Learning to Speak

The Grass is Greener

2012-01-27T07:15:00.002-05:00

So here's the irony about my trip to Kharkov to visit with the mission team there.

Before I left there were some things that, I wasn't really complaining about, but that I would've liked to be different in regards to the mission work I'm doing.

First off, there was a part of me that at times thought it would be a lot nicer to be working with a church plant rather than an established congregation. Why? Because I felt like there would be more for me to do, more ways to reach out, to get involved. Not that I don't do anything at Neva, but sometimes you don't feel like you're being effective or really doing anything.

Secondly, I thought it would be awesome if there was a team here. Or, rather, that I was part of a team. It would be so nice to have the support of a group of same-culture people who had shared experiences and could be there when I got down. In turn, I could help and support them. And we could all work together to help the church here.

So I went to Kharkov because I wanted to learn about the work the team was doing there and one of the biggest things I learned is that the grass is always greener. I mean, we knew this already, but it's interesting in the way it was reinforced. I think God was trying to tell me something because I had several conversations with people that specifically addressed these specific things.

I learned that being on a team has its own set of problems. Sometimes it can cause you to want to stay insulated with the people who are like-cultured. Sometimes it can keep you from interacting more with natives. And as with any family, sometimes you have to do things you'd rather not in order to accommodate your teammates. It's a give and take.

One evening, I was talking with some different people about what they liked and didn't like about working in Kharkov. One person specifically said "Sometimes I wish we were working with an established congregation instead of a church plant. I think there'd be more for us to do" which again made me stop and think. The irony was not lost on me. And I think I even said something about how sometimes I wished the opposite.

I'm not saying people who go on teams or on church plants are wrong or should do it a different way. Nor am I saying the way I'm doing it is the best way either. What I'm saying is that the most important thing I learned is to be content. God put me here for a reason and he put the team in Kharkov for a reason and though there are times we all want things to be different, the bottom line is that there are advantages and disadvantages to every situation. So we need to take a step back and look at those things.

Besides, at the end of the day the most important thing is that God is glorified and people come to know him. After all, that is our ultimate goal.

The Great Ukrainian Adventure

2012-01-26T07:35:00.001-05:00

Oi my hoodness.

I got back from the "Great Ukrainian Adventure" last night. Three weeks is entirely too long. However, it was a busy three weeks but not in a bad way. It was really great to have an opportunity to relax a bit and not have to think or worry about things. Once I got my visa application in that is. I'm going to be doing a separate post on the visa process when I get a chance

I felt very much New Testamenty because during my time in both Kharkov and Kiev I stayed with families in the church. Before my trip, I wasn't sure how I felt about doing that, but honestly it was a really good experience. I recommend doing it. It gets you connected to the church, you have people to hang out with and the common experiences of being a Christian and (in this case) being missionaries makes for good times.

I stayed with the Noyes family in Kiev. Since it was over Orthodox Christmas, we had an awesome dinner on the 6th. During this dinner, I met a couple of girls from the congregation and we hit it off. Since I had to wait for the consulate to open and the girls had time off work due to holidays I got to spend some awesome times hanging out with them. It was great to just kick back and have a great time.

On January 10th the consulate opened so I went in the morning to drop off my visa paperwork. As I mentioned, a more detailed blog post will be forthcoming. Despite my fears to the contrary, everything went smoothly and I was told to come back on the 24th to pick my visa up.

The evening of the 10th, I took a train to Kharkov to meet with a group of American missionaries there and spend some time with them. The first two days in the city, I did nothing but rest since I was trying to get over a cold. It was actually a really good couple of days. I read, and slept, and ate. I'm really grateful to the Price family for letting me crash at their place and for feeding me tastiness. Once I felt better, I got involved with some of the activities that the church is doing there.

It was great because there was no pressure. I could participate or not as I chose (As it turned out, I very much enjoyed participating in everything I was invited to) but there was no pressure to have to participate in anything. It was a great vacation. For real.

The trip also gave me some different life experiences. I became more confident with my Russian, I got experience riding on trains, and most valuable of all, I got to see how some other churches on this side of the world function and the things they're trying to do in order to reach out.

After spending about ten days in Kharkov, I headed back to Kiev. They were having a seminar for unmarried women about how to avoid problems on the path to marriage. In other words, how to make good life choices when it comes to guys. Even though I'd heard a lot of the information before thanks to my mom and the church people back home, hearing it in Russian put a new perspective on things. Plus I feel like now I'm at a stage in my life where the information is more useful to me and I'm more willing to apply it.

Through this seminar, I got to know some other girls from the congregations in Kiev and again, it was fun although by this time, I was getting pretty tired. Thankfully, Monday I had a chance to relax and recover. Tuesday, I gathered my things and in the afternoon picked up my visa from the consulate (again without problems). Then I took an evening train from Kiev to Moscow.

Let me tell you the one advantage trains have to planes is at least you feel like you're going somewhere. With a plane, not so much. But the train ride back was super super long. Too long. I left Kiev at 6pm. I arrived in Moscow at 9:30 the next morning. Then, at 1pm I took another train to arrive in St. Petersburg about 10pm. I was so ready to get off the train and just be done when I got in.

I was also really excited to get back to Piter. I'd really missed the city and more importantly, I'd really missed my church family here. It was a good trip, like I said, and I really needed the break but at the same time three weeks was too long.

Leaving on a... Choo-Choo Train?

2012-01-04T11:16:00.001-05:00

Well, tomorrow's the big day. The day that I've been alternately looking forward and dreading since October. Namely my trip to Ukraine. During this trip I will be getting a second visa and hopefully this will keep me from having to go to Ukraine again. I will write about the whole visa process in more detail upon my return.

Anyway, so it's really strange to be thinking about this. On the one hand, I'm really looking forward to the trip. I get to have an adventure and meet new people and so I'm very excited about that.

On the other hand, I'm nervous. I feel like there are a lot of "What ifs." I also feel like I'm going to forget something. Maybe it's because I haven't completely packed yet. I have some stuff that I can't actually pack until tomorrow morning.

In any case, it will be an adventure, and for those of you who know me you know I like adventures. So please pray that the visa aspect of this one goes perfectly fine and I can enjoy myself.

Christmastime is Here

2011-12-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

Or rather it was.
Russians don't celebrate Christmas like the west. Here, the big holiday is New Year's and when people do celebrate Christmas is pretty much a religious holiday and is celebrated on January 7th. (The Orthodox church still goes by the old calendar) however people here are aware of the Western Christmas tradition.

I told Joel the other day that the last time I was in Russia I felt like I had no holidays because Russian holidays are different than American holidays and I didn't have tradition for Russian holidays. He made the good point that I now have the advantage of being able to celebrate all the holidays. This means that my holidays started December 24th and extend until January 7th. I know you're all jealous.

So how did I pass American Christmas? Well, it was interesting times, that's for sure. I had decided that since December 24th was Christmas eve, I was taking the day off to celebrate. (When you work for God you can do that sort of thing. You know, decide when you're going to have time off and such. Yeah it's pretty much awesome) The only problem was, I wasn't sure how to celebrate. You know, since stuff here doesn't start for another week. Usually when I have a day off I'll do something like wander in the city or go window shopping or something but since this was Christmas eve, I wanted to do something...well... Christmas-y. Like watch a Christmas movie in English or something. The only problem: I have no idea where to do that sort of thing in St. Petersberg. I was rescued however from complete Christmas blues by having connections.

There are three nice young computer guys who attend the discussion club I lead at American Corners. The last time I lead discussion club, they all left me their email addresses in case I ever had some technical problems. I had gathered from things they'd said that they are all three very interested in English and have been to many English events in the city. So I pulled out their email addresses the week before Christmas and basically said "Hey, I'm looking for something to do for Christmas eve. Any ideas?"

Not long after sending the email out, I got a reply saying the American Council for Education (Or something like that) was having a Christmas party, they were going and I was welcome to come. I agreed and I also invited Marina from church. So on the appointed day we met and off we went.

It was epic times. We watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and played getting to know you games and other silly little games and it was just fun. I had been a little worried that I would still have to feel like I was "on" or "working" but I didn't at all. I got to relax, kick back, laugh and almost forget that I'm in Russia. Afterwards, our little group wandered around looking for a suitable cafe in which to hang out. We settled on Pizza Hut which turned out very well. I hadn't had "real" pizza since coming here and so it was nice to have some. We all shared a pizza and I complemented it with "Unlimited Lemonade" Yeah, it was a good night. Not only that, but it was great to just hang out at the cafe and talk about all kinds of different subjects. Even though I was in a Pizza Hut in Russia, speaking Russian, and surrounded by foreignness, it just felt... normal. Like "This is what I do, it's just in a different place and language now."

I find it a lot easier to reconcile into one person who I am this time around. On exchange there were times I felt completely Russian. Here, I know that I'm different. But it's okay. I'm not an American. I'm not Russian. I can operate with ease in both cultures. I'm a Christian woman with a U.S. passport who lives in St. Petersburg and speaks Russian. But also English. That's who I am and honestly, I think I have the best of both worlds. Actually, being in St. Petersburg makes me feel more like a "citizen of the world" rather than of one country (Maybe it's cliche, but it's true)

Christmas day, our Choir performed at the end of the church service. It was my first experience actually performing with the choir and so that was fun. After church, I was invited for Christmas dinner at the Petty apartment. That was a lot of fun and again, I could kind of kick back and embrace my American self a little more. We were also visited by Grandfather Frost who brought presents for the three Petty children. Here in Russia, children kind of have to earn their presents. Grandfather Frost comes and the kids have to guess riddles, sing and recite poetry for him. It's really cute. To my surprise, Grandfather also had a present for me. It was a heart pillow with huggy arms to remind me that I am loved by God and by people here. It was the perfect present.

After our meal (which was also attended by Zhenya, Sergei and baby Varya) and some fun conversation, we all returned to our respective homes. I spent the rest of the evening watching "A Christmas Story" and crocheting.

All in all, I would say it was a very successful Christmas and I immensely enjoyed it. Now I'm gearing up for round two as I'm attending the New Year party that's taking place at the Church on Saturday. Then after that it's off to Ukraine! Busy busy times!

Everyday Life

2011-12-18T10:03:00.001-05:00

I walked to the Gulf of Finland today. I know, right? Let me say it again. I walked to the Gulf of Finland today. Why? Just because I could. Well that and because I drank half a liter of Coke at McDonald's and wanted to walk off the caffeine. Speaking of McDonald's it's always crowded in Russia. I was sitting at a table enjoying just being by myself when three teenage boys asked if they could sit there too since there was no room. I am not exaggerating this either. Each boy had on his tray a Big Mac, A Big and Tasty, Six Chicken Nuggets, a Medium Fry and a medium drink. And those sandwiches are about the same as they are in the states. Yeah. It was ridiculous. I told them so too. Or rather I told them we didn't even eat like that in America (And Americans stereotypically eat a lot) The one young man's reply was that this was Russia. Can't argue with that.

I feel like my point in writing all this is that living here is a place of contrasts. I'm not just talking about the culture, but my point is that on the one hand it's everyday life. I brush my teeth, I buy groceries, I do laundry, I go to work. On the other hand, I'm doing it in Russia. Not just in Russia, but in St. Petersburg. So the contrast is you have things like "I went walking on Nevsky prospect today, I went to Kazan Cathedral, Oh yeah, that's the Palace Square where the Hermitage is. No biggie."

I don't always write about the big things that go on, because honestly for me it's more about the every day stuff. It's about working with Sergei, Galina Mikhailovna and Marina to prepare dinner for Poisk. It's about sitting with Sasha, baby Ilya and Marina just having a nice conversation. The little everyday things. And it may sound cool because it's happening in Russia but people are people and somethings never change.

For example, yesterday I was leading a discussion about American Christmas Traditions at the American Corner (Which is a place where people interested in learning and practicing English can go and attend different events such as movie showings, reading clubs, singing clubs etc. to help them practice) At the end of said discussion I had one gentleman inform me that his son was 26 and basically told me I should marry him. And I thought that sort of thing wouldn't happen once I left the states. Guess I was wrong. ha ha.

I think maybe that's the whole point of my sporadic blog posts. I feel like when I was on exchange, I tried my best to show not only the awesome cool parts of exchange, but the seamy underbelly as well. It's the same with this mission work. Yeah it's so cool to be like "Hey! I'm serving God overseas and look at all the cool stuff I get to do!" But a lot of times missionaries don't talk about how hard it can be. How lonely. As I told one of my friends from college the other day, I have never felt so close to God yet at the same time so far away from him. It's kind of a weird feeling.

Anyway, I don't want to end on a depressing note. Feeling down isn't something that happens everyday. And it's something that happens a lot less here than it did in Yakutsk. Not only that but I'm a lot better at handling it this time around. I just have nice long chats with God and try to find the good in being here. Honestly, this experience so far as been an amazing one and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

A Midsummer Night's Dialogue Reading With Pasta Salad and Strange Little Girls

2011-12-13T14:55:00.002-05:00

Yup, the title says it all. It was just a really good day.

It started with me going to Natasha's school. I've been showing up there about once a week to interact with different English classes, usually Natasha's. The first few times I went, I gave presentations. Now, I read out loud and do dialogues with the kids so they can hear a native speaker. It's always interesting times. Today however, I was invited specially.

The 8th grade English class was putting on a short version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Alla Vasilevna, one of the English teachers called me over the weekend to invite me. I said I would come and was so glad I did. You could tell the kids put a lot of effort into memorizing their English lines and practicing the emotions and things. Although sometimes they smashed the English words together so they were hard to understand, they did an amazing job. It was hilarious and I really enjoyed myself.

After the play, I had tea with Natasha and then I attended her 5th grade class. We read about "My Favorite Town" they were really excited to get to read with me. The best part about class today was that the classroom we were in is one of the math classes and the math teacher was sitting in the back grading papers. Afterwards, she came up and was talking to Natasha and I, asking about me. The woman wasn't sure why I wasn't properly interacting with the students and things. Natasha explained that I was a guest. The woman didn't get it. Finally Natasha explained that I wasn't a teacher. I was a guest and friend from America who was helping in class today. The woman thought this was interesting. She said that she thought I might be foreign but then she wasn't sure because I said a few things in Russian. So that made me feel good.

The day was also good because I successfully made an interesting sort of macaroni salad. I've been experimenting with cooking since coming here and am surprised how much I enjoy it. I think because if I were cooking at home, I'd follow recipes all the time. Here, I don't so it gives me a chance to be creative and see what does and doesn't work. My salad was macaroni, cucumber, crab and mayo. I was pretty proud of it.

Finally, the day was good because of this evening. On Tuesday nights a group of Christian Businessmen meet in our church building. Generally, they meet in the room that's my "office" so I have to be out before they come at 6:30. Today on my way out, I forgot to take the tupperware with me to put salad in to take home to eat tomorrow. So I was waiting for the meeting to get done so I could get salad and go home. The thing is, they were taking forever. There was a little girl there this evening with her mom and she was wandering up and down the halls and playing in the nursery. At one point I was like "Hi!" but she didn't say anything. So I went about my business.

The next thing I know, I'm in the kitchen playing Bejeweled on my iPod and I feel these eyes on me. The little girl is literally standing in the doorway just staring at me. And Staring. So I look up and smile. She smiles back, I go back to my game, but I can feel her continuing to stare at me. It was really awkward. I was finally like "Can I help you?" She didn't respond.

So then I smiled at her a few more times and went about my business. At one point she was kind of following me around and so I turned around and teasingly scared her. Then I felt bad. I wasn't trying to make her go away, I was just playing.

Eventually, I asked her if she'd found the toys in the nursery. She said yes. I asked her if she wanted a cookie. She said no. Finally, she got up the nerve to ask me what my name was. I told her. I then asked her grade and name. She told me. Then she ran off. I continued getting my stuff together. A few minutes later, she was back asking me to repeat my name. I did and she ran off again. By this time I was pretty much ready to go and had successfully gotten my salad packed up. As I was walking past the business men, the little girl was talking to her mom and was like "That's Abigail"

So I stopped to talk to the mom and she remarked on the uniqueness of my name. I explained it was a Bible name and then she must've heard my accent because she was like "Oh, you're not Russian?" "No, I'm American. I work in the church." "Oh, I see. Your Russian is really good." "Thank you." We said it was nice to meet each other and then off I went to find Luka and Natasha with whom I usually walk home.

On our way home, we found ourselves behind a group of the businessmen including the woman and the little girl. The woman again complemented my Russian and asked how I knew it so well. I explained that I had lived in Yakutia. "Oh. Wow." Yeah. Saying that usually gets interesting comments.

But in any case, all of these things combined put me in a really good mood. I felt the need to share it because I feel like I'd been kind of "blah" of late. I'm also kind of excited because I'm working from home tomorrow. I have to do a presentation about Christmas for the American Corners on Saturday and I'm using Prezi which doesn't seem to like the wi-fi connection at the church. So am going to do it here. This also gives me an excuse to continue to rest my bruised knee which I hurt on Sunday. But anyway, life is good.

