The Online World

    COVID-19 has made it's way to Siberia, and everything is in lockdown.  Much of our lives have transferred to online, which has both blessings and challenges. Our kids' teachers are beyond heroes by switching from in-person teaching to navigating everything over Skype.  We have two computers, but have learned to do a juggling act between the five of us, with kids online classes plus Leif and my growing online meetings.  Thankfully we can use our phones in a pinch, too!

Anneka, in her science class

     The kids are missing their extracurricular activities with other kids.  We are so thankful we have a yard and the weather has been much warmer this year than normal.  We try to go outside as much as possible.  They've also been taking a few fun Outschool classes with other kids their age to meet a bit of this social need.  Anneka has joined a weekly reader's theatre class and really loves it!

    All three have been keeping up with piano lessons, too. Virtual lessons aren't quite the same, but they're better than nothing!

     We've transferred all of our English groups, clubs, Bible studies, home groups, etc... to Zoom meetings.  There have been several blessings.  We've had people who are able to come more regularly than before the lockdown.  We also have people that have moved away who are able to join us.  We sense that people's hearts are more open to spiritual things during this time.  They've had some great questions coming out of our Bible texts. 

late-night Zoom meeting

     I must confess that these types of meetings tire me out much more than seeing people face-to-face!  We pray for the grace we need every day to make the most of this unique time in history.  We're thankful for the access we have to great resources and continued connections with the people in our lives.

A Special Ending to "White Month"

       Right before the lockdown began for COVID-19, we were able to have two parties at the end of White month.  This one was at our house, and we invited neighbors.

       Nettie has a friend who is an expert at making buuzi (Buryat dumplings).  She made 150!  She is a believer and does it as a ministry.  Nettie and Ella helped.

     It's common here for the kids to eat first at the table and then they leave to go play while the adults eat.

     Except for Sasha, who came later, it was all women who came.  One lady kept raving about how wonderful it was to celebrate together and how we should celebrate holidays together more often.  She commented about how she feels like we are getting closer and closer as friends.  She kept calling her husband and trying to convince him to come.  I think she is probably a 10 on the extrovert scale, and he's probably a 1!  While it was a bit disappointing to have a lower turnout than we'd hoped, it was also a special time of connecting and celebrating this important Buryat holiday together.

     It was very loud, and people and kids were running around everywhere!  Little did we know that soon we wouldn't be seeing any people at all!

     We also had a Sagaalgan party at the Brubacher's apartment with English Club friends.  We have done this annually for many years.

Masha was there with her baby.  He was wearing Ike's old shirt, which was fun to see!

We enjoyed talking with everyone.

     After our feast of white foods, we played "Four On a Couch".  People were very confused by this game!  It was quite comical!

Ike loved holding the baby!

Girls dressed in white to match the theme of the month.

This little guy discovered the taste of cheesecake and licked his mom's plate clean!

...much to everyone's entertainment!

The boys can never get enough of climbing on Dima. =)

     This year our gift to everyone was a white candle with a Bible verse blessing attached.  Leif shared a short message from the Bible about the hope we can have in Jesus, who can make our sins whiter than snow.  

Parents and Kids Swap Places!

Ella planned our family church service.

     Our kids are always kids of big ideas.  One day a recently they had the idea that we should all switch places for a day! We decided to do on the first Saturday of their spring break.  They wanted to trade personalities, too, but we thought that may become a recipe for hurt feelings, so we just traded roles.  We traded for a full 24 hours!

     Anneka officially switched with Nettie.  She wore one of Nettie's shirts and put on dangly earrings (which she is not normally allowed to wear! 😂).  Nettie had many tasks for Anneka, including editing a document that had been translated into English, writing in our English Club group, vacuuming rugs, sweeping, watering the plants, doing dishes, mopping the floor,  folding laundry, doing a devotional, and working out.  

     Both Ella and Ike cleaned out the ashes in the furnace.  (They took these pictures of each other). All three kids shared a lot of Leif and my roles for the day.  They took pictures of each other.  We didn't get a lot of photos throughout the day, because they didn't let us "kids" use the camera very often.  😉

Dumping Water onto the Ashes

     All three kids took turns transplanting tiny pepper and eggplant seedlings into cups so that they have more room to grow.

     Perhaps the kids' favorite part of the day was having us do all of their schoolwork!  They definitely do have a lot of work each day.  We appreciated how hard each other work from trading roles!

     Ella and Ike printed out doubles of all of their work so that both Leif and I could experience the work they do in a typical school day.  Nettie, Leif and I all shared Anneka's work.  She had special math problems set aside for each of us.  She really wanted me to make a box and whisker diagram.  I had no idea what this was, but thankfully the math book had an index and I was able to look up how to do one.  Nettie, Leif, and I also had to do the kids' chores and feed the animals.

  As "parents", the kids prepared three meals and cleaned up the kitchen afterward.  It was really sweet how they all worked together.  For dinner on Saturday, they decided to have a barbeque.  Ike lit this fire and roasted hotdogs all by himself.  Ella made pigs in a blanket, and Anneka made a Greek salad.  

The kids also wrote our weekly prayer update, studied the Bible in English and Russian, read emails from our organization and updates about the coronavirus, and thought of ideas for games that we can do online as an ice breaker for English Club.  It was a bit challenging to think of appropriate jobs for them!

     At the end of the day, we all switched beds, too!  This was the kids' favorite part!  Nettie and I slept in the girls' beds, and we got so much sleep because we went to bed so early! 

