and to have deeper discussions, too.  At the beginning we played a game where each team had to decorate a New Years' tree (yes, in Russia it's a New Years tree instead of a Christmas tree).  These kids turned out pretty cute!


     I got the privilege of listening in on the different discussion groups without being in one myself.  I loved overhearing this group when Olya shared that something she's looking forward to this year is getting baptized.  I took this picture right as she was sharing (she's in the middle in the back).  She was just glowing with joy, and I loved thinking about all that God has done in her heart and life in the few years we've known her.  May we all continue to grow more and more in love with Him this year!!

Christmas

     I'm just now getting to our Christmas blog.  It was so busy surrounding Christmas, and then we enjoyed our time when the kids were out of school to connect with other families and make the most of the time.  Just this week we're getting back into a "normal" schedule again (that is, if you can ever use the words "normal" or "schedule" with missionary life!!).  On Christmas Eve, we hosted our team for a party.  Nettie set up a little photo booth for whoever wanted to take silly pictures (I think it was just kids!)

      We enjoyed our tradition of acting out the Christmas story.

.....and eating lots of great food!  We also sang Christmas carols together by candlelight in a few languages.  This is a special time that we all treasure.

     This year the adults drew names for giving presents and got food items for each other.  But the kids each got unique gifts.  These girls looked so cute in their matching hats.  I just love their pet zebra, too!  =)

     Ike and Bogdan got power tools with safety goggles.  They zipped those things all around the house and had so much fun!



          Then on the 26th (after our busy performance day and a night of sleeping under the Christmas tree as a family), we awoke to a special morning together.  Each of the kids had made a special gift for the family.  Anneka wrote a book about a pony that we had laminated and bound.  Ella made us a calendar (all on her own during her rest time- not one of us knew what was on the pages), and Ike made a framed painting.  They were each so excited to share their special gifts with the family.

 
     Something else really special was that our friends, the Lacys, sent amazing presents for our whole family.  Our kids loved everything they sent, as their (same-aged) kids hand-picked gifts they knew they would love.  Our friend Erin sent wonderful presents, too.   She found a game set that she played as a little girl that's PERFECT for our family.  Inside are games that even Ike can play without being on a team with someone else.  It makes it really fun for all of us on our family nights!  Our parents sent special gifts, too, and we felt so loved by the love and care that went into shipping them all of the way here!

     Nettie came and joined us in the afternoon.  She helped the kids put together legos and we played a very fun game that she gave our family.  (can you tell that we love games?)  We ordered Chinese food for dinner and watched a ridiculous Christmas dog movie and just relaxed.

     The next day, ,the older kids at church put on a play.  Anneka was a horse and did a great job with her lines!  She only had one day in between her other performance and this one. 

 

     We enjoyed a meal together as a church family after the service.

     I had to snap this picture with Baba Ira, all dressed up to go outside in her fur hat and coat. 

     We feel so thankful that even amidst a busy season, God also gave us special times as a family and with loved ones to celebrate Him.