Touching God

2011-12-10T11:59:00.001-05:00

I can't pinpoint one event. Maybe it's because I've been praying more. Maybe it's because I've been reading mass amounts of Bible every day. Or maybe it's just because. But I can tell you when it happened. Last night.

I've had a rough couple weeks. I've been sad, missing home, God felt far away. I got to the point where I was writing psalms asking God why he brought me here only to leave me. I daily questioned why I came and what I was doing. I figured if David could question God, so could I.

Last night I felt it. It wasn't like a thunderbolt realization from on high, but all of a sudden there was this deep sense of God's presence. I could feel him surrounding me, next to me like an actual person. A sense of fullness like I have never experienced before in my life. Words don't do it justice.

I weep from the beauty of it though. Because all my life I thought I'd given it up to God. All my life, I thought I had a good relationship with him. And in a sense, I did. But everything I ever thought I had pales in comparison to what I have now. It's like all my life I'd been satisfied eating vanilla ice cream and suddenly I learn there are other flavors. Once I've tried them, I never want to go back to plain old vanilla.

Suddenly these things I've been hearing my entire life make much more sense. "Taste and see that the Lord is good." I have truly tasted his richness. I truly understand what it means to say "He's everything I need." because he is. I feel warm and I feel safe. It's like he's permanently got his arms wrapped around me.

And now everything is a lot easier. It no longer matters if I miss people back home. If something were to happen and I would never hear from them again would I be sad? Yes. But it would be okay. Because of this richness. Because of this feeling, I have been able to deal with some things that I've needed to take care of for a while but hadn't truly given up to him. It no longer matters that I'm far away, if I'm not married, if I'm doing something different with my life. Because of his Spirit, I am able to face anything. It's no longer something I'm just reading about in the Bible. I'm part of it.

I never want to lose this feeling. I know, there are up and down parts of life. There are times when things come and go, but now that I've experienced it, I thirst... no... I ache for more. For that living water. Because if this relationship is like this now, imagine what it would be like in a few months or a few years.

I have briefly touched the presence of God. I have tasted heaven. If I had joy in him before, my joy is now tenfold. If I had peace in him, my peace is now a hundred fold. I would gladly go through this again; This loneliness, this wondering, a thousand times if it would mean that I would be able to remain like this, in the presence of God. Because that is all I truly want.

2 months?!

2011-12-08T06:55:00.001-05:00

I'm starting my third month here. Which is kind of weird for me actually. As Zhenya N. put it at the women's meeting yesterday. "You've only been here two months? It seems like you've been here a lot longer. You're already one of us."

When Americans come for example it's kind of interesting. I do things like help interpret and such, but I'm not actually one of them because I live here. I belong here. I know people, I work here, I'm part of the rhythm of life. It feels like I've been here a lot longer, but not in a bad way. I keep busy. For the most part, things are going pretty well. I mean, I have down times of course. I'm at that point. The point where I get tired of people, tired of giving, tired of not always understanding, tired of not getting jokes, tired of sometimes being treated like I don't know anything. But this too shall pass.

What's been happening? Well, generally the same old same old. I study English with a few people, the other day I did a transcription of a clip in English for a woman who's a Christian and teaches English. It's the same woman whose class I visited during Thanksgiving where I had a great time. I'm going back to visit them again on the 12th. Hoping to make some connections that way.

I volunteered to lead a discussion group at the American Corner this Saturday and next. Basically, people who want to practice English come and participate in the various events they have. This week I'm doing a presentation about myself. Next week I'll probably present about Christmas. Again, trying to find ways to make connections with people.

I'm going to be taking a trip to Ukraine for purposes of visa acquisition in January. Going to leave right after the holidays and have a little holiday of my own. Honestly though I'm rather stressed about having to go. It's traveling on my own in a foreign country I'm not used to. For two weeks. Hoping to find some people to connect with through the church who will help me out with a place to stay. We shall see how that goes.

The good news is that I'm not too terribly upset about not being home for the holidays. I mean, yeah it's kind of sad that I'm not going to be there, but it's also okay. I mean, I'm on my own, don't have a family or anything and honestly in some ways I'm not much of a holiday person anyway. So it doesn't really feel like they're coming. And the holidays are a little different when you're an adult anyway.

That's the other thing. It's fun being an adult, but sometimes it's just a pain. Today for example. I realized that I'm out of food pretty much. It's like "Aw man, now I have to go shopping and then I have to fix myself food" Sometimes I just don't feel like it's convenient to stop to eat. Unfortunately, eating is kind of a necessity. It would be nice if I could get some kind of IV or drink so that I wouldn't have to stop and fix something.

Who Are These People Anyway?

2011-11-27T07:32:00.001-05:00

In the almost two months I've been here, I've found myself with what at school I called an "Urban Family" although here it's definitely more of a Family in Christ. In any case, it's a group of people with whom I have mutual love and support in absence of my own relatives. God has been gracious and blessed me with getting to know some awesome people so far in my time here. So I wanted to take a moment to explain who some of these people are and what they mean to me.

Joel, The Mentor
Joel is like the Obi Wan Kenobe of my apprenticeship. He's also a major player in the reason I'm here. I am extremely thankful that the day I talked to Dr. Green about the WorldWide Witness program he was about to go have coffee with Joel and that he mentioned my name. Joel has been working with the churches in Russia for something like 14 years. He knows tons about Russia and the history of the church here. Learning about this history and about being a full time missionary has been a great experience. It's been a blessing to be able to learn from him.

Luka, The Big Sister
Luka is the director of our choir as I've mentioned in several places. I would be completely lost without her. She is a woman who is on fire for God and is passionate about serving him through music. Not only that, but she's very giving of herself and her time. Without her, I wouldn't be living where I am now. I am so grateful that she took time out of her busy schedule to look at rooms with me. She has been a source of comfort when I'm missing home, lets me complain when I'm frustrated and has prayed with me often. Words cannot express how thankful I am that God has allowed me to get to know her. She is an example to me of how I, as a single woman, can serve God wholeheartedly.

Lena, The Mother
She would hate this label, but it's not like a mother mother, Maybe "Oldest Sister" is the best term to describe Lena. She and her husband, Brad, opened their home to me and I was blessed to be able to live with them for a week. During that time, I got to know Lena and I really look up to her. She always checks in to make sure I'm doing well and also to make sure I'm eating enough. She has done a ton to help me with my visa stuff and if I have any questions that I might not feel comfortable asking other people, I know I can ask her and she'll give me sound advice. Because her husband is American I feel like Lena understands better than most what it's like being a foreigner in Russia. It is very apparent that she and Brad love each other deeply and strive to be a Godly couple. Lena is a great example to me of how one can serve God as a Christian wife.

Natasha, The Good Friend
Natasha and I spend a lot of time together, partly because we both live here on Vasilevskii Island and because we're both young single women. Also because Natasha teaches English and I speak English. Natasha is a little hard to get to know, but it has been awesome getting to spend time with her. She keeps me grounded when I need it and always encourages me, reminding me that even if it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything here, the small stuff definitely counts for something and sometimes for more than the bigger stuff. I recently was blessed to get to visit her home for an afternoon and it was a great time. I am so thankful that God has put a friend like Natasha in my life.

Dima, The Big Brother
Dima is the Encyclopedia of Culture and the Master of All Aspects of Serving in the Church. He explains Russian culture to me and gives me an interesting perspective into how men in Russia think. He has been an endless source of general cultural help, word explanation and theological discussions that stretch my Russian skills to the limit. He also has me learning about all the different ways one can serve God. From answering letters from people who want to know more about the Bible, to helping count the offering money I'm learning about leadership and responsibility in the church in a way I never did back home. I am so thankful that because of Dima encouraging me to do these things, I am able to more effectively serve God.

There are of course other people in my Russian Family. It's interesting the way relationships are built and the ways you interact with people. For example, Yana, my little sister. She is fascinated by American culture and hopes to one day visit there. I love getting to not only help her practice English, but also listen to the stories about her daily life as a teenager. And then there are Sasha and Zhenya, sisters and young mothers. Through interacting with them and their babies, I've been learning about what it means to be a mother and to give of yourself to your family. That's a powerful lesson right there.

I could go on, for several more paragraphs, listing people I've met here and why I'm thankful for them. But I feel like this kind of gives you an idea. I know for me, just sitting down to write this blog post has given me an opportunity to reflect on my time here so far and really see how God has blessed this work. He truly is a powerful and almighty God!

Schools, English and the Hare Krishna

2011-11-25T14:38:00.001-05:00

So I feel like I haven't updated you on what I do with my time for a while. Why? Because there's always something going on ha ha.

This week was busy. I feel like I'm starting to get more of a routine and find some opportunities to connect with people.

Last Wednesday and this Wednesday, I've spent the day at school with my friend Natasha. She teaches English and German and thought it would be fun to have me go speak to a couple of her English classes. The whole thing kind of exploded. I went in to speak to one or two classes and ended up doing a total of four presentations. I was there for five periods. The one class was fifth grade so I read dialogues with them. During my time there, I spoke to classes taught by a woman who lived in the States for ten years so that was interesting. I think I'm going to see about going back.

This week, I was asked to come in and speak to another teacher's class. This turned into another all day thing. At one point, the foreign language teachers were having a planning meeting and I was told to come in and was then introduced to the group. The teachers were told to make use of my English skills. Entertaining times? I think so.

Yesterday, I went to our Bible in English study group at the church and then had a quick lunch before heading to metro Sportivnaya. There is a yahoo group for Christians and missionaries in particular who work in St. Petersburg. A woman who teaches English was looking for some English Bibles to gift her students as well as a native speaker (Missionary) to come and talk with her students to give them practice. So, Joel told her he could get her Bibles and I told her I would come chat. So I went to the University of the Ministry of Finance and Economics and spent like two and a half hours with the students. Let me tell you, it was one of the most entertaining times I've had with a group of English students. We would just crack up about stuff. I can't even tell you what. But it was epic. I told the woman that I would love to come again so we'll see what works out.

Today my weekend started. I spent most of the day getting groceries which was exciting for me. I've become more interested in cooking whilst here and so am going to attempt to make myself some tastiness over the next few days. I showed up at the church about 5, which was a couple hours early for Search but actually ended up working out really well. I got to talk to Lena for a bit which is always fun and she told me she had something for me. I was like "what?" She goes "A little bit of Thanksgiving"

Brad's mom and her friend are visiting them for a week or two. Yesterday they had a Thanksgiving dinner and Lena was kind enough to bring me some leftovers. It was just wonderful! Little bit of turkey, stuffing, cornbread and cranberry sauce. I was super excited and relished every bite.

I then had chai with Marina which took us til the Hare Krishna came. Oh yes, I forgot to mention. Tonight was a very special night at Search. Why you ask? Well because we had some special guests. The Krishnaiti. Which as I mentioned are Hare Krishna in English. Apparently one of the guys Dima plays football with is one and Dima went to one of their meetings. He then invited them to come to our discussion group. Which they did. I would've enjoyed it very much I think if I'd been able to understand anything they said.

Actually, it was kind of funny, I was sitting there listening, and okay I admit my attention wanders sometimes. It happens. But often during sermons or discussions I can eventually pick it back up. Not so much with the Hare Krishna. I thought it was me, but then I didn't feel so bad when we were cleaning up afterwards and Dima was like "What did you think?" And I was like "Well, it was really hard to understand what they were saying..." And Dima goes "Yeah, it was really hard to understand. They were talking a lot about deep spiritual stuff in their religion" So then I felt better. As far as I know, the discussion went well and we were invited to go to visit the Hare Krishna at some point. So that could be interesting.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow is my free day. What am I planning on doing? I honestly have no idea. I may read, I'll probably try cooking something at some point, I'm definitely sleeping in. Oh and I may go wander around the area of Mikhailovskii Sad. I want to go be a bit touristy I think. Maybe I'll take some Gnome Pictures. I haven't completely decided yet. I just know I'm looking forward to it. :D

Daddy-Daughter Dates Part 3: Scripture and Journaling

2011-11-23T21:00:00.000-05:00

When I've finished meditating, the next step is Scripture Reading. This is different than my daily Bible reading plan. I feel like this is kind of a chance for God to speak to me. So normally what I do is page through my Bible until I find a place that looks good and start reading at random. Generally what happens is a scripture will pop out at me. It's really amazing actually how often doing this has lead me to scriptures that I've found very applicable to what's currently going on in my life. I'll usually read the scripture or the section several times and think about it for a few minutes.

Finally, the last step in my date is Journaling. This part is kind of like when you're being dropped off at home at the end of the date. I keep a paper journal for the daily stuff, but I keep a separate journal for Daddy-Daughter Dates. This journal is more like a prayer journal. Generally what's been happening is that I start writing like it's actually a letter to God. It gives me a chance to thank him for what he's doing and has done in my life. A lot of times in my journaling, I will talk about the things in my life I'm trying to overcome, or aspects of my spiritual life I'm trying to work on. I also reflect on things God has been teaching me. Generally at the end of the journal entry I'll copy into it the verse that really spoke to me during scripture reading.

An additional note about the journal I use for this last step. Generally, I'm a straightforward, plain blank journal kind of person. However, when I was preparing to come to Russia, someone gave me a "Missions Journal" and I've found it to be an invaluable aide to my journaling. It has the general blank pages, but it also has scriptures and devotional pages for meditation and sections with questions that help me explore thoughts and ideas. If you're going to be taking up journaling as a spiritual discipline, I definitely recommend finding a journal that has some devotional type elements to it.

So there you have it, the end of my Daddy-Daughter Date. As I mentioned in the first part of this series, I've really come to enjoy these times. Afterwards, I feel much more focused, and at peace. I find that it allows me to let go of the worldly things, the stress and the craziness of life. Best of all, I'm usually much happier after I've spent time with my heavenly father.

Daddy-Daughter Dates Part 2: Meditation and Prayer

2011-11-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

So in my last post, I explained what Daddy-Daughter Dates are and why I partake of them. This post I'm going to go into the specific aspects of my Daddy-Daughter Dates and the significance of them.

The first part of the date is Meditation
The purpose of meditation is to center myself and let go of the noise and stress around me so I can focus. It's kind of like the car ride to the restaurant. You have small talk with the guy and look forward to getting into a little deeper stuff.

Meditation for everyone is going to be a little different, but here's how I usually do it. I combine aspects of the Jesus Prayer (See this link as well) with things that I've found work for me. I'd recommend using a portion of scripture while you meditate.

I find a place that's quite and where I can sit comfortably without distractions. I shut down the computer, silence the cell and hide the iPod (It's kind of rude to be distracted during a date after all) then I get comfortable, close my eyes and begin to breathe deeply. I'll breathe in for four counts and then out for four. During this time I recite Psalm 117 first in Russian then in English and alternate the two. . If I'm really distracted and having a hard time focusing I'll start by reciting the scripture out loud and then as I become more focused, I'll change to mentally reciting it.

I'll recite one line inhaling and one exhaling. In: Praise God All People Out: Praise Him All Tribes In: His Love is Unfailing Out: His Faithfulness Endures Forever. Again, you can use whatever scripture or phrase that works for you.

Once I'm nice and focused meditation leads naturally to the next part of the date: Prayer
If meditation is the car ride, Prayer is dinner at the fancy restaurant.
The prayer is my time to talk with God. To tell him what's going on in my life and bring up my thoughts, concerns, feelings and ideas.

During the prayer time, I continue my breathing rhythm of four counts in and out, but now I pray in phrases as I exhale. In addition, the phrases are only as long as my exhale. For example: In... Out: God, guide my path In... Out: I don't know where to go.

Doing this gives the prayer itself a kind of chant like rhythm after a while. If you're comfortable you can say it out loud, usually at this point though I'm more focused inwardly and saying it out loud would feel uncomfortable.

The prayer goes on as long as it needs to, generally until I feel like I've covered everything. After the "amen," I again recite Psalm 117 in Russian and English. This time I say the lines on the exhale like I did with the prayer. When I'm finished, I open my eyes and am ready for the next part which is scripture reading and journaling.

I Love Daddy-Daughter Dates Part 1

2011-11-21T15:15:00.001-05:00

One thing I've noticed in being here, is that sometimes I get so caught up in working for God that sometimes I forget to work with him. Or, to put it in a more straightforward, parable like form:

It happened that a man took a wife and they had several children together. The man was happy but it takes much to provide for a family. The man had always been a hard worker, but he began to work harder and more hours in order to provide his family with everything he thought they might need or want. He very rarely saw them, but all the same he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was doing great things for them.

One evening the man came home to find that the house was dark. This was not unusual as he often came home long after his wife and children had gone to bed, yet for some reason this night the house felt particularly desolate and lonely. The man flipped on the light to discover that there was a note on the kitchen table. It was from his wife telling him that she could no longer be married to a man who didn't even know his family. She had taken the kids and left.

