A Cousin and A Kitten

     At the end of April, our cousin Delaney, along with two of her friends, came to visit us.  It's always extra special when family comes to visit, as we're not exactly the most convenient place on earth to travel to!  We cherished the few days we had together.

We introduced Delaney, Nora, and Mark to local foods while they were here.

 
  We planned the kids' spring break around Delaney's visit, so we were able to show them around Ulan-Ude as a family.  The market is always a fun place to see.

...especially the indoor food market!

     We also took them to the Ethnographic Museum and learned about the various people groups who have lived in this area and how they survived in such a harsh climate.

We hiked up a hill for a picnic one day and showed them the view....

 

     That evening we had some friends come to show us how to make buuzi (traditional Buryat dumplings).  It was a fun evening for everyone!

  Russia didn't want Delaney, Nora, and Eric to leave!  There was no room on the Saturday bus they wanted to take on to Mongolia, and then the flight they were supposed to take on Sunday night was delayed until Monday morning.  They were good sports about the changes.  They joined us for our Easter service at church.

And they even joined in with our English Club later that afternoon.

Having some tea after English Club

Several of the guys asked me if Delaney was single!!  ;)

     While Delaney, Nora, and Mark were here, we went on a walk one evening, and our neighbor asked us if we wanted a kitten.  How could we say no??!!

Her name is Tiger.  Even from her first day with us, she eats like a ravenous wolf!

     I ended up carrying her around in a sling a lot because she didn't want to be alone.  Our Monkey kitty didn't come back after a bad storm one day a few weeks before.  Sadly, a lot of kitties in our neighborhood disappear (probably from dogs!).  Our kids still wanted a new kitten, though, even though they know that her days may be numbered.

taking our kitty for a walk

     At first, our kitty had problems with her stomach bloating up (like a huge balloon!). The vet said she didn't know if she'd live or die.  But now she's doing great.  We told the vet we'd prayed for her a lot. "You must have!", she replied.  =)  I included this picture because at the end of May, we were so happy to have Nettie return from her home service in the States.  Hooray!!!!

Lots of Learning

     People are asking me all the time if I teach English.  I tell them about our English Club across town, but I don't privately give lessons to people (both because of time and I'm not an ESL teacher).  But recently I realized that it's such a common request that it seems like this is a way that I can get to know some of the ladies in my area and help meet one of their felt needs.  I talked with Yulia about it, and she was very excited!  She said she's been praying for this!  So, an English group has officially been formed.  So far it is small (4-5 people), but we've enjoyed the time.  We have tea each time and spend about an hour just talking in Russian in addition to studying English.  On this day, we made piroshky out of ground up lung.  I was pretty surprised, but apparently, this is a common filler for piroshky.  Who knew??

     This spring has been a bit more unusual with our homeschooling.  The Blakers were here January-April, and then were gone for 6 weeks.  We missed them greatly!  

     During the time the Blakers were gone, we  did a unit study on Gardens as well as used a few supplemental online classes.  Here, Anneka was teaching Leif how to make an impossible triangle.  She learned this in a class that combined both math and art.




     Ella took a Princess class, where she learned about different cultures around the world.  She had other classmates her age, and she enjoyed interacting with them and the teacher.

   
     Ike likes to have the kitty help him with his schoolwork  =)  The kitty likes it, too.  In addition to Ike's reading and writing, he took an online engineering class using LEGO.

     Anneka continues to take horse lessons.  She's been galloping this spring, which she loves!  She also loves the nice weather.  It sure is different riding in the spring than in the winter!!

Here, she's showing Ike and our neighbor friend how to feed the horse safely.

      We had fun learning more about gardens. Here, Ike was learning about worms. He wrote a cinquain poem about them:

Worms 

By: Ike

Worms have tiny brains.

Slimy, potty-pooping worms

Gardens count on them.

     Part of Anneka's horse lessons is learning how to care for the horses. She feeds then and cleans their stalls. She brushes them, and sometimes they can get quite dirty!