Tucking Ella in

The kids stayed up late and watched several episodes of The Cosby Show.  Ike said that it was hard work being a parent, but it was worth it for the bed!  😂  

Kairos Conference

Leif taught several sessions

     We put on another Kairos conference this month (our third one in Ulan-Ude).  There were a couple of things that distiguished this conference from the first two.  Firstly, aside from an official instructor who came to oversee everything, it was entirely run by those of us here, including local guys!  And secondly, several wives whose husbands were previously inspired by Kairos were able to go through this course.  It was so fun to see them excited, too, and I believe it will be very powerful to have families moving forward in sharing the good news to the nations with one heart and mind.  One of our guys has enough training and experience now  that he can serve as a head trainer and travel to many other regions. 

     The course is very intense- much reading, many lectures, much discussion.  Here, the leaders were doing a role-play.

     On two of the days, I was able to help in the kitchen with Renata and Nettie.  It was fun working with them- we made a great team!

 

Everyone was thankful for the lunch and small snack breaks in the middle of intense days!

     On one of days (not pictured), people only got rice and beans for lunch and had to share tea bags (with no milk or sugar).  It was a good reminder of many impoverished people in the world.

     Our kids' teachers (the Blakers) were rock stars!  Not only did they teach our kids on Thursday and Friday, but they also took in kids of other moms who were taking the course.  Anneka, Ella, and Ike really enjoyed being helpers with these little ones.  In this picture, they were all cookies that Ella and Ike had made and ice cream that Anneka had made (all for their history classes).

The graduates!

     After the last class was finished, one of the ladies sent me a picture of her certificate of completion- a huge feat!  I love how excited everyone gets about sharing Jesus with the nations.  We already see fruit in people's hearts and minds and expect to see people going out in the future, too.

Mamai

     One cool thing I (Leif) have been able to be part of here, is going on hiking trips as a way to reach out, build relationships, create great opportunities for conversations and get people our of their everyday life in the city and out into nature.  This year we decided to try something new.  Typically we have gone on trips in April to some of the larger mountains in Buryatia.  These trips take at least four days so people have to take time off of work or studies, and are physically more challenging than many people want to do.  This year we went to a place called Mamai, and were able to leave Friday after work and get home Sunday night.  This allowed people to come without missing work.  The hike, though still physically challenging, was easier than the longer alpine hikes we have done.  This allowed us to bring four people who had never been on a hike like this.  All told, we gathered a good group of 12 people and one dog that was about half and half people from the church and people we have met through our English club.

      Sasha and Zhenya here are two guys who I have worked with in planning hiking trips over the years.  It was nice that we were all able to go and see this new hiking place together.  Another advantage of this new place is that there are many places to go back country skiing and snowboarding.  Both Sasha and Zhenya took advantage of that.  It sounded fun to me, but I'm not an experienced skier or snowboarder, so I took the role of making sure everyone that was just hiking made it down safely.

     

     We hiked in to a cabin late on Friday night, and then on Saturday our whole group set out together for a hike up one of the many nearby peaks.    

     As we made our way up the clouds started to gather and visibility became worse, but thankfully not so bad that the trail was lost.  It was just a bummer that the view was hindered.

     One thing I like about hikes like this is that you see people really working as a team to encourage and help each other.  The snow was deep so it created a challenge.

Here is most of the group celebrating making it to the peak we climbed to on Saturday.

     One fun thing for me, was to have Lisa with us.  She is one of our kids' teachers, and really felt like she needed a challenge outside of what she normally does.  She did a great job and we enjoyed some good conversations that don't always get to happen around the busyness of a normal school day.  Afterward Lisa shared about some lessons God taught her through the challenge of the hike.  This is another thing I love about these hikes, God uses them to teach us things about Himself and about us.

     This is on the way back down and as you can see the clouds started to clear a little bit so that we could see the view.  I also like this picture, because right about this time Lisa was sliding down the hill with the joy and exuberance of a preschooler :).   

     The cabin was also something that made this hike different from other ones I've gone on.  We all chipped in a rented the cabin instead of staying in tents.  Though it was very rustic, it felt luxurious in comparison, and it allowed us a good place to play games and enjoy good conversations in the mornings and evenings.  On Saturday evening we even used the nearby banya (sauna), and after getting nice and hot in the sauna we dunked in the mountain stream that was flowing.  Where we live near Ulan-Ude it was still too cold for streams to be flowing, but Mamai is closer to Lake Baikal and the temperatures there don't get quite as cold and it is much more wet, so it was fun that the stream was flowing.

     Here is a picture in front of the cabin.  There were two loft areas above the table where we slept.  It was my first time in this area, so I was surprised to find out that there were many of these cabins. I found out they are often used in the winter months by people from both Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude getting out to ski and snowmobile.  

      On Sunday morning half of us decided to hike up another ridge.  It was really snowing hard that morning, so our hope for a view was low, but the scenery was beautiful nonetheless.

I liked this hike more than the one Saturday because we walked through trees for more of the time.

As you can see the snow kept falling hard on us the whole way up.  

     I loved seeing the way the snow piled up deep on different rocks and trees as we went up and down on that day.  On the way up we went up switchbacks, but on the way down we cut through the deep snow and went more or less straight down.

 

     

   I really liked the way the snow stuck to and piled up on a few tall stumps like this.  This one reminded me of a snowy lollipop. 

      

     Here we are at the top of the ridge on Sunday.  As you can see, the snow and wind made it so that we couldn't just sit there and enjoy the view, but it was a beautiful place anyhow.  More important than the views and mountains during this weekend, were the many great conversations that we had.  Many of us had opportunities to not only have friendly conversations, but to also share about our faith in our Lord Jesus.  Having time away from everyday life often gives opportunities for these kinds of conversations, and we are thankful that we can continue to share life with these friends.  I'm already looking forward to the next opportunity God gives me to go out on a hike like this again.