Okay, so maybe this is an extreme and very cheesy way of explaining it, but my point is that relationships take work. When couples are dating, they spend time together in order to get to know each other and find out if they would be compatible marriage partners. After a couple is married and their lives become busy, they have to remember to make time for each other. To continue their relationship, strengthen and grow it.

Thought God is... well... God... It's the same kind of thing. I mean I'm not saying that God is going to divorce you for never spending time with him. But what I am saying is that every relationship, even one with God takes work.

So here's how it works. I spend most of my time here working for God in one form or another. Talking to English classes, attending Bible Studies, drinking tea and building relationships with my sisters, writing letters for the Russian Bible School, helping people practice English and so on. Suddenly after a week or so of this, I'll realize that I've been so caught up in dealing with everyone else's spiritual needs that I've been neglecting my own.

I know it's happening because I'll come to a point where there's this build up of noise inside of me. That's the best way to describe it. You know how on the old TVs with antennas, if you couldn't get a channel there would just be static and a fuzzy noise? Yeah, it's like that only inside.

I pray a lot throughout my day and week, but many times it's more like when you call someone to check in with them. "hey God, I'm hanging in there. Hey God, I don't know what I'm doing, can you help me out?" That sort of thing. And as many of you know, a relationship can only go so far with quick chats and texts.

So I've had to come up with a way to rebuild my spiritual reserves. My roommate back home would call it "Jesus Time." I'll freely admit that I used to kind of laugh inwardly when she would compare it to a date with Jesus. I have been humbled however because honestly that's exactly what it is and I've discovered that I really look forward to my "Daddy-Daughter Dates" with God.

Like any date, it's a chance to spend time with God, talk to him about what's going on in my life, bounce ideas off him, tell him about my concerns and fears, de-stress, debrief and regroup for the next onslaught. I try to be in the word and searching but Daddy-Daughter Dates are different than just reading the bible and praying.

Daddy-Daughter Dates firstly involve quiet. They also require setting aside specific time, which again is what a date is supposed to be. Generally they start with meditation, go into prayer, involve scripture reading and finally journaling.

In the next blog post, I will go into more detail about the structure and working of the date itself.

My Life is a Russian Sitcom

2011-11-19T14:48:00.001-05:00

So I should probably tell you all about my visit to Natasha's school and how I'm a super star. Instead, I'm going to tell you about a small even in my life that amused me.

I was standing in the washroom, taking out my contacts when suddenly the door was flung open. I half expected to see my neighbor Alyosha who happened to open the door on me during the same process once before but no. There in the doorway stood Tatyana Gavrilovna my landlady. "Abigail!" She said urgently. "Can you get this sim card out of my phone? We can't get it out!"

"Just a second," I replied. She seemed to realize then that my hands were wet and so she disappeared back into the kitchen. Just as I was putting the last of the solution on my contacts, there came a scraping sound of a key in the lock. It was my other neighbor, Dima. Tatyana Gavrilovna must have heard the same sound I did because she came bustling out of the kitchen again. "Dima! Are you alive?" She asked before the young man could remove his coat or shoes, or even really have a chance to set his stuff down.

"Yes," Dima answered and before he could say anything else Tatyana Gavrilovna had thrust the phone into his hands.

"We can't get the sim card out, I've tried and it won't come. Can you get it?"

Dima proceeded to attempt to get the sim card out. He pulled on it and slid it all to Tatyana Gavrilovna's commentary. "My old phone doesn't want to give it up. Alyosha tried and couldn't get it out either." Finally, Dima had it most of the way out but couldn't get it the last bit. Tatyana Gavrilovna finally took the phone back "Let Abigail have a turn, she hasn't tried yet." So while Dima closed and locked the door (He hadn't had a chance before the cell phone assault) I took the phone and in about half a second, had finished sliding out the sim card. Tatyana Gavrilovna was ecstatic.

"See? We all had to have a turn to try and get it out."

And so, life continues on. Never a dull moment in Russia, I tell you what...

Mission Epiphany

2011-11-15T07:56:00.001-05:00

Question of the Day: Do one's spiritual gifts change depending on where you are and what you're doing? Maybe not your spiritual gifts per se, but maybe the way in which you use them?

So, I had an epiphany the other day.

Sometimes it's hard being here, because sometimes I don't feel like I'm using my skills. Or that I'm not doing anything. I know of missionaries out there planting churches and building houses and taking care of people's health needs. What do I do? I help people with English. I listen, I show up to events. I feel like I'm just here and not really doing anything worthwhile.

Then I volunteered to wash the floor of the zal this week. So after Search on Friday at about 10:30 I started the process. It was good to do some physical work that also gave me some time to think. So here's the question for you. So I'm mopping the floor, and thinking about how I must've paid more attention than I thought
when mom showed me how to do these things when I was younger, because I'm doing a decent job. Then, I started lamenting the fact that I'm here not doing any great things. You know, nothing like winning those heroic spiritual battles that you read about in the Bible. I'm not amassing thousands to the Lord, or doing miracles.

Then I thought about how my days don't always turn out exactly how I planned them. I suddenly realized two things. One, being a missionary is not a 9-5 job. I mean, maybe that seems obvious, but it feels more like it's a little bit here, a few things there, a couple hours doing this a couple hours doing that and not just sitting at a desk for 8 hours. I kind of like the flexibility but at other times it can be a pain. There are some times I have to be "on" when I'd rather be "off".

I also realized that it's not really about fighting giants, or gathering thousands to the Lord. I feel like in God's kingdom it's not about numbers or projects. Sometimes we get caught up in that. It's about building relationships and doing what you can. Most importantly it's about being willing to serve with your whole heart. Sometimes I feel like the widow who gave her two coins to the poor. It was a heart issue. She had nothing, but she wanted to give and serve the Lord with everything. My job is to have that kind of attitude and do what I can.

So what is my job? It's rather abstract, but my job is to be here. I know it sounds strange. My job is to go speak to an 8th grade English class, to help watch a baby so her parents can have time together, to jump in and fake a bible class lesson for pre-teens, to listen to women who need to talk, to pray, to help people study English, to mop the floor at 11pm on a Friday night to participate, to encourage, and most importantly to love. It's not about me. It's not my job to personally save the world. Someone else already did that and boy am I ever glad he did.

I was talking to my friend Natasha about this Sunday evening. She agreed, that it's all about the small things and told me that I came at just the right time. She also said something that really stuck with me. She told me she didn't want me to leave after this year and be like "Oh yeah, I was in Russia" and have life go on. She's right. I already feel this way.

I already feel like it would be wrong to just continue my life the way it was, this is different than exchange. I have family here, friends, mentors, brothers, sisters. Just like I can't come here and completely forget about my family, friends, mentors, brothers and sisters back home, I can't go home and just forget about the people here. I need to take what I learn and discover here, and apply it to serving God back home. I need to pray and discover where God wants me and how he wants to work in my life. Then, I need to take my skills and my spiritual gifts and wholeheartedly serve him.

My Testimony -- Russian

2011-11-08T05:01:00.001-05:00

Я написала мое свидетельство, чтобы рассказать людям о том что Бог сделел для меня, и что он мой спаситель. Я его написала и на русском языке и на английском языке. Это русская версия. English Version

Я выросла вцеркви. Мои родители верующие, и бабушка,и дедушка тоже. Я крестилась 13 августа2000 г. Я верила в Бога и хотела жить с нимна небесах после смерти. Все было хорошо,а потом, когда мне стало 17 лет, я началазадавать себе вопросы о том, во что яверила.

Я сидела насобрании каждое воскресенье, слушаяпроповедника. Он говорил о том, какстать христианином. Я видела, какимибыли братья и сестры, и по-моему они былихристианами только по воскресеньям. Ябыла разочарована Я продолжала ходитькаждое воскресенье в церковь, но толькоиз-за того, что мы так делали в своейсемье.

После окончанияшколы я стала студенткой по обмену. Япоехала в Россию, где жила один год. Впервой половине поездки я мало думалао Боге и о церкви. Я все еще верила вБога, но думала о нем только когда ездилана природу. Хотя я почти все бросила, уБога были другие планы.

Я люблю читать,и когда я собиралась поехать в Россию, то взяла с собой несколько книг наанглийском языке. Но через пять месяцевя уже все их прочитала, кроме однойкниги. Библия осталась. Я сильно хотелачитать по-английски, поэтому началачитать Библию. Всю жизнь я слышаласвяшенное писание в церкви, но первыйраз читала его сама. Я большему научилась,когда сама читала, чем когда сидела вцеркви каждое воскресенье во времяБогослужения.

Бог многомунаучил меня через этот опыт, но самоеважное он научил меня скромности. Ядумала, что была лучше, чем другиехристиане, потому что считала, что вседелала правильно. Мой грех – гордость.Бог научил меня, что не мое дело судитьсердца других людей. Мне нужно бытьуверенной, что все в порядке в моейдуховной жизни. Мне обязательно нужнорассказывать другим о том, что Бог сделалдля меня, а он сам будет судить, что уних на сердце.

Я об этомрасказывала, потому что, у всех естьстрадания и духовные крисизы даже, когдачеловек вырастил в церкви, но слава Богу у нас никогда не будут слишком многоиспытания. Наш Отец всегда верный, и оннам помогает.

My Testimony -- English

2011-11-08T04:52:00.002-05:00

This is long overdue. One of the things Joel had me do in preparation for coming here was write out my testimony. So I did in English. Then, I got to translate it into Russian so Dima could send it to people interested in the Bible school and so I can tell it to people. Below is the English version of the text. Русская Версия

I grew up in the church. Sometimes Ithink that's more difficult than becoming a Christian as an adult.When you come in as an adult, you make the decision to believe and bebaptized and you are committed to making that change. When you growup in the church I think sometimes things aren't always so clear orfirm.

I committed my life to Christ when Iwas 11 years old. I believed in God and I wanted to make sure that Iwould spend eternity with him. So I was baptized and began myChristian walk. Things went pretty well until high school and then Istarted questioning. As I got more into reading the Bible and betterunderstanding of what Christianity is, I started to becomedisenchanted with it. I was reading what a Christian should beBiblically and looking around my church, suddenly realizing that thetwo didn't match up. I started to feel really down. Here I was,wanting to live out the faith and I felt like I was surrounded byhypocrites who showed up on Sunday morning because that's what goodpeople do. By the time I was ready to graduate, I no longer cared.Force of habit and my parents' expectations were what kept me goingto services.

I went to Russia as an exchangestudent right after high school. The first half of my trip I didn'treally attempt to find a place to worship. I thought about God in thecontext of things I was seeing and doing, but most of it was briefand in passing. But God was working on me.

After I had been there about fivemonths, something interesting happened. You see, I love to read andabout this time, I ran out of things to read in English. The onlything I had left was my Bible. So I opened it at random one day andthe next thing I knew, I was devouring the word. Reading for myself,I learned things that I never learned just sitting in worship everySunday. I suddenly realized that I really missed being with otherbelievers and so I made an effort to find a place where I couldworship.

God worked on me and made me realizethat it isn't my place to judge the hearts of men. It's his job. Myjob is to make sure that I''m right with him and that those around mecan see the light of Christ within me. My journey since then has beenfilled with highs and lows. I am after all human. But God is alwaysfaithful to me and because of the sacrifice of his son, I can livewith hope.

Why I Love Fridays

2011-11-05T06:29:00.002-04:00

Fridays are my favorite day of the week. Perhaps because for a lot of people it's the end of the work week so things are more relaxed, perhaps it's the dynamics. In any case, I love Fridays. They make me happy.

I think maybe it's a combination of things. Fridays is "Search," our discussion group. This in itself is always an interesting experience. We come together, eat dinner and have a discussion about more in depth spiritual topics. I'm not talking about hot topic items we discuss to death in the church (What is the Holy Spirit anyway?) I'm talking about stuff the world wonders about too. This week it was the differences between Christianity and other religions. It takes a lot of concentration to follow these discussions, but they're always interesting.

I also love the conversations that go on before and after "Search," we joke around a lot, chat and just have a general good time. Sometimes afterwards a group of us will take a little walk, last night some friends and I just kind of hung out and chatted.

I also have some English lessons on Friday. I've been working with some of the people from church who want to improve English skills. Yesterday, I met with Luka. Her English is pretty decent and so we're working on a lot of vocabulary building. For hour hour lesson yesterday we took a walk, went to a bakery and just chatted. I really enjoyed that.

On Fridays I also meet with two teenage girls from church. Now that's an interesting experience. I'm not sure how much English they've actually been learning but it's always a good time. Yesterday our topic was Justin Beiber. We read a little about him, watched the music video to "baby" (Singing along) and then read the lyrics and made sure we understood what the song was about. A conversation I had with another church member a little later went something like this:

Me: "I met with Sonya and Yana today. We were practicing English"
Them: "Yes...I heard you singing..."

What can I say? It was really fun though. They told me that they wanted to talk to some Americans, so I told them I was trying to arrange a Skype visit with some teenagers from different youth groups. I'm not sure how they feel about it, but I think it would be a cool opportunity.

So, all around, Fridays generally put me in a good mood. People make me smile. With some of the church people I feel like I can relax and be myself. It's really great because that weird identity crisis I've been mentioning seems to disappear when that happens. I'm American, but I'm not. I'm Russian, but I'm not. It's a cool feeling.

The Consulate

2011-11-02T04:11:00.001-04:00

Last Friday I spent a good hour at the consulate. I turned in paperwork and have found a way to deal with the visa stuff. However, doing that involves going back to the consulate in a week to ten days and picking up some stuff and then calling a place that will get me a letter of invitation. All of this has to be done by the middle of December.

Why? Well, because my time on my visa is up at the beginning of January. Now this wouldn't really be a problem except there's this lovely little thing here called the holidays. It's a ten day period from the end of December through the first week or so of January. During this period pretty much the entire country of Russia shuts down. I imagine it's similar in Ukraine. Plus, I'm hoping to avoid the mass amounts of people traveling on the train during said vacation times. Oh. Yeah. did I mention I'm going to be taking the train? It's definitely going to be an adventure, I can tell you that right now... I'm kind of nervous about it, but God's got my back.

I feel like one of the big things He's teaching me through this whole process is to relax and he'll take care of it. Was I upset when I found out my visa would only let me be here for 3 out of 6 months? Most definitely. But I don't know. I've had kind of a sense of peace about the whole thing. Not just visa stuff but being here. Just kind of like "Well, God seems to want me here, so I'm sure he's got a way it's going to work out." Now if I could only be that calm in other aspects of my life, everything would be great.

I'd like to take a moment and talk about the consulate experience because it was interesting times. You see, you can't just walk into the American Consulate. You have to have your ID checked. Once you actually get inside, you have to have several scans and x-rays and things to make sure you aren't going to do anything drastic.

I got inside and the nice Russian officer explained that I needed to take all of my electronic devices out of my backpack and purse and put them in a bin. Now, normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but please let me explain. I went to the consulate on a Friday. Friday is generally one of the days I go work at the church. By work at the church I mean go and sit at a desk and write things and such. When I do this, it requires a computer so I take it with me. Basically, my backpack is where I keep all of my electronic devices.

So the man set out a blue plastic bin and I proceeded to unload my phone, my ipod, my computer and my camera. Then apparently I didn't hear him say to turn everything off, so I turned off the phone and the ipod. Then, I remembered I had more stuff in my backpack, so I pulled out my hard drive and my electrical converter. Yeah, it was embarrassing.

As if that wasn't bad enough. The guy swept a wand over me and I went on to the next stage. You have to walk through a metal detector and your stuff (But not your electronics) gets x-rayed. So I started through and the guy manning this station asked if the stuff in the blue bin was all my electronics. I said yes and he proceeded to x-ray my bag. Then he politely informed me that I still had electronics in my bag. I proceeded to pull out my computer cord and my headphones. I felt really bad. I kept explaining it was because I was on my way to work. The guy was really nice about it though.

The kicker though was that while you're in the consulate they store all your electronic stuff in little cubbies. I mean little cubbies. In retrospect it was really funny to watch him fit everything into two cubbies, but at the time I was horrified. Eventually, he gave me the tags to retrieve stuff and I went on my merry way.

Visiting the consulate is the ultimate identity crisis. Most everyone you interact with there is Russian and I was never quite sure if I should be in Russian mode or American mode. So I went with a little of both. I am so grateful though that we're going to be able to get this stuff worked out! Hooray!

Apartment Hunting, Commuting, Fitting in and Connecting

2011-10-27T15:22:00.002-04:00

So I'd forgotten what it's like to live in this weird limbo of expat-ness.

That weird place where you're not exactly Russian but you're not exactly American. I think I'm working on trying to reconcile the two selves into one American-Russian-Christian-Glob of Globbiness. I'm not really sure.

A woman and her mother are staying at the church because the woman is trying to adopt a child from here. I call them Americans. "The American women came. We didn't recognize the Americans" and so on and so forth.