As part of the Garden study, we both planted seeds and transplanted seedlings. Here, we transplanted Ella's houseplant into a larger pot.

Carrots were the first thing we planted, as you can still plant them when it's cold if you cover them.

     Ella finished her first year of dance school with several performances.  They were dressed as chefs with ladles, and the song was about making porridge.

During this performance, a local choir sang the song as they danced behind. 

     Ella was also a part of a drama class once a week (it was a part of the dance school).  She had a pretty extensive exam (with 7 parts) and she performed this orally while parents watched.  I was so proud of her!  She got 6 A's and 1 B.... and they don't give out A's easily here!!  I thought this may be a very difficult exam for Ella, as Russian is her second language.  But Ella was not nervous, and this helped her a lot.  Some of the other girls had practiced roles and lines at home to get into character, but Ella just did it on the fly.  This helped as the teacher asked them questions while they were in their role.  She was able to answer quite comfortably and stay in character.  It was a proud mom moment.  =)

     Yulia has been giving the kids Russian lessons this spring. Here, Ike was doing Russian homework, while the kitty watched.  It's been fun to watch Ike reading all of the Russian signs around town since he started these lessons with Yulia.  =)

     Leif reads in the Russian and Buryat Bibles each day, in addition to the Bible in English.  He reads them out loud, usually, so sometimes it takes me by surprise when I hear him talking in Buryat.  =)

The kids continue in piano lessons. On this day, I found Ella writing her own song.

     Ike had a big "exam" in his karate class.  He was very nervous for it.  He did a great job and got a special certificate that is recognized internationally.  We're not sure what that really means, but we're proud of our guy!  ;)

We were so happy to find flowers to plant in our yard!!

     June 1st is officially the first day of summer here and it's also Kids' Day.  Ella's dance class performed in the park.  It was very windy with rain, but even still, several faithful friends came to watch and support Ella.

Here's one of the friends who came.  =)

     Now that it looks like it won't get below freezing at night anymore, we planted the rest of our garden.  We don't have outside water right now, so it's a big job every day to water it by filling up watering cans in the sink and taking them outside.  It's nice when we can all do it together (Nettie included!).

It's very common to plant flowers into old tires here. They make the perfect planter boxes😉

     We're happy that summer is officially here!!!

Kurumkan

Our neighbor Sasha invited me on a trip to Kurumkan, the region where he grew up in the northern part of Buryatia.  I was pretty excited to go along as I had not made it that far north in Buryatia before.  The area is a large valley with mountains on the west that go right up to the shores of Lake Baikal.  The trip was planned because of an older Buryat couple from Mongolia.  Their families had left to Mongolia during the time of the Bolshevik revolution because they wanted to leave the political  uncertainty of Russia.  They ended up living through some very difficult times in early childhood, but settled into life in Mongolia where they met each other and got married.  A few years ago this couple became Christians and began thinking of the place where their family was from.  The wife's family was from Kurumkan just like Sasha, so when they met at a conference last year, they asked about going there with him to search for relatives and be a light for the good news for them. 

The trip is a long one with the roads further north being dirt roads and in some places rough ones.  Our driver was a Buryat pastor from one of the villages east of Ulan-Ude.  It was good to meet him and very helpful as he is an older Buryat man who speaks his native language very well.  He was able to share well with people in the villages as most of them prefer to speak in Buryat.  I could make out words here and there, but was finding myself sitting and praying for the conversations the way I often did when I was first in Russia and listening to conversations around me.

 Here is a picture of our "team" plus a dog that followed us around at one place that we stopped.  You can see some of the mountain range in the background.  I always love seeing the mountains as it reminds me of my own home growing up.  

After visiting a couple people in the town of Kurumkan, we went further to the place where Sasha's dad grew up and stayed with some of Sasha's relatives who still live there.  There aren't many people still there as the villages are emptying out as people move to larger towns or cities in search of work, but some are still out here with their farms.