Yet, when I called about an apartment yesterday the woman asked where I was from "I'm an American." She promptly hung up on me. When I called back I was informed that they would only rent to Russians.

I'd forgotten how strange this country is.

For those of you who don't know, I moved out of the church. The aforementioned women needed a place to stay. So I'm now living with a young couple, Brad and Lena. I'm really enjoying it here so far too. They make me feel really welcome.

The only thing I don't really enjoy is the 50+ minute commute to the church. Although it got better when I started taking a book with me. My mother reminded me that I used to drive that far often over the summer. I replied that at least when you're driving, that far you're constantly moving. My city commute involves me walking to the bus stop...and waiting for the bus. Then I walk to the metro, drop in my token, get on the escalator...and wait to get to the bottom. Then you have to wait for the train...Once you're on the train you have to wait for your stop... Then I have to change lines so that's another wait...one more stop and you finally get to get off. But then you have to go up the escalator... Finally I leave the metro and walk several blocks to the church. Oh yes, it's good times indeed. Plus, I would be really cranky by the time I got to the church. Taking a book along helps me feel productive while I'm waiting and also gets me some escape time. So now while I don't know that I necessarily look forward to the commute, it's definitely not as terrible as it was the first couple times.

In other news, I'm looking for a room to rent. As I mentioned, I called about one yesterday. I also went with Luka and Natasha to go look at a room last night. Yeah that was interesting times... we're not going to be renting that room. The man and his wife were rather strange and the atmosphere was...eh... we looked around and promptly left. Luka is putting me in touch with an agent who can help me find something. In the mean time I've had several conversations with God about it and I know a lot of other people have been praying about it as well. I'm not too worried about it as I figure God's always got something in the works.

By the way, the best part about going to look at the room yesterday was hanging out with Luka and Natasha. We went to a cafe afterwards and hung out for a bit. It was good times.

That's the other thing I'm really enjoying. Just getting to know people. Learning about their personalities, their lives, making connections. But then after all that's what I love to do... make connections.

Cultural Respect

2011-10-20T04:02:00.000-04:00

I had a bit of a revelation the other night about cultural insight. This post is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my youth group explaining what I learned. I hope you blog followers find it interesting as well.

I wanted to tell you guys some things about culture that I think you'll find interesting. One of the most important things to remember if you ever go out on the mission field, or even just a trip is that things are going to be different. When I was an exchange student it was explained to us like this: It's not necessarily better or worse than in America, it's just different.

Learning about other people's cultures is extremely important. Through learning about this, it's possible to connect with people on their own level, one that they understand. I include language learning in this. Language and Culture are intertwined and it's impossible to separate them. I encourage you all to, even if it's a short term mission, learn as much of the language as you can before you go. It will make you more effective and people will appreciate that you've taken the time to learn about them.

Also, don't be afraid to make mistakes or ask questions. It's all part of the learning process. When I was an exchange student, I was often afraid of speaking up. I didn't want to sound silly or dumb. I was afraid of being judged for not knowing anything if I admitted I was wrong. This time around though, I'm much more open. If I don't understand, I'll say so. If there's a word I don't know, I'll ask what it means. In some ways, my learning experience here in St. Petersburg is a lot richer in only two weeks than probably half of my exchange just because I'm trying to open up and connect with people, even when my language skills are lacking.

Let me give you another example. This time dealing with how things can be different. I recently had a conversation with one of the brothers here, Dima. He was explaining to me that a Fire Inspector was coming on Friday and how it might be necessary to essentially pay him what we Americans would consider a bribe. I said that things like that often happened in Russia and that I thought it was strange and dishonest. He then informed me that things Americans do seem strange to Russians. I asked him for examples and he cited things like taking each other to court all the time and whistle blowing if someone is breaking the law. An interesting cultural thing he pointed out was that often Americans will say "Maybe" when they mean "no" I was kind of mentally laughing when he said "It's dishonest." That made me stop and think.

I like to think of myself as culturally aware. But I'm still American and embedded in that culture as well. Sometimes I think we (and I include myself in this) tend to look down on people because they don't have the same ideas that we do about life, freedoms, security, government and so on. We might say "Oh it's wrong for the Russians to have to pay bribes to pass fire inspections and they should have the same ideas about basic rights as we do" but if you stop for a moment and look at the historical events that have shaped each culture it makes perfect sense why each country feels the way it does.

America was a state founded by people who were trying to escape oppression. When they set up the government, they wanted to make sure the oppression they escaped from wouldn't happen again. Because of this, they wrote out the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The ideals that every man had basic rights and freedoms was extremely important to them and became embedded in American culture. They felt that the government's job was to serve the people, not the other way around.

Russia has always been a country where the government was the be all, end all. The people were to serve the government not the other way around. In earlier times, the Tsars ruled. These monarchs were seen as fatherly figures whose job it was, as head of the "household" to make decisions. Father knows best as it were. Later on, during Communist times, telling on people meant you were working with the repressive government. It was necessary to pay bribes to get things done. Everyone was supposed to cooperate in order to build a utopian society.

What I'm trying to say is that we, not just Americans, but everyone need to be respectful and understanding of other cultures. Does it mean we have to deny who we are culturally and take on characteristics of other societies? No. We just need to understand that people have different values and we need to be respectful of those values when we interact. Remember, it's not better or worse it's just different.

Keep on keeping on!

In Him,

Abigail

Comparisons

2011-10-17T04:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not even going to lie, it's kind of scary how much I'm loving being here. I'm really enjoying this time. I mean, is it lonely? Occasionally, when it's late and I should go to bed but don't feel like it. But generally I'm keeping busy and things are going well. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop because I feel like it should not be legal for me to be having this much fun.

Maybe it's because everything is sort of subconsciously compared to my exchange. This is completely different though. There was a part of me that never fully got used to living in Yakutsk. I mean, my goodness all I did was cry the first three days and then tried to make it through every day in order to get home. I learned a lot. There were some definite good times, but there were also some very bad times too.

I think some of my enjoyment of this comes from automatically having a family. I mean, you have host families while on exchange. But honestly, with one exception I never felt particularly close to my host families. This time it's different. As soon as I got here, I felt welcomed, loved and accepted. Oh, I still have awkward moments, you have those any time you live in a foreign country. But among my church family I'm not afraid to admit that I don't understand, not afraid to make mistakes with the language, not afraid to ask for help. It's a nice feeling. My host families were willing to help me, but sometimes I could tell I was a burden or that they didn't really want to be dealing with me. They accepted me to a certain extent because they had to. The church people kind of have to as well, but the difference is they don't mind. I feel like there's an attitude of "Great! You're here! What can you learn from us and what can we learn from you?" Because we are all trying to be Christ centered, we automatically have that in common and it makes things easier.

But I didn't start writing this blog post with the intention of preaching. There are other factors that are making this transition easier as well. For one, I already know the language an culture. My exchange took me through the difficulties of learning a language and adapting to the culture. The first few days I was in St. Petersburg were a little rough language wise. I wasn't used to hearing full-on fluent Russian spoken all the time. Last week as I believe I mentioned, however all of a sudden it was like I kind of slid back into it and now every day it gets easier. I'm understanding a ton of what people say. I'm speaking more too.

The one thing I regretted after my exchange was I felt like I didn't practice talking enough. Well, that's being remedied now. If exchange was Russian 101, this is the next level. I talk a ton more than in Yakutsk. Plus, I talk and listen to more in depth subjects. I guess I really am conversationally fluent. People tell me good things about my Russian which makes me feel good. I know that I don't speak perfectly, not by any means, but to have native Russians tell me that I sound good, or that I form my words well, or that it's good when I correct myself means a lot to me. It's like they notice I'm trying and that makes me feel good and want to try harder.

Another thing that is making this easier is the place itself. Honestly, sometimes it doesn't even feel like I'm in Russia. There's a McDonald's two blocks down and KFCs here and there. I mean, it's obviously a Russian city, but it doesn't feel like it. I don't really know how to explain it. It just has a different atmosphere. After living in Siberia, and Yakutsk in particular, this place is like a wonderland of joy and joyness. The stores don't have empty shelves and there's always a selection of at least two or three brands of whatever item you want. Yeah, stuff is more expensive here, but they also have what you want. When you want it. I'm constantly surprised at the things they have in the store here. Pre-made dough for Pirozhki? What? Or a product similar to something we have in the states that I couldn't get in Yakutsk? Wow!

I can already tell that it's going to be really hard to go home next fall.

A Day in the Life of a Missionary Part 2: Settling in

2011-10-12T03:36:00.000-04:00

I thought it would be fun to do one of these posts while I'm still settling in so here it is. This was my day on Tuesday.

9:50 am: Wake up because I'm supposed to meet with Joel at 11. Check Facebook and discover he is going to be late. I lay in bed a bit longer then get up and get ready for the day.

11:00 am: I'm having Chai in the kitchen and reading Mere Christianity when Sergei walks in. He asks me if I can get Wi-fi in my room. I tell him no. He then asks if I need the computer that's in my room. I again tell him no and he says that he will move the computer out and hook my notebook up to Ethernet. I abandon my chai and we go take care of that.

11:30: After returning to the kitchen and finishing my chai, I go back to my room, where I have a message from Joel that it's going to be a little longer. I start working on fixing a topical study he wanted me to fix because I didn't quite understand what I was doing the first time.

Noonish: Joel shows up and I show him my flier for English conversation lessons. He tells me to take it across the hall to have Lena print it.

12:30: After Sergei and Lena mess with the printer and help me tweak said flier, I finally have five copies. Joel and I proceed to the dormitory across the street where Joel has a chat with the Kommandant (The woman who's in charge of the dorm) and she allows us to go through the dorm and hang the fliers on each floor.

1:00 pm: I return to the church to see that Luka has arrived. I stop to chat with her she asks if I would like to have chai but I decline and explain I have work to do but maybe later. I work a little more on the study.

2:00 pm: Luka comes by my room and tells me she has a song she wants me to listen to. I listen, then she tells me she's going to translate it and asks if I'll look at it when she's done. I agree.

2:15: Dima comes by and asks if I would like chai. I start to decline and then he says that there are blinchiki too. So I agree and off we go to the kitchen. Once there, we are joined by Galina Mikhailovna and Sergei. Conversation ensues.

2:45: Luka comes in to the kitchen and I go over the song lyrics with her, helping her clarify some things.

2:50: Immediately following, Dima brings in a letter he wants me to answer from a woman in Yakutia who wants to learn more about the bible.

2:55: Whilst putting some things away in the kitchen Dima grills me with questions. I do my best to answer. He asks how I came to God and the Church and so I tell my story in rough Russian.

3:00 pm: I return to my room where I sit down to finish my study when Joel IMs me and asks me to come by his office.

3:45 pm: I have a meeting with Joel.

4:45 pm: I am very tired from the lots of Russian and the meeting. I stop by Dima's office to find out exactly when I'm supposed to write this letter.

5:00 pm: Dima comes by with the main points of what the woman wrote in her letter so I can get a better idea of what to say in mine.

5:30 pm: I work on this blog post. Whilst doing that a girl calls about English lessons. She asks them in Russian and I do my best to answer. She says she will call back after thinking about it. I don't think she will.

6:45 pm: Dinner time

7:00 pm: The chorus practices in individual parts, so I went and sang with the sopranos

9:00 pm: We have chai after rehersal and the girls discover it is my birthday. Congratulations ensue. I manage to follow most of the conversations over chai pretty well.

10:00 pm: Luka is cleaning up the auditorium after rehearsal. I stop by to say goodnight and she asks me to sing a bit for her. Afterwards, she asks if I would be willing to help the altos sing because their strongest alto might not be able to come on Thursday when they are recording. I agree to learn what I can and help them on Thursday if need be.

10:30 pm: I hide in my room, play guitar and relax.

First Sunday

2011-10-11T07:48:00.000-04:00

I know, it's already Tuesday, but I wanted to write about my first church service. I was tired yesterday.

Worship was the same but different than at home. I liked a lot of what went on actually. When we got started, there was singing of course, but one thing we did which I think we don't do enough of at home, was scripture reading. Between every song, there were chunks of scripture that were read. Sometimes we read them all together and sometimes, one of the men would read them. We went through a good chunk of Matthew 5 which was pretty cool.

Another interesting thing, I knew all the songs but one. How? Well because they were all songs we sing at home, but (obviously) in Russian. We actually sang one of my favorite songs, "We Shall Assemble." I'm hoping to learn the Russian version. I guess it should be obvious that we sing the same songs, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so many. Maybe because the Baptist church I attended in Yakutsk sang a lot of different songs. I've only been here one Sunday though, so what else is sung remains to be seen.

After much singing and scripture reading led by Igor, it was time for communion. Dima got up and said a few words and then we passed around the bread. It was much like home (Well, the bread was a little different. Was all crunchy) except that instead of eating it right away, we waited until everyone had a piece. Then Dima quoted Jesus "This is my body, do this in remembrance of me." And we all ate. We did the same thing with the juice after passing it around, then our little communion cups were collected.

Oleg, who I guess you could consider the main preacher, did the offering. Following that, they had all the children come to the front. It was cool because they asked the kids if there was anything they'd like to pray for and then they had a prayer for the children. After the prayer, the kids went to their respective classes.

Oleg then preached the sermon. It was pretty interesting, what I understood of it anyway. About halfway through it got easier to understand which was awesome. The lesson was about persecution.

Oh and apparently, worship here (like the scripture and stuff) isn't always the same. I just got done having tea with Dima, Sergei and Galina and they told me that the beginning part changes depending on who is leading that part of the worship. Dima also told me that this congregation is actually one of the more progressive churches of Christ in Russia. Which was interesting. It would be interesting to see how some of the more traditional churches run worship and interact with each other and the world.

There wasn't an invitation song or anything which was actually kind of nice. We just prayed at the end of the sermon. Then there were announcements. Igor got up and congratulated the couple who got married last Wednesday and then they introduced me and Joel talked a little bit about who I was and why I was here. Then we said a prayer and dismissed.

I really enjoyed worship and I've been enjoying getting to know people and getting involved with the stuff going on here. Doing this is one of the best decisions I've ever made...

First Day in Piter

2011-10-08T14:30:00.002-04:00

My day started at 5am. No lie. I went to bed last night at midnight and set my alarm for 9. I was like "this is going to be perfect."

At five I found myself lying wide awake in the room at the church where I'm temporarily lodged. My sinuses were draining down my throat so I took some medicine and went back to sleep. Or, I tried. See the problem was that I was tired. I could tell that my body needed more sleep but it wasn't working out so well. I alternately tried to sleep and journaled. Finally, about 8:30 I found myself relaxing enough to get to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was awake looked at my clock and saw that it was noon.

Now, this wouldn't have ordinarily been a problem except that Joel and his family were coming to get me at noon to take me to meet a sister named Zhenya. You can imagine my distress upon waking. Thankfully, things don't run as fast here so my ride wasn't here yet. I promptly jumped in the shower and probably coined a new record for the fastest shower. Ever. I'm talking two minutes max. (Good thing I have short hair.) As I was drying off I heard the buzzer downstairs which meant that Joel & Co were here. I answered the buzzing telephone, explained I overslept and that I would be down as soon as I was dressed.

Fifteen minutes later I made it downstairs. I did have a moment of panic tearing through my suitcases looking for socks before I realized they'd been packed inside my boots. It also took me longer because Russians love locks and I had to lock up the church behind me. Which took a bit.

Once in the car I was informed that instead of being taken to Zhenya's house as previously thought, she would be meeting me at the nearby McDonalds. Which is like two blocks away. The Pettys drove me there. Inside, Zhenya eventually came along and we proceeded to gulyat'. This is a Russian word that means walk. But not really walking to get anywhere. Just walking and talking basically. Which is what we did. All day. We ate at the McDonalds and chatted for a while. Then we wandered down the street and found a place where I could buy a cellphone. I was really glad Zhenya was with me because the guy at the store talked really fast and was really trying hard to upsell. It was kind of intense.

We wandered past pretty much all of the major tourist sites: The Hermitage, St. Issaac's Cathedral, Spas' na Krovi and had just gotten to Mikhailovskii Sad when Zhenya got a call from another sister, also named Zhenya. When she hung up she informed me (If I wasn't too tired) that we were going visiting. I was fine with this since the other alternative was to sit alone in the church and off we went.

We spent several hours visiting with Zhenya and her son Mark. He's just a baby and so it was kind of fun to get to play with him a bit. The two Zhenya's were awesome at including me in conversation, but I felt bad because quite a bit of it went over my head as I was getting tired. I was excited though because when I started this morning, I was able to have all kinds of conversation with Zhenya. We talked about family, church, history, boys all kinds of things and I did pretty well actually. I mentioned when we started that I was nervous about talking because my Russian isn't always the best. Zhenya told me a story about how she used to be really judgmental when people spoke Russian badly. Not necessarily foreigners even, but Russians themselves. But then God reminded her that it's not how you say it, it's what you say. I think she has a good point.

I really enjoyed the fellowship today. I think this year is going to go by pretty fast. Please pray that I'm able to be of good use here.

Tomorrow is the "general assembly" which means the worship time (General as opposed to the small groups and other Bible studies that go on here throughout the week.) I'm looking forward to it. It's kind of intimidating because I'm probably going to be meeting a lot of people all at once, but at the same time I'm super excited!

Alone?

2011-10-06T13:00:00.000-04:00

Am I doing something extraordinary?
Possibly.
Right now, as you're reading this, I am on a plane thousands of miles above your head.
I'm going to New York. In a big metal bird that some how manages to defy gravity... Yeah I don't want to think about that too much either.

But back to my question. Am I unusual?
Because here's the conversation I've been getting of late:

Me: I'm going to Russia on Thursday
Them: Oh? What for?
Me: I'm going to be doing mission work there.
Them: Alone?

Am I strange?
Because apparently people don't normally do this sort of thing...
I used to get this in Russia all the time too.

Host mom: Where have you been?
Me: Out walking
Host mom: Alone?

In Russia I just assumed it was because I'm female. And most young women did go walking in groups. So I just assumed that's why I was considered strange. It's not that I don't like people. I just like alone time once in a while too.

But I'm digressing from my main point. Namely, that people find it odd that I'm going to Russia alone.
It's not like I'm going to wander around the city by myself attempting to preach the gospel on street corners. I explained that to someone the other day. "Well I have church people who are meeting me."
They still gave me a funny look.
What am trying to find out is, even in our "liberated" day and age am I defying a gender norm? Essentially that it's not typical for women to travel alone?
As far as I know no one ever asked my brother this question and he spent two years in China.

I think people sometimes wonder why I'm doing this. What possesses an (almost) 23 year old to run off to Russia for a year at a time? I have no idea. I get the impression that people admire the fact that I'm going, that they're super impressed. I don't know how many people have said "I couldn't do that" or something similar. Like I'm doing something so great.

I just want to set the record straight. Maybe it's not something everyone has in them, but honestly for me it's not a big deal. It's a natural thing that stems from the talents and desires God has given me. It's right and it's good to go back to Russia. There is nothing special about it or me. I'm not trying to debase myself, but I'm saying that just because traveling abroad is what I do, doesn't make me any better or worse than anyone else. Why? Because there are plenty of things I can't do.

For example, I greatly admire people who work with people who have special needs and people who work in hospitals. Why? Because I can't do that. I just can't handle it. If I had to, I suppose I would, but honestly I pray that I am never in that situation because it just makes me uncomfortable. Nursing homes are the same way. It's not where my talents lie. There are people I know who are great at that. They connect with people that way and are able to show love, kindness and compassion. That is where their talents are and they can use those talents for great things.

So my reminder for the day, as I'm flying above your heads, is to remember what Paul said. We are all parts of a single body. We all have different ways of dealing with things, different goals, different talents and we can all use what we have to glorify God.

What If?

2011-10-05T14:45:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning and the first thoughts in my head were about fifteen "what ifs." I mean, it wasn't anything super horrible. It was just little things. What if I get super sick? What if I lose a contact? What if my passport gets stolen?

So much for my feelings of peace and non-concern about going. I think it's starting to hit me. I've felt kind of sad all day and out of sorts. There are things I need to finish, but I don't have time. And then there are some things that I was like "Oh wait, I can finish this in Russia. It's not like my life is ending."

Mom says I'm going through the stages of dying. Not that I am. But she says that anytime someone has a big change in their life death, divorce, moving, extended travel they go through stages. Apparently symptoms of this sort of thing is avoiding, holding on to stuff, or giving it away, and being angry and/or sad. She's kind of right.

Even though I'm not completely avoiding, I still am. I'm not completely thinking about it. In fact through the course of writing this blog entry, I've been forced to think about it and therefore am feeling kind of sick.

As for the stuff. I don't know that I'm really holding on to stuff. Unless you count me trying to fit everything into my suitcase as holding on. But I'm definitely letting go of some things. I dated a guy this summer and had some stuff of his. Gave it back to him when he came to say goodbye on Monday night. He was like "Why are you giving me this back?" "Because." It just seemed like the thing to do.

Saying goodbye to people is weird as well. Half the time it doesn't seem like I'm even leaving. Monday night was just surreal. It was like an ordinary night all summer. The guy comes by after work, we sit around for a while and then he drives the rest of the way home. It didn't even feel like this was the last time I'd see him for a year.

Sunday night I went to my college church to say goodbye to all of them. I love those people. They are a tiny congregation but they've been so interested in and supportive of my upcoming journey. It was good to get to talk to a couple of my adopted moms and see everyone. But again, it was weird.

Everyone is like "Bye Abigail. Good luck on your journey, we're praying for you" But it didn't feel like an unordinary night. We had our potluck, and services and I stood outside in the parking lot for an extra hour talking to a couple interested in Missions like I usually do. And then it was like "Well, see ya."

Mom tells me that it's always harder for the people staying behind. I'm starting to believe it because I don't feel much of anything at the moment.

Four Days

2011-10-03T16:36:00.001-04:00

I'm leaving on Thursday. This time on Thursday I'll be on a plane. Or, waiting in an airport. In either case, I won't be here. I'm having a really weird time of it as well. There are two suitcases, a backpack and a guitar sitting in the middle of my parents' dining room.

The suitcases have (mostly) clothes, and books and random things like vitamins thrown hither and yon into them. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I have clothes in the washer and a mental list that contains more items than Jewish Law.

I'm leaving on Thursday, but it doesn't feel like it.
I mean the good news is that I'm not avoiding. The above evidence of the suitcases and everything proves that. I know I'm leaving. It's looming over me.

But it doesn't feel like I'm going for a whole year.

I realized this the other day and it's been bothering me ever since.

I don't feel like I'm going to be spending a whole year in Russia. I feel like this is just a little jaunt. But it doesn't feel like I"m going to be back in a few weeks either.

Maybe it's because I know how fast it will go? Maybe it's because I've done this before? Maybe it's because I know life goes on after you go overseas. I mean, yeah you change and the people here change, but life still goes on.

I sure hope it doesn't hit me like it did last time. Last time, as soon as I left my parents in the airport I started crying and didn't stop for three or four days. That would be terrible.

What's nice though is that all my fears and doubts that I had when I first decided to do this, as well as the ones I'd been having in recent days, have completely disappeared. I feel a deep sense of peace about this whole thing. I have visa issues. So what? If God provided me funding to go and has been with me all this time, he's certainly going to provide me with the means of working out my visa. And if not? Well it's because he wants me to work in Ukraine or another country as well as Russia and who am I to argue?

That doesn't mean everything is peachy though. Although it doesn't feel like I'm leaving, I am. And while I don't feel finality that I did last time, I still feel rather weird. It's hard to explain. I feel lonely at times. So lonely I want to cry. I came home from seeing my church family where I attended during college and was just in this weird mood. Went right up to my room. Mom came by later and asked three times if I was okay. "I will be."
"So you're not now, but you will be?"
"Yeah, I guess."

I couldn't tell her exactly what was wrong. I don't know myself. Just an underlying sadness, with a weird combination of nostalgia and anger. It's an odd combination for sure.

Hmmm... perhaps I should be preparing myself for the bi-polarness that comes with living overseas because it seems that I'm starting now...

The Walls of Jericho

2011-09-26T12:58:00.001-04:00

If you have attended Bible school at some point in your life, most likely you've heard the story of Jericho. If not, you can read it in the book of Joshua, chapters 2 and 6.

Jericho was a city with massive walls,

and right now I find myself staring at those walls.

What are they?

Lots of things.

Goodbyes, hellos, suitcases, clothes, visas, lists, documents, passports, airplane tickets, newspaper articles.

Going back is weirder than going the first time.

I wish I knew how to explain it better.

You know what to expect which makes it better, but also makes it worse.

And then there are the people around you...

No one who loves you really wants you to go. They didn't want you to the first time either, but they also understood wanting to be an exchange student. This however, is different. Compared to this, exchange was a lark in the park.

Everyone reacts differently. Some people say things, some people don't. Some people avoid the subject altogether and pretend like everything's okay. Some overcompensate by trying to be helpful and some completely explode. Your parents, your grandparents, your friends, your significant other all react this way. Maybe they understand why you feel called to go do something like this. Maybe they don't. Maybe they admire you, maybe they're jealous that they don't have the strength to do what you're doing. Maybe they're afraid for you. Maybe deep down all of their good intentions are a secret selfishness. They know you are doing what you need to do, but they want you just to stay.

Whatever their thoughts, feelings and reactions, it places a lot of pressure on you. Suddenly you're bombarded with everyone's expectations. "Don't worry about it." "Have you done this yet? How about that? and that over there?" "This is me not caring" "Why don't you just settle down?" "You can't do that." "I'm not talking about this." "I'm glad you've finally dealt with that issue, now onto the next." "Why are you making this such a big deal?" "Let's talk about this more." "Let me tell you how I would handle it" "Why haven't you done this yet? You better plan on doing it before you leave." "Do you have enough money yet?" "I want to see you before you go" "When are you leaving?" "Why haven't you left?" "When are you coming back?" These are all things you hear on a daily basis, over and over until you can't hear the one thing that even matters in the first place -- the still, small voice of God.

Add to that the way you feel inside. The questions and expectations you place on yourself. "What am I doing?" "Why am I doing this?" "Is this really necessary?" "What if, what if, what if...?" "How can I deal with this?" "How is this going to change me?" "Is this going to be effective?" "What do I want to do?" "What does God want me to do?" "How can I make them understand?" "I need to be good." "I can't let these people down." "What happens after this year?" "What are my goals?" "When am I leaving?" "Why haven't I left yet?" "When am I coming back?" And suddenly you're overwhelmed and you try to find a way to deal with that. You ignore your emotions or you break down and cry. You shut down or keep busy or stare blankly at the ceiling.

It's true you know,

The Devil is in the details.

It would be nice if life had a large pause button so you could just take a breather.

But time marches endlessly on...

What I've Learned About Myself the Past Week or So...

2011-09-22T09:27:00.000-04:00

I'm officially leaving October 6th.

This has led to kind of a crunch time for me.

Which in turn has led me to discover some things...

I work best under pressure. Okay, not really pressure because I get really stressed. But I've discovered that I need to have firm deadlines if I ever hope to accomplish anything. In college for example, I knew when things were due all the time so I could start them ahead, work on them in increments and get them done. When I don't have firm deadlines for myself, I'm not working on things consistently and therefore nothing gets done.

I like to be organized. I'm not one of those obsessive-compulsive people where everything has to be perfectly neat. I get piles of stuff lying around and such. I tell people I'm not messy, my form of organization is just different. But actually, I've learned that there is this toleration point where I can't stand things being messy and so I have to clean before I can sit down and work.

Lists = Good. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. Therefore I am better if I sit down and write out a list. Sometimes it's a list of everything I want/need to accomplish that day and sometimes it's a list of what I have to do and when it has to be done. In either case, it gives me a tangible visible way to break everything down and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I cross things off.

I am more left-brained than I'd like to admit. I take pride in my right-brainedness and non-analyticalness. But honestly, the whole making lists thing is totally left-brained. I remember that question being on those little personality test things (that was before I started making lists). And honestly, being a little left-brained helps me get stuff done. So it's actually a blessing in disguise.

Being a missionary and being human are not mutually exclusive. I know, this seems kind of dumb, but I'm discovering something about being a church worker. There's pressure there. I mean, my goodness, people have paid good money to support me on this trip. They put a lot of faith and trust in me. It's quite a burden. Especially since we're dealing with spiritual matters. It's kind of terrifying. You sit there thinking "Oh my goodness, I don't want to mess this up!" But at the same time, it does get messed up. So here I am with a dilemma. I want to be as perfect as possible because I have an image to uphold, but at the same time I do a really good job of royally messing everything up. So the last couple of days I've thought about it and decided "This isn't going to work and so we're just going to forget it." Not that I'm not trying. We should always try to be more Christ-like. That is our goal as Christians after all. But the idea is that I try to grow in the faith and do my best and God's grace will cover the rest. It's hard for me to let go like that not even going to pretend and say it is. Because there's a part of me that's like "I've done some really dumb things and made some really bad mistakes in my life. How will grace ever cover what I've done?"

It's like the preacher at the congregation I visited yesterday said. "He will take you back. Do we deserve it? No. But it's okay because He loves us anyway and he will take us back. " That's encouraging to me.

Anytime you work in the church, there is a standard people hold you too. The key is understanding within yourself that the standard is man-made and you're no better than anyone else. Once you realize this, you can let it go and more effectively live life for Him.

God Wants Me in Russia

2011-09-13T12:18:00.000-04:00

So, In order to make this trip, I had to raise about $18,000. Which sounds like a lot of money but if you think about the fact that it's what I'm living on for a year, it really isn't that much.

I'm not going to lie, I was terrified to start fundraising. As I've probably mentioned before, fundraising is something that every beginning missionary dreads doing. Who really wants to go around asking people for money? That's just awkward.

Anyway, I had managed to raise about $10,000. Which is pretty good. How did I do it? Well, mostly I just sent packets out to individuals explaining what I was going to be doing the next year. There was one congregation who took up a collection for me and who are also supporting me monthly. Most everything else was one-time gifts.

Now, my fundraising kind of hit a stand-still. I was hovering about that ten thousand mark and it seemed like the gifts had pretty much tapered off. Oh dear. Because there is no way I could go to Russia and be able to stay the year on $10,000. So what did I do? I sat down and figured out that if 8 individuals or congregations would pledge to support me $90 a month, I would reach my goal. I also figured out that if I had five people willing to pledge that, I would be able to make it through the year. So my goal became "five pledges but ideally, I need 8" So I prayed about it and got ready to call churches and beg for money.

But a funny thing happened. Wednesday night, I was at church and I asked for fundraising prayers. I explained what I needed and several people asked questions. The next thing I knew, one woman had said that she would be willing to pledge 90 a month. I was so excited. But then it got even better. Thursday someone else said they would pledge and Friday a family who knows me said they would support monthly as a birthday present. I prayed and waited and within three days I had three pledges. But it gets better.

The teen group I spoke to back in June was inspired by what I had to say. They decided that they wanted to kind of adopt me and help support me. So they started collecting money and they also decided to hold a comedy night fundraiser with donations going towards my trip. I had also heard that the elders at their congregation were going to match whatever they raised.

I thought about it and started praying "God, I could really use $500..." But then I stopped and thought. I mean I assumed that $500 was about what they all could do. Yet, ask and you shall receive right? Besides, I've been studying about the power of faith lately and thought this was potentially a good way to test it. So I changed my prayer. "Actually God, what I really need is $1000. It would make it so much easier if I could get $1000 from this fundraiser." After praying about it, I didn't worry about it. I figured God would make it happen.

Saturday night we went to the comedy show and had a great time! The teens did a good job and it was just and all around great evening. At the beginning of the night, one gentleman stood up and talked a little bit about my trip and what the teens had been doing to raise money for me. For example, when they went out to eat they would order water instead of pop and then take the money they would've spent on the drink and put it towards my trip. Cool things like that. Anyway, so they were talking about my trip and this man goes "They asked the leadership to match what they raise. Unfortunately, we can't write a blank check but we will match a thousand dollars." Bam! Right there, five minutes in, my prayer was answered. I was getting at least a thousand dollars from the church. Plus whatever the teens raised on top of it. Grand total I was expecting $1,500. God wasn't done yet.

Sunday evening I was visiting another congregation. After church, I got a text message from my dad. He informed me that the unofficial count from the fundraiser and teens was in. The church was giving me $1,000 and the teens managed to raise another $1,500. Grand total I'm getting about $2,500 from them. I was blown away.

When I started this post, I was going to go on and talk about how God must want me in Russia because he's brought me the money with minimal effort on my part. Maybe it sounds trite but the most work I've done specifically towards fundraising was send out those packets. Other than that all I've done is talk about it and express need. God has done an amazing job working out, not only the money but potential issues with getting into and staying in Russia as well. I am extremely blessed!

And speaking of blessings, I was thinking as I was typing this about the effort the teens put forth. I mean, they set their minds to helping me and were committed to it and look where they ended up. It's amazing! Not only that but look at the way God blesses us. I gave up time to speak to the teens. I didn't think it was a big deal but through what I said they were touched and blessed. In return, they have blessed me as well. I don't think they realize just how much having that $2,500 means to me. It's the difference between going and staying. This is the way it's supposed to work. We each give, each throw our hearts into blessing others and the blessings will come back tenfold.