Here is Sasha standing by the horse hitch at the house where his parents got married.  He was saying that this is a Buryat tradition, to have a horse hitch in this style at a house where someone gets married.

There were herds of sheep as well as cattle as this is the traditional Buryat industry.  I took this picture as we walked over to the river where we sang songs praise in Mongolian, Buryat and Russian and prayed for the area.

After this, we traveled further north to last town on the road, and went to a hot spring area.  The building at the bottom of the hill behind me had a pool to soak in and there were a number of springs along the bottom of the hill with names of different body parts that that particular spring was supposed to be able to heal.  I'm not sure how they came up with one being good for eyes, another for kidneys, another for intestines, etc., but many people travel here believing in the specific healing powers of each one.

As is common for hot springs or other unusual places in nature, there were also many signs that this was regarded as a holy place.  These are Buddhist/Shamanist prayer flags and a place for placing offerings to the spirits.  

 One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting time with the different people on the trip.  I really enjoyed getting to know the pastor who drove us, and also talking with the Mongolian couple, thought I was severely limited to using my broken Buryat which is different from Mongolian which was all the husband knew.  I also enjoyed getting time with my friend Sasha, and seeing the area where he grew up.  The last member of our trip is Bato, who went through a bit of a "prodigal son" story.  It was great to see how his heart has changed from when I first met him 19 years ago when he was a teenager.  His family is also from an area just south of Kurumkan and he would often stay there in the summers with his grandparents and aunts and uncles.  Bato, Sasha and I hiked up from the hot spring to a frozen waterfall and talked and prayed about what could happen in this area.  We thought about how great it would be to explore some of these mountains with guys living here and to have opportunity to share about the one who put the mountains in place.  Hopefully we will get to make more trips to the north of Buryatia, and will get to see the good news spread to these places that are so far from any churches.  These places are definitely on Bato and Sasha's hearts as they think of their extended family and all the people in this beautiful area.

Soul Care

Getting ready to take the train to Lipetsk

     In April, I was given the unique opportunity to go to a Soul Care Retreat.  It is just for ladies and the main focus of the retreat is to give long-term ideas/resources for ways to connect with God more deeply and then to give us time to BE alone with God every day! This is the first time I've had the chance to do something like this, and I was so thankful for this time.

     The retreat was near Lipetsk (in Russia) at a place that's been newly remodeled for camp ministries.  My very favorite part is that I got this whole room ALL TO MYSELF!!!! Every day from 1:00-6:00pm, we  had time to be alone with God.  Having our own rooms was very conducive to this.

     This was the view from my balcony.  We were in the middle of a forested area, and it was very quiet.  I won't post pictures of the actual morning and evening sessions because many of the ladies there were from closed areas.  We were given great tools to both sustain and grown in our walks with God.  These are things that will help us our whole lives and also pass along to others.

I went for a few walks in the woods.

     After the Soul Care Retreat, I decided to stay one extra day in the area to visit friends that used to live in Ulan-Ude and had moved.  It was so good for my heart to see these lovely people that I've missed so much!!!  I had the blessing of joining the Patchovka family for their Sabbath meal and prayers of blessings over their children, me, and one another. 

     They shared how different meanings of Jewish foods and customs point to Jesus as the Messiah.  It was really interesting to learn these things and sing songs of praise to God together.

     I also went to their Messianic Jewish church service with them.  I waited outside with three of the kids while the rest of them got ready inside.

      Each Saturday it takes them an hour and a half to get there!  Walking, bus, train, and more walking!  All with five kids!!

     The church service was a great celebration, with dancing and trumpets.  They included the kids in the service and taught from the New Testament (but referenced back to the Old Testament).  I really enjoyed being there.

   
     After the service, I met up with Liza and Sonia, who used to live in Ulan-Ude, too.  It was so nice to catch up with them and to know how to be praying for them.  After lunch and before I needed to start traveling back, Sonya and I went on a long walk.  It was so nice to have the time together to talk! 

     I came back from this time refreshed and filled up.  What a gift!!