My Banner is Clear

2011-09-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

I've been haunted by things from the past of late. If you're Facebook friends with me, you may have seen that I discovered some pictures from my exchange year that I'd forgotten about. Which is cool. Good memories and everything.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing in preparation for my journey and today I discovered the Bible that I carried with me in High School. I need to take a moment to explain how I feel about Bibles. I am a huge fan of marking them up. *Gasp!* I know, right? But it's a place to keep thoughts, feelings, ideas etc about scripture and/or lessons and sermons I've heard. Hence the reason my current Bible has a journal in the margins. Perfect for notes :)

Anyway, so the Bible I carried in High School was a teen study Bible and it's pretty beat up. Not only that but some of the notes are rather interesting. The most interesting feature, however, is how I decorated the inside covers. There are notes about communion bread making, numbers for my favorite songs from our song book, the word "Believer" written in Russian and something else written in Hebrew, song lyrics and a host of other things. On the inside of the front cover is something I'd completely forgotten about.

My cousin is a preacher and when he was first doing a sermon or communion speech for us, he shared a little... I don't know it's not really a poem, with us. I copied it in to the front of my Bible because it spoke to me. I couldn't remember where it came from so I did a little research. Apparently it was written by a pastor in Africa who was martyred. I hope it brings you as much encouragement as it did me.

I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit Power. The die has been cast. I've stepped over the line, the decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ!

I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is clear. I am finished with low-living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, worldly walking, cheap talking and dwarfed goals.

My face is set, my goal is fast, my goal is Heaven. My road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my Guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I won't give up, shut up, let up until I've stayed up, stored up and prayed for the cause of Christ.

I must go til he comes, give til it hurts, preach til everyone knows and work til he stops me. and when he comes to claim his own, he'll have no problem recognizing me. My banner will be clear!

It's in the Mail

2011-09-06T13:42:00.002-04:00

oh my gosh! oh my gosh!

Yeah so my letter of invitation is totally on a FedEx truck/plane right now. This. Very. Instant. Suddenly it's hit me that I'm actually going to be leaving. Soon. What?! This is craziness. Pure craziness.

My Mother Was Right...

2011-08-30T14:18:00.000-04:00

As much as I hate to admit it, it's true. For those of you who read this blog for the express purpose of hearing about my journey to Russia, we're going to digress a little bit today. Okay, a lot.

Anyway, growing up I was pretty much a tomboy, let's just make that clear. I preferred to be outside, didn't like to dress up and so on and so forth. I would tell my mom that I was going to stay single forever and never have kids. Instead, I wanted to be an accomplished career woman living in a little apartment in the Big City with a dog. Mom was very good. She never quashed my dreams but she always told me that it was good to keep my options open because some day I might change my mind.

Well friends, some day is today.

Okay well not literally today. But it's here. Staring me in the face.

Yes, that's right. I'm succumbing to Womanhood! *Gasp* NOOOOO!

So in recent months. Namely since May, I've discovered something interesting. I like running a household. I know, right? Me. I find myself feeling very fulfilled when I spend afternoons alternately working on Russia stuff and doing dishes and laundry. And the days I feel really special and important? The days that mom works late and it's my job to make dinner for Dad and my Brother. Oh yes... Suddenly, I find myself thinking "You know, it would be really nice to be married and have a family," Yes, that's right. I think it.

If you know me, you also know my aversion to children, or rather Children's aversion to me. I mean, I like kids and all but I've never been one of those "Let me fawn all over your children" kind of people. Kids tolerate me and I like them in small doses. So it's kind of a shocker for me when I'm sitting at the park alternately having devo time and watching the families and thinking "If those were my kids I would..." Yeah. That's right. I've started having maternal moments. It's rather terrifying actually.

Plus, I've become more sentimental in my old age.
I cry during chick flicks
I cry during disney movies
I cry during Conan the Barbarian (Okay that was because of the terrible scripting)
I cry when I read novels
I cry when I think about this summer
I cry when I hold babies

I feel like I could just go to Africa and supply all those well-less villages with water. We could just desalinate it and we'd be good to go.

All joking aside though, it's kind of weird for me to discover this. I mean I've always liked helping people. But this is different. My boyfriend stops by after work and I'm like "Let me feed you and take care of you!" (At least I don't have to walk him) or with my brother today. I informed him that I was making tacos tonight and he goes "Oh goody! I'll come home for dinner then." which made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Basically, this terribly independent, liberated, no nonsense woman, famed for the fact that she "Don't need no man to buy/make/help/do..." has discovered that she kind of enjoys taking care of the men in her life.

Hats off to you, Momma.

Are You Still Looking for Funding?

2011-08-23T13:32:00.000-04:00

So, things are slowly coming together. Actually, in some ways they are starting to come together quite quickly. You see, I was finally able to reach a consulate in Ukraine who said that they could help me when it was time to get a new visa. All this was well and good and I was pretty excited until I realized that I had no budget to travel to Ukraine 3ish times, stay there for two weeks and get a new visa. I was starting to stress about it and finally I had a long chat about it with God and tried not to worry.

Maybe a day or two later, I got an e-mail from Joel. Basically he informed me that we were switching things up with my visa because he was going to get me a year-long multi-entry business visa. Say what? That's right. Not only is my visa going to be good for an entire year, but I will be able to exit and re-enter the country. Can I get a Whoop-Whoop? There was a flurry of activity to get the paperwork in for the letter of invitation which, I was informed would take about a month to process. It will then be FedExed to me and it will be probably about 10 days on my end to actually get the visa, pushing my departure date back to sometime just after Sept 20th.

Which was actually just fine for me. Why? Well, because I'd been looking at my funding and even without having to go to Ukraine three times, I was still kind of worried.

Which brings me to my new favorite question:

Are you still fundraising?

I've had several people recently who are interested in funding my trip ask me this. The answer, dear friends, is always yes. I don't care what the "deadline" was on the paper. The answer is still yes.

You see, we are missionaries. What does that mean? It means that local churches and individuals support us so that we can focus our energy on teaching, preaching, encouraging, sharing and generally spreading God's word. As a result, sometimes there are sudden expenses on the field, trips, emergencies, etc. Or sometimes a congregation that has been supporting a long-term mission suddenly decides it can't any more and pulls funding.

My point in telling you this is that you shouldn't let the fact that a mission might already be funded stop you from giving. Chances are they aren't. And if by some miracle they have all the money they budgeted for, your support could go toward helping another project that otherwise might not be possible.

Now, would anyone be interested in giving $90 a month to support a lovely young lady in Russia...? :P

Why Are You Using a Russian Bible When Church is in English?

2011-07-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

I recently met a young couple who are new to this area and had the pleasure of spending an evening at Dairy Queen getting to know them. She was an MK and grew up in Austria and Germany. He majored in Bible with an emphasis on missions and spent time in the Ukraine. One of the things we discussed was this question. Well, not this question exactly. But something similar.

Though I have never actually physically been asked this question, I'm sure there are those of you out there who have seen some random person with a Bible that looks a little bit different than yours. Namely, it looks like this: Библия: В русском переводе

Or maybe not quite like that.

But anyway, back to my story.

The next time I saw this young couple, they were kind enough to let me borrow some song books and a bible that they had picked up in Ukraine.

This does have something to do with the question. I promise.

So I've been kind of flipping through the song books and such. It's been fun seeing what songs some of the Ukrainian congregations are singing. Then I stumbled upon one of my favorite songs, Send the Light. For those of you who don't know this song, I like to think of it as kind of the "Missionary Anthem" as it's all about taking the light to people in other places.

The second verse of this song is what I find most interesting.

We have heard the Macedonian Call today,
Send the light, send the light.
And a golden offering at the cross we lay
Send the light, send the light.

Pretty straightforward right? Yay.

Well, I was skimming through the Russian and the first line was translated such:

Македонский крик звучит и в наши дни

And suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I was like "Oh!" New understanding dawned. Why? Well because if you translate the Russian line back into English it comes out something like "The Macedonian cry sounds even in our days"

When you put it like that, it means a lot more. All of a sudden, I wasn't just thinking about a reference to some dead guy who wrote half of the New Testament (No offense, sir). Instead it suddenly became more real. The Macedonian call goes out even today. Today. Now. Right now. This very moment. We are supposed to be sending the Light. Everywhere. I guess it just made it more tangible to me.

Then, I read the rest of the Russian translation of the second verse...

Македонский крик звучит и в наши дни:
Дайте света, дайте света.
Не покиньте бедных погибать одних
Дайте света, дайте света.

So... In English we hear the call to send the light and lay golden offerings at the cross. In Russian, the call is going out to Give the light. The third line of the stanza then imperatively commands people to not leave the poor to die alone. Yes, that's what I said.

The Macedonian cry sounds even in our day,
Give the light, Give the light!
Do not leave the poor to die alone,
Give the light, give the light.

Now, I don't know about you but to me, personally reading the Russian is kind of like a slap in the face. It gives me this feeling and sense of urgency that I don't feel when I read the English version of this song. In English it's like "La la la...oh yes we should be sending someone else to take the light...yay..." In Russian it's more like "HEY! HEY! YOU! YES YOU! WE'RE DYING HOPELESS HERE, GIVE US THE LIGHT!!! HELP US!!"

I mean, no offense to Mr. Charles H. Gabriel. I'm sure he had the best of intentions and spoke from the heart when he wrote this song. And it was written in the late 1800s after all.

But this brings me back to my point. Why do I follow along in an English church with a Bible that's in Russian? Because it's amazing what you can learn. I don't know about you, but often I will sit during worship service and kind of zone out. You get to the point where it's like "I've sung this song a thousand times, I've heard sermons similar to this one, I've read this verse over and over" You've done it so many times or heard it so much that after a while you become numb to it and don't even think about it any more. So to read it in a different language, often sheds insight onto the same, old, tired thing. Often it's just because things are worded slightly differently, or you read it in a way that makes you get something new out of it.

Is all of this making sense?

Good.

I encourage any of you out there who are studying a foreign language to pick up a Bible in that language. Even if you don't know the language well. Reading will not only help you improve your language skills, but the benefits run deeper as well.

Women in Ministry

2011-07-21T15:31:00.000-04:00

I spoke at a Ladies' day last Saturday. That plus speaking to a group of teens plus reading some friends' blogs and just a combination of things got me thinking. What about? Well, about women in ministry and women in missions.

I feel like often people don't think about women doing missions. Especially in the Church of Christ. Why? Well, because the men are supposed to be the spiritual head and they are the ones who run the worship service and therefore we women resign ourselves to teaching children's classes, making communion bread and marrying preachers.

Not that these jobs aren't important. Not by any means. I mean let's be real here, what guy knows how to make good communion bread? No, I'm just kidding. There are quite a few guys out there who cook a lot better than I do. But I digress.

My point is that you need to find your niche. The Church of Christ prides itself on being based on New Testament example. Let me tell you what Ladies, if you're not out there finding ways to share your faith, that's wrong. There are plenty of examples of New Testament women who got out there and were actively involved in the works of the church. Lydia invited people to gather in her home, Lois and Eunice brought Timothy up to know Christ and the women in Luke 8 went with Jesus and the Disciples and provided for them with their own money. Kind of a big deal since that was in the days before women's lib.

So is it wrong to go into the ministry with a husband? No. Men need a helpmate and if that's what God has called you to do, then by all means do it. But what I'm saying is that you need to consider your options and keep an open mind. Be creative. We are all called to share our faith. If we're not doing that, we're wrong.

Single ladies, I know a lot of times you think you need a husband in order to go into the ministry. But you can find your own ministry separate and apart from that. I know single women serving in Russia, China, Burkina Faso and of course here in the states. What are your talents and gifts? How can you serve? If you like children, then by all means teach children's classes. Do you relate well to teenagers? Start a mentorship program for teenage girls.

We all have people that only we can reach. Whether it's here or abroad. I think a lot of times congregations focus on certain, common ministries such as youth or seniors. Often they overlook women. So reach out to the other women in your congregation. Start a night where you get together and just have girl time.

It doesn't have to be formal, it doesn't have to be a big deal. But ladies, I encourage you to get out there and find where you belong in God's Kingdom. We are one body but we have many parts.

Please note that this does not apply to women in worship. While, like all organized denominations, I think the Church of Christ has some issues. I feel that scripturally men are the ones who need to be leading in worship. Just trying to head off the nasty comments before I get them.

Reverse Culture Shock

2011-07-19T10:57:00.000-04:00

My brother came home from China a couple of weeks ago. It's been interesting to see how he's been dealing with being back. He was in China for two years. He came back for about six weeks last summer and didn't seem to really have any major issues with returning to the states. I think this second year he got a lot more into the culture and Chinese life though, because it's been interesting having him back.

I had a really rough time when I first came back from my exchange year in Russia. I felt extremely strange, it felt like no one understood my thoughts, feelings or views. There were things here that just didn't make sense because I was used to the Russian way of doing them. It was weird. And it's been very interesting seeing reverse culture shock from this side.

It started when we went to Dollar General. My brother started completely freaking out in the grocery aisles. I asked him why. He explained it was because a lot of the American food they were selling was hard to come by in China, or they didn't have it at all and so to be faced with it all at once and having it be so cheap was a little overwhelming. I understood. My city in Russia never had a variety of brand or varieties of a product at once. When I came back from the states, the amount of variety we have here was rather unsettling.

My brother also found it weird that he could understand everything everyone was saying. While he is not fluent in Chinese, he was exposed to it every day and gained a decent amount of survival Chinese. He was used to being able to just kind of ignore what everyone around him was saying and think about other things. Here, he finds understanding everyone to be distracting.

He also laughs because "Everyone here has an accent." Meaning he is very attuned to the patterns in which people speak. I can definitely feel him on this one. When I came back from Russia, it was weird to hear all that english. I remember my parents were watching Good Eats on the Food Network when I came in the room. I stopped, listening to Alton Brown. After a moment I was like "I have to leave." My parents asked why and I explained that Alton Brown talks funny and it was driving me nuts.

There are other things too, such as his random fits of the giggles during worship services. I've mentioned this before but other countries don't take Christianity for granted like we do. As my brother put it, "Christianity is America's folk religion." Meaning that a lot of people are "Christian" because that's what we do here.

Anyway, those are just a few interesting examples of how my brother is adjusting back to life in the states. He asks me things like how long it will last, or mentions things that bother him. I just nod and tell him I understand. Other than that I don't know what to do. Talking about it with people who've been there helps. Aside from that, you just kind of have to work through it.

A Day in the Life of a Missionary (Part A)

2011-07-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

So, I always wondered what it is that missionaries do a on a regular basis. So I decided to do a series. This is the first part. The second part will come when I'm actually in Russia. But even though I'm not actually in-country yet, Being a missionary is still a job. So here's a sample of a day in my life.

My day starts at 3 a.m. with a call to the Russian consulate in Helsinki, Finland. I've been trying to figure out some visa issues and am attempting to call places who may be able to help. I manage to get a hold of someone at the consulate general who directs me to a different number.

3:20 a.m. My attempts at calling the new Helsinki number are met with a busy signal. I decide to try calling the consulate in Lvov, Ukraine. It's busy there as well. I try Finland again...

3:30 a.m. After trying both locations several times, I resolve to try again in a few hours.

8 a.m. I try the consulates several more times. Still nothing.

1 p.m. I work on a lesson for tomorrow night. I am speaking to a group of teenagers at a VBS about how God can work unexpectedly in their lives and can use them even when they can't completely see his plan. I get ideas for how I'm going to present my topic while creating a video to show.

5:30 p.m. I take a spiritual gifts assessment to help me better define myself and what I can help with in the Russian church.

6 p.m. I work on putting my ideas for tomorrow's talk down on paper

6:45 p.m. I eat dinner and relax with my family

So there you have it. A day in the life of a missionary who is preparing to go out on the field.

The Joys of Calling Eastern Europe (And Other Missions Things I've Discovered)

2011-06-15T12:00:00.001-04:00

I'm supposed to be calling Eastern Europe. And Finland. You see, Russia has some interesting visa laws. Namely that a foreigner can't be there longer than three months. So we are trying to work out that once my visa expires I can go to a nearby country and get it renewed in either a couple days or a couple of weeks rather than three months.

Here's the thing about calling Eastern Europe. It's difficult. Why? Well, because of the tiny detail that there is a time difference. No big deal right? Except that the consular information people I've been trying to call are only there from 9am to 12pm. No big deal right? Well you see, that's 9-12 their time. Which is like the middle of the night here.

So not only does taking care of this business require calling in the middle of the night, but it also requires that I call the right department, the people actually pick up the phone, and I am able to talk to the supervisors. etc. Yes, it's been interesting times.

In other news, the fundraising has been going pretty well. I told my parents the other day that Someone must want me to go on this trip because I've been able to raise quite a bit with minimal effort so far. Not that I'm trying to brag. I just think it's interesting. I have about a third of what I need for the entire year in Russia. Which is amazing! God and the people I've talked to have been extremely generous. I am extremely blessed! Just because I have a third of what I need though doesn't mean that I don't have more to raise. Please continue to pray for me as I go through this process and try to get the rest of the support to go!

In my personal devotional time, I've been reading though Acts due to the mission work that goes on. It's been taking me longer than usual because I've been reading it in Russian as well as English. I read the chapter in English then spend a few days reading it a few verses at a time in Russian, writing down and looking up words I don't know. I don't have a lot of Russian church vocabulary and so am hoping that this will help increase it. It's been an interesting experience and one that I am greatly enjoying.

That's really all I've got for the moment. Things seem to be going pretty well. Again, your prayers are appreciated!

A Petulant Child

2011-06-14T11:07:00.000-04:00

It's been an interesting few weeks. I'm not even sure where to begin.

I went through this phase of avoidance for a while. I don't know why I do this sort of thing. But I hate change and so often I will do things to avoid it. Namely by not thinking about it. Which is never good. There were times the last couple of weeks where I did a lot of thinking; wondering why I even want to go to Russia. I mean it would be so much easier to just stay here. But then I suppose that would be a waste of everything I've been preparing for.

I feel like the last couple of weeks I've been kind of like a petulant child. I was thinking about how I've made some decisions recently without really consulting God. Or, consulting God and then doing exactly what I wanted anyway. I imagined myself like a little kid stamping her foot and going "But I want this!"

It's kind of ironic that I had this image of myself because on Sunday the preacher talked about this exact thing. I feel like some of the sermons I've heard of late have directly related to me. Parts of them have really spoken to me, or related to things I've been thinking about.

It's also odd, the way that things can refocus you. I was kind of just going through the flow in a haze of uncertainty and avoidance and then I had a chat with one of my best friends. Katya and I have been friends and roommates and we can talk about just about anything. She came by my house the other day for a visit and we sat and talked for over and hour. Honestly, I can't pinpoint that there was anything exactly that she said or I said that refocused me. It was just the whole conversation. Maybe it's because we go from talking about ridiculous things like boys and scrabble and then in the next sentence talk about deeper things such as mission work, worship and where God is leading us.

In any case, it was an afternoon well spent and I came out of it going "Oh. I'm kind of dumb." I realized that some things in life are more important than others and I had been focusing on the wrong things. Again.

As our preacher put it on Sunday, God has everything worked out. He knows what's best for us. But sometimes we try to take the reins. We think we know exactly what we want and need and instead of focusing on God and trusting him to work it out, we go off on our own. I can just imagine God shaking his head as I go my own way and waiting patiently for me to come back to him. I am so grateful that he does wait patiently!

Virginia Beach Vacation

2011-06-08T09:42:00.001-04:00

So, I couple of weeks ago I took a vacation to Virginia Beach. Why? Well because I felt like I needed a break, I'd never been to Virginia Beach and I wanted some time alone. Yeah, did I mention that I went by myself?

If you've never taken a vacation by yourself, I highly recommend it. You are beholden to no one and you can just kind of do your own thing. It is pure amazingness.

I stayed at a hotel about 8 blocks from the beach. It was a nice hotel, but if I'm going to do it again, I'd probably stay on Atlantic Ave. Right on the beach. It's definitely worth it. VB's main street is rather touristy. If you know me, you know I like to avoid super touristy places, but there were interesting things to see as well. Like the Wildfowl Heritage Museum which is free. If you go to Virginia Beach and are looking for a tasty place to eat, I'd recommend the 33rd st. Cafe. Their fish and chips are amazing and I had a nice chat with some of the locals.

All in all, I spent a couple of days essentially just lying on the beach. I ended up going the second or third week of May which was a really good time. It was warm enough to lay around on the beach, but there weren't mass amounts of people there. It was perfect and a great way to relax.

Procrastination as a Science

2011-05-04T12:57:00.000-04:00

So, as a college student I thought I had the art of procrastination down to a T. Let me tell you what, being a senior in college, graduating in three days, It has become straight science. College senioritis is worse than High School. In High School, even though you knew it was over, you had to keep trying because you had four more years of college to get through.

Yet College is different.

College Senioritis = (graduating in 3 days/going to Russia for a year)^regular tiredness

Now if you break that all down and work it all out, you get something like this:

(Graduating/Russia)^Tiredness = an extremely long period of time
Time-BA Degree+Real World Experience= Employer not caring about undergrad classes
Employer Attitude+Ending School= Straight Apathy
Apathy+Graduation= Who really cares about this stuff anyway?

Now for all of you non-mathematically minded people (Like me), what this means is that I just don't care anymore. I mean, I kind of do. But not really. Which is a really weird feeling for me. I've spent most of my life caring about school and how well I did. But I've gotten to the point where it's like "Does any of this really matter anyway?" I mean when it really comes down to it, it's about who you know and your life experiences. I'm not being cynical either. I'm just stating a fact.

Do I feel like the past three years of my life have been wasted on a useless degree? Well, sometimes. But mostly not. I mean SPU has given me a good run. I've learned a lot here. Being at a really liberal campus has given me perspectives that I never would have gotten elsewhere. Not only that, but I've made some really great friends throughout my time here. So all in all, it was worth being $15,000 in debt I suppose. It was worth the experience.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to stop procrastinating these last three projects.

On Grace

2011-04-26T14:04:00.000-04:00

So I heard a sermon recently about grace.

Do you ever have one of those times where people tell you something over and over and you're like "yeah, okay" but it doesn't really affect you. Then one day someone says the exact same thing you've been hearing, but said in a way that all of a sudden it hits you and you're like "oh! WOW!"
Yeah, this sermon was like that.

I'm not going to lie, there have been things in my life recently that have been getting me down. Really down. Stupid things I've done, mistakes I've made. I just keep thinking that this is not a good thing. I'm a sinner. So I search the scriptures, trying to find a way to make it right with God. People kept telling me "Just give it up to God, let it go." But I wanted to make it right some how. I thought that there had to be something, somewhere that would tell me how to make it right. Then I heard the sermon.

It was like hitting a brick wall. The proverbial light bulb went off over my head. Because the preacher talked about how the law was never possible to follow perfectly and the law won't save us. There is a point where we have to just let it go and give it up to God. It's his grace that covers us, that saves us, that continually brings us back to him. My job is to ask for forgiveness, change my life and let God take care of the rest. If I pursue God whole-heartedly, he will bless me and cause growth in my life.

I'm sure there are some of you out there, who are like "Well, duh, Abigail. You're a little slow on that train." Maybe I am. But it's nice to have a reminder once in a while. Let me tell you what, after hearing that sermon, I could feel the things I'd been carrying around for weeks and months just slip away. It was like the feeling I had when I was first baptized and I came out of the water feeling clean and new. It was a good feeling.

The First Presentation

2011-04-23T12:54:00.000-04:00

So last Sunday I did my fundraising presentation for my congregation I attend while at school. Let me just say that even though it's a tiny church, they are some of the most loving people you will ever meet in your life. Walking into that church feels like coming home.

They set aside Bible class time for me. 45 minutes. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to take the whole time, but it actually worked out well. The presentation itself took about half an hour which left time for questions. The questions took about 15 minutes so it was timed perfectly.

One thing I've discovered so far, the most difficult thing is talking to people you know. You would think it wouldn't be. I mean you know the people, the people know you. It should be a good thing, but for me it is extremely difficult to ask people you know for money. I've found this with my job at SPU's phone center as well. It's because you kind of know about people and what some of their means are and you feel really awkward. Plus you're invested in these people and you want their approval. It's a little scary to give a presentation to them because what if you mess up, or they judge you. I get worried about what people will think. But I digress.

The congregation was extremely enthusiastic. Which made me feel encouraged. I was also encouraged by the fact that they are going to put me on their prayer list and petition the Father on my behalf.

It's a really good feeling, to know that people are praying for you. Lately I've felt that I'm going to really need said prayers. I've been feeling inadequate. Like I'm not going to know enough to be able to effectively minister to the people of St. Petersburg. I can feel this turning into a separate blog post, so I'm just going to stop there.

My congregation had a little reception for me before services Sunday evening since I'm graduating and all. They also presented me with a Bible they had all signed which was awesome. In addition they told me that the collection they take up on May 15th is going to go to me and they would also like to support me monthly! Thank God for their warmth and generosity. Going to be talking with them about how much monthly support they'd like to give over the next couple of weeks.

I'm home for Easter this weekend and while I'm here, I'm going to be talking to my Sponsoring Congregation about when they would like me to do my presentation. Originally, I was going to go to Abilene, TX for a missions conference during the weekend of the 15th but apparently they cancelled it, which I was really disappointed about. In any case, it actually works out because I'm going to see if Alliance would like me to speak on that date. I'm also going to be talking to them about taking up a special collection to support my mission.

There is one other congregation I need to make arrangements with. They have connections to people at Alliance, and have been looking to support foreign missions. Apparently they heard about what I am planning on doing and definitely want me to come and speak. I'm actually going to be seeing some people from that congregation on Sunday and so plan on talking to them about when they would like me to come.

So I have three congregations lined up. I've already had a few gifts come in which is awesome. In addition, I won a language prize in Russian at SPU which came with money. I've committed that to the mission. So far, God has blessed me with several hundred dollars. I say it like that because honestly, the money I've received so far has come through no effort of my own. It just kind of appeared. Which is awesome! My mother thinks that God wants me to be there.

It's hard not to worry about the money. I need quite a bit to make it through the year. But I'm trying to keep in mind that God seems to have his hand in this trip from the beginning. From the time I called ACU and got the wrong department until now. He's made it happen and guided it and I pray that he continues to look on this with favor.

I'm getting ready to send out info packets to individuals and some other local congregations. Please continue to pray as I work toward raising the support I need.

Presentation

2011-04-16T23:14:00.000-04:00

I finally finished my fundraising presentation. It was a load off my mind. Nice to have it done and now I can finally start giving it. Which by the way, my first presentation is tomorrow, at the congregation here where I go to school. They told me they would be my Guinea Pigs. XD

I've been feeling more like a missionary lately. Does that even make sense? Maybe it's a sense that "yes, this is what I'm going to be doing the next year of my life." Or maybe it's just that I can think about it more now that school is winding down for the last time. In any case, I've been thinking a lot about fundraising, suitcase packing, insurance and various other odds and ends. Going to have to explore these feelings more.

In any case, my presentation is, of course, all about my trip, goals, and of course a plea for money. It's funny how life skills can help you though. I've worked like two years at SPU's phone center calling Alumni and raising funds for them. Giving a fundraising presentation is basically the same thing, only the money goes to directly support my work.

One question that people have been asking me already is if I'm using PowerPoint for this presentation. The answer is "no." Having spent the last three years listening to professors "teach" using PowerPoint, I've decided that I am on a personal crusade to take down the software. Okay, not really. I've just decided that I'm tired of it. Last semester I found out about this great presentation software called Prezi. It's better than PowerPoint because it does away with the tediousness of slides. In addition it has a nice flow. If you are interested to see how I've utilized this software for fundraising, you can view the presentation below.

I'm slightly nervous about giving this presentation tomorrow. I think mostly because it's the first time I've done it. The more times I do it, the easier it will get. I remember how after a time or two giving presentations to English classes the last time I was in Russia, it kind of worked itself out and was no big deal. Hopefully this will be the same way.

Fundraising on Prezi

My Identity Through Song

2011-04-08T22:00:00.000-04:00

For my music class, I had to write an essay about a song that defines my life. The following essay is what resulted.

When I found out the topic for this essay, I had no trouble thinking of a song to fit my life. Throughout my years, there have been many songs that have been many things to me, but there has only been one that quintessentially sums up my life and that is “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson. This song was a single from her 2004 album of the same name. About the time this song came out, I was in high school making some big decisions in my life and “Breakaway” became my favorite because it so perfectly described my life; where I'd come from and where I was going.

I grew up on my family's farm in rural Ohio. My family was large and ever present and I never lacked for love or attention, but there was a part of me that was searching for something else. Clarkson's lyrics follow the same pattern. The first verse of the song talks about growing up in a small town and wondering what it would be like to get out and see the world. “Dreamin' of what could be and if I'd end up happy, I would pray,” Even as a kid I never wanted to follow the paths that everyone else did. I always wanted to get out and do something different with my life.

The second half of the first verse also describes my life. I never quite felt like I completely fit in during my high school years. While many students focused on clothes, parties and a social life, I preferred reading. I guess you could say I was rather nerdy which wasn't the cool thing to be in high school. I had a small group of friends which helped, but there were times when I felt completely isolated from my peers. Much like the song, there were times that I tried to “reach out, but when I tried to speak out, felt like no one could hear me.” So I accepted the fact that I was the way I was and did my best to get through high school.

An opportunity for change presented itself to me during my senior year of high school. It was what I had been waiting for, a chance to, “spread my wings and learn how to fly,” I applied for and was accepted into Rotary Youth Exchange. After high school graduation, I would be taking a year to go to Russia as an exchange student. Not only that, but I was going to be living in Siberia which seemed like even more of an adventure. I was extremely excited about this opportunity. It would allow me to get out of my small town and see the world. Maybe I wouldn't be lying on beaches like Clarkson in her second verse, (Siberian winters are extremely cold after all), but I was putting myself out there and trying to risk it all to do something different with my life just like the song's chorus “make a wish, take a chance, make a change and breakaway.”

“I'll spread my wings and I'll learn how to fly, though it's not easy to tell you goodbye,” Clarkson sings in the final repetition of the chorus. It wasn't easy to tell my family and friends goodbye, but going to Russia was one of the best decisions I've ever made. That year long journey taught me a lot about who I was and what I was capable of. It also strengthened my relationship with God and made me realize just how much I need him in my life.

It has been almost a full three years since I've been back in the States. I'm getting ready to graduate and though I'm going to be heading back to Russia to do mission work for a year, I no longer put “Breakaway” on repeat and listen to it over and over. That stage of my life has passed. Now it doesn't matter whether I fit in or not. What matters is that I have gained confidence in the knowledge of who I am and what I can do.

Relief

2011-03-30T13:11:00.000-04:00

Let me just take a moment and tell you how awesome God is.
I just came off of spring break. Well, it was sort of a break but I did do a ton of homework and such while at home, because, well, there's a lot of it to do. By the end of my time at home, I'd gotten through some things and worked really hard at it, but there were still some things that needed to be done.

Friday for example, I went to bed thinking "Okay, I have this ten page paper that's due Tuesday and I have no topic and not a lot of research. Plus I have a Psych test on the same day that I haven't studied for yet and..." The list went on, full of things I had to do my first few days back or shortly thereafter. Even though there were only six weeks of school left, I had no idea how I was going to get through them. I thought to myself "If only the paper were due Thursday, then I would have time to do it." Then I thought to myself "Well, with God all things are possible and he'll get me through the next six weeks." I feel asleep.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I checked my e-mail. The professor of the class where I had to write the paper informed us that she was moving the due date to Thursday. I was happy. "Good," I thought. "Now I'll be able to get this stuff done." Yet life can be tricky. I didn't get as much done as I hoped and I was super stressed. I was really upset when my parents brought me back to school Sunday night. How am I ever going to get this stuff done? I just kept telling myself that it would work out somehow, I had no idea how. But it would.

Sunday afternoon, I worked on research for my paper, and I kind of forgot that I had that Psych test on Tuesday. It's okay I can always study tomorrow. Monday, one thing lead to another and it was 11 p.m. before I was able to even open my notes and look at them. Fail. I prayed. "Dear Lord just please get me through this test tomorrow. Please. Have mercy on me because I didn't study. Help me."

When I got the test on Tuesday, I started to panic looking at the multiple choice questions. I prayed again, flipped the test to the back and started with the short answer. After answering a few questions there and mentally chanting a prayer "Lord, Help me! Help me! Help me!" My brain seemed to unlock and I was able to at least complete the test. After I made it through, I decided that my Tuesday afternoon would be dedicated to finishing stuff for my online class that's due Thursday and then I would spend Wednesday afternoon writing my paper. It was a great idea, except my professors had other plans.

My translation professor gave us a huge translation due Thursday, plus a final draft of another translation also due Thursday. So now I had an entire unit to do for my online class, two translations to work on and a ten-page paper, all due Thursday. So last night, I spent hours working on the online class. I managed to even beast the test which made me happy.

This brings us to this afternoon. I get back from class and I'm like "Okay, I'm going to do the translation first because it won't take as long, and then I'll do as much as I can on the paper. If worse comes to worse, I'll e-mail her and ask for an extension through the weekend, because once I get through the week, I'll have time to do it." So I sit down at the computer. Before getting started, I decide to check my e-mail because the Prof in the class where the paper's due said she would send us some information. There was no e-mail from her, but my psych prof sent one saying she had posted the grades. I went and checked mine and immediately began giggling hysterically. My roommate asked what was going on. "Would you believe it? I got a 90! I did better on this exam than my last exam!" God is awesome. And before you go saying "Yeah, right you prayed and he gave you an A." Let me just explain a little more because it gets better.

So I was trying to decide if I wanted to e-mail the other prof about a paper extension now, or wait and see how much I got done. I decided to look at my e-mail again and keep it pulled up in case she did e-mail. To my surprise when I reloaded the page, there was a note from her. It's subject "Paper Extension." My breath caught as I opened it.

"Dear Students, I was having trouble uploading some things so I will try it again tonight. In the meantime, I'm extending your paper due date to Tuesday, April 5th."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! <----- That's what I did. My roommate goes "Are you okay?" I replied that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry. She gave me a funny look and went to class. Turns out I did both. I laughed and then I hit the floor literally crying in relief. Whereas before all I could do was say "Lord have mercy, help me" over and over now all I could say is "Thank you!"

Maybe it's a coincidence. It's possible I suppose. I don't know what it was about the situation. I mean, I kept telling myself it would work out. I don't know that I felt like I had complete trust that it would, but deep down I think I knew that this was fleeting. Maybe it has nothing to do with prayer and everything to do with people. It's possible. But let me explain that in my time here I don't think I've ever had a paper due date moved before. If I have it's only been once. Never twice. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it, but doggone it I was going to try and I was determined to make it through this week. Now I know I'm going to.

The first thing I thought of when I got up was the parable Jesus tells Simon Peter in Luke 7. Jesus talks about two men who are in debt. One owes fifty denarii and one five hundred. The man whom they are indebted to cancels both debts. Jesus' then asks "Which will love him more?" and Peter answers the one who had the greater debt. I feel like I understand that man in debt a little better now.

Christian Training School

2011-03-23T21:00:00.001-04:00

This is not part of the WWW curriculum, but is something I've been doing on my own. Every year, the local congregations in my area get together for a Christian Training School. We spend five consecutive Monday nights taking a class. Every year the class choices are based on different topics, and there are always interesting selections. This year among the offerings was a class on Islam, a singing class, a history of the church and a forgiveness class. I took the Ladies' class this year which is basically "Women in Missions Here and Abroad." Coincidence that they're offering this class while I just happen to be getting ready for a year long mission? Well, my mom is the coordinator for the class this year and was having trouble coming up with ideas... ;)

Anyway, each week we have different women coming in to speak about what it's like on the mission field. My mom was worried that the class was going to get boring because every week someone was going to stand up and give a sort of mission travelogue. It hasn't been that way at all though. Each speaker we've had has brought a new and different perspective to the area of missions. Whether it's a single woman working in Honduras, a married woman who spent two weeks in Romania, a newer Christian trying to shine her light at her workplace, or the ways in which local congregations are reaching out to their communities.

It has been an eye-opening experience and has given me a lot of food for thought and good ideas to incorporate into my own journey. If you are someone who is planning on going into missions, I would definitely recommend spending time talking to people who've been in the field and get some firsthand accounts of what it's really like.

Why Russia?

2011-03-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

A lot of people ask me the following question. "Why did you decide to study Russian?" Sometimes I occasionally get the question "Why are you going to Russia?" Although I generally try to head this one off before it gets asked. It's true confessions of Abigail time in the blog today. As I was getting ready for the day I was doing some thinking and realized something.

Russia scares me.

Yes, that's right. You heard me correctly. Russia scares me. Funny isn't it? I've learned the language and culture of a place that I'm hesitant to go to. I spent ten and a half months in a place that I don't like.

What is it about that place that scares me?
I have no idea.
It's not really that I'm terrified for my personal safety or anything. There are just somethings about Russia that are intimidating.
It could be the wildness of the country, how it's not really European, it's its own place. It could be the government, it could be the cities, it could be the language or the people. It could be the history, the school system, the healthcare system, the food, the living style. It could be because my exchange year was rough sometimes. Or it could be a combination of all of the above and more.

So why am I going to Russia if it's a scary place?
The easy answer would be "God called me," but that would be ducking out without answering the question and not to be rude, but we all get tired of hearing people talk about "God's Call." Do I feel like God is calling me to Russia? Yes. Do I think he's been preparing me for years to go do this, even before I really knew this is what I wanted to do? Yes. Did I make an Oath to God that I would go serve the Russian people? No. Am I really obligated to go? Not really. Do I have freewill to go? Yes. Will I feel like I've missed an opportunity to shine for the Lord if I don't go? Yes.

Now that we have all that out of the way, back to the original question. Why go if it seems scary?
Anyone who knows me, knows that I don't like to take the easy way out. I've always felt the need to be different. Do things differently than everyone else. Choose the harder way. I speak French, I could just as easily have contacted WWW and said, "Hey, put me in touch with France!" That country doesn't scare me. But that would be too easy. Maybe it's about sacrifice? Or maybe it's about my comfort zone? I don't know for sure. I'm having trouble putting my emotions into words, but I can tell you this:

I've learned that the hardest trials bring the greatest rewards. Maybe I sound cliche. But it's the truth. Why Russia? Because getting out there in a place that makes me feel uncomfortable, will make me rely more on God and trust in him to take care of me and remind me that everything is going to be alright.

Bible Study: Commandmants 6, 7, 8

2011-03-14T13:59:00.000-04:00

I'm the chaplain for Kappa Phi, which is a sisterhood of Christian women. This means that once a month, I put together bible studies for the group. We've been studying the ten commandments this academic year and I noticed there are a lot of studies out there overviewing all ten commandments, but not really any where the commandments are split up. So I thought I would share. This activity is meant for reflection and discussion. At the end, I read Romans 13:8-10.

The following verses relate to the three commandments we are studying this evening. In your groups read through these verses and categorize them into stealing, murder, or committing adultery. Do Not split these verses up amongst your group members, rather you should read them together. This is not a race. The idea is to think about the implications of these verses and discuss them amongst yourselves. At the end, we will read one more verse and close in prayer.

Exodus 20:14
Exodus 21:12
Zech. 5:3
Rev. 21:8
Lev 20:10
Lev 19:11-12
Matt 19:16-19
Prov 6:32
Exodus 20:13
Matt 5:27-28
Deut 24:7
Jer. 7:8-10
Ex 20:15
Matt 5:32
Ex. 22:1

If you need discussion ideas:
-What are the punishments for breaking these laws?
-How are these verses similar? how are they different?
-How does the Old Testament view of these laws differ from the New Testament?
-What are the contexts for these verses? (Other verses around them; historical and cultural background)
-Have you broken these laws? How did you feel after?
-What does it mean to murder, to steal, to commit adultery?

Why Don't Earthquakes Scare Me?

2011-03-13T01:04:00.000-05:00

It's been several months since the bombing in Moscow's Domodedovo airport. Today it is time for me to write about it. Indirectly.

When I found out which airport in Moscow had been bombed, I completely freaked out. I had an anxiety attack and felt anxious for several days. The bombing took place at the international baggage claim. I've traveled through that airport several times and the fact that it was the international area made it even worse. For several days all I could think about was "What if there's some kind of terrorist act while I'm in Russia? What if I get hurt or killed or something?"

Yesterday Japan was hit by an earthquake. The last time I checked the death count was over 2,000 and there is fear of a nuclear disaster akin to Chernobyl. There were around 35 deaths in the Moscow bombing. Other then the threat of a nuclear disaster, what happened in Japan doesn't scare me. And even with the threat of nuclear disaster I'm not as paralyzed with terror as I was when I found out about Domodedovo at work today, I began to think about why.

Now before I go any further, I know some of you are thinking "Well Abigail of course this doesn't affect you. It happened in Japan, not Russia." Yes, but over the summer there were fires all around Moscow and I didn't have the same reaction to those as I did to the bombing.

So again, back to the question. Why did the bombing bother me so much? Why didn't the earthquake or the fire scare me?

An answer soon started to emerge.

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong...

Had to get my little blast from the past there.

I'm serious though.

An earthquake is a natural disaster. A fire (in this case) is a natural disaster. A bombing is not.

Natural disasters are forces that are often unexpected and cannot be helped. Terrorist attacks are unexpected and should be helped. And therein lies my issue.

I suppose it's equally likely that I could go to Russia and there could be some horrible natural disaster that could kill me just as easily and possibly more easily than a terrorist attack. Fire, Flood, Earthquake, Tornado, Tsunami. I mean, one could kill me here for that matter. But in either case, it's something that can't be helped. The terrorist bombing in the Domodedovo airport, and terrorist acts in general, are distressing because the people who are killed didn't *have* to die. It is just senseless murder. And that is what upsets me.

Because things should be different. (Oh yes, you didn't think I'd be able to tie this back to missions did you?) What if these people had been taught differently? What if they knew another way? A lot of Russia's problems stem from discontent in Chechnya. What if there was a way to work with both sides to keep from overusing violence?

I know, you're probably thinking I'm an idealist, that I'll never change the world, or even that I've spent a little too much time hanging out with the hippies here at SPU, but I don't know. What I do know is that the system is broken and people are broken. Not just in Russia, but everywhere else as well and I want to do what I can to help.

Training

2011-02-23T15:57:00.000-05:00

I've had some people ask me what exactly I'm doing with WWW since I'm not actually in Abilene taking the class twice a week. Well, I'm going to be attending their Missions Focus weekend in May and I'm working on trying to get there for a few days during spring break. I'm also on the list as auditing the class, meaning I have access to the readings and information that they post online for the class which has been most useful.

So what exactly does my training involve? Reading. Lots of it. Some of it was suggested to me by the director of WWW and some of it I'm doing on my own because I think it would be useful. I'm currently making my way through the book Eternity in Their Hearts. This book is about how people have been prepared to receive the gospel message before people actually came to share it with them. Since it's broken down by cultures, I'm trying to do one a day and treat it as a devotional. I'm also trying to journal about my impressions and thoughts on what I read.

In addition to using that book for devotional time, I'm also reading The Eternal Kingdom by F.W. Mattox. This is a book I'd heard about and thought would be useful to read. I feel like it fits nicely with my other training. This book is basically an overview of church history from the time of the apostles up through the Restoration movement. It's really interesting so far and I'd recommend reading it. One of the most interesting things that I've learned from it is that there really is nothing new under the sun. There was a part of me that always thought the early church was "purer" than Christianity today. But through reading this book, I've come to realize just how quickly and easily the early church became corrupted. It's kind of terrifying if you actually think about it. I've read up through the establishment of the Papacy so it's getting pretty intense.

I know many of you are thinking that you can't just do missions training from a book. You need some interaction with people and I am inclined to agree with you. It's why I'm working on getting out to Abilene next month and I'm going there in May. I'm also doing a little extra as well. Through the end of February and most of March, the churches in my area have Christian Training School. For five weeks you can go and take a class. It just so happens that this year, one of the classes they are offering is about women in missions. I've managed to rearrange my work schedule so that I am able to attend these classes. I'm really excited for them to start and I'm hoping that I'm able to get some good insight from these ladies.

Well there you have it, all about my training. I'm doing spiritual exercises ha ha. Anyway, if you all have any questions about this process or anything please feel free to post them in the form of a comment or drop me an e-mail and I'll do my best to answer them.

The Hardest Task

2011-02-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Saturday night, I went home in order to talk to the Elders at my congregation on Sunday about being my sponsoring congregation and maybe taking up a special monetary collection for me at some point. I'm not going to lie, I was terrified.

It doesn't make any sense that I should have been. I mean, I've known these people my whole life. They've watched me grow up, they've been key people in my spiritual growth, but it's hard and scary to ask people for money. Especially when I feel like I have so little confidence in myself sometimes. I was up until almost 2am the night before, praying and thinking about what I was going to say and then writing out an outline and practicing it out loud.

We met after service yesterday morning. I had written up a little brief about the Church on the Neva and also an outline of my expenses. I basically just outlined my training with WWW, then talked a little about the congregation over there. This transitioned into why I should go.

I feel like the hardest thing about my fundraising is going to be trying to get people to understand why I need to go. What I mean is that the Church on the Neva is a pretty vibrant and active congregation from what I can tell. Most people, when they think of Mission work they think of church planting or they think of serving, i.e. English lessons using the Bible, digging wells, etc. So I feel like I really have to emphasize the fact that I have a unique skill set which will allow me to reach people over there that no one else can.

After discussing why I should go, I asked them to consider being my supporting congregation. They have a regular meeting next week and I told them they could discuss it then and get back with me. The five elders were present at the meeting as well as our three preachers. When I finished, they had some really good questions and suggestions which made me happy because they were things I hadn't thought of. Our one preacher even told me that he would be happy to put me in contact with some other congregations who might be willing to help financially. That made me so happy!

My next step is to finish my fundraising presentation and then start on the creation of my packets.

New Blog

2011-02-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

So there's a blog I've been following a bit for the last year or so and I thought I would share the link with you. Eileen is originally from my area and she's been working with the church at Rostov-on-the-Don for quite a few years. Enjoy!

From Russia with Love

Oh. My. Word.

2011-02-08T00:13:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to blog about the Domodedovo bombing. But I can't bring myself to do it. I keep trying to avoid it. Why? Well because it affected me deeply and really bothered me and I'm having trouble forming thoughts about it.

So, instead I'm going to talk about what's been going on with the St. Petersburg plans. As I recall, we last left off where the Church of Christ on the Neva said they would like me to come work there. I feel very honored about this.

A while back, WWW sent out an information packet to Joel to fill out with all kinds of information about the mission site, the congregation and so on. I received a copy of this filled out packet yesterday or the day before. I was pretty excited to get it. Why? Well, because it has some details that I didn't know and also because it included an estimated expense report. What does this mean? Well, it means that I can now start fundraising.

This weekend, I will go home in order to talk to the Elders at the congregation in Alliance to see if they would be willing to be my "bank." Okay, that sounds cheap. Let me explain what I mean. They aren't really going to be my bank. Basically I'm going to talk to them about being my supporting congregation. This means that they will hang on to the money I raise, and dispense it to me as I need it. They will also pray for me, offer guidance and so forth. In addition to holding the money for me, I am also going to ask if they would be willing to take up a special collection for me from the members of the congregation there to help support my work in that way.

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon and some of this evening after work compiling a one page summary of the Neva congregation as well as an outline of my expense report. It was kind of exciting to see where the numbers were going. And also a little scary. Let me break it down for you:

WEEKLY EXPENSES
$15 Public transportation (per week)
$100 Housing (per week)
$100 Food (per week)
$5 Bottled water (per week)
$5 Laundry (per week)
$50 Other weekly expenses
$275 TOTAL (PER WEEK)

ONE-TIME EXPENSES
$0 Airport tax (total)
$500 Travel within the country (NOT counting the international air travel)
$(variable) Entertainment
$500 Other one-time expenses
$1,000 TOTAL

$275 per week x 4 weeks = $1,100 per month.
$1,100 x 12 months = 13,200
+$1,000 One-Time Expenses
+$2,000 (Airfare to and from country)
= $16,200

Yup, so that's where we're at. And maybe I shouldn't share with the world wide web how much money I'm going to have to raise, but I feel like in order to accurately document the experience of a missionary, I should include fundraising. It is rather important after all.

That said, if you or anyone you know would be willing to help support my work in Russia, please drop me an e-mail at languagelove at gmail dot com.

Interesting News

2011-01-24T23:35:00.000-05:00

So, just before writing that post I was starting to feel discouraged about this whole Russia thing. I was thinking about how I probably won't be able to get a visa, and how I wasn't even sure that the church could use me. It had been several weeks since I spoke with Joel. I'd sent him a copy of my resume and my spiritual bio and I was getting antsy. I wanted to know how his meeting with the church leaders went. Was actually just on the phone with my mom about it this afternoon, wasn't sure if I should email Joel, or the Director of WWW and try to find out what news there was, if any. Right after I got back to my room and got off the phone with her, I checked my email. Wouldn't you know it, there was a message from Joel. It went as follows:

Abigail

Hi. I visited with my fellow church council (read: elders) members here and have talked to other missionaries about visas. The brothers are impressed with your credentials and have made good suggestions about how you can minister.
I don't think that housing will be a problem and I think the visa problem can be solved. I think God is blessing and leading this.

So, it is a go. I will get that form done over the next few days and sent in to Gary. I was waiting to see about the visa situation before filling all that out and got some positive news about that today.

Thanks

Yeah. So can I just say that I am super super excited? :D

Returning

2011-01-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

So I was kind of waiting until I had something definite to post. I still kind of don't have anything official or final or anything like that, but I did skype with Joel, my contact in Peter. I think at first he though I was just some kid who wanted to come to Russia and have a good time. I'm hoping that after talking with me he understands that I've thought this through and considered it and that I've had skills and experience. I would be working with The Church on the Neva. What would I be doing there? Well, Joel informed me that they do have a group of single women between 20 and 30 who could use a sort of peer mentor. After talking to him I'm like. "So basically I would be going to Russia for a year to be friends with people? Cool!" Where would I be living? Well apparently the congregation there has a room I might be able to rent from them. But I'm not sure. I'm not really sure of anything right now. Suppose it will all work out if it needs to.

I talked to Joel for about 45 minutes. When I got off the phone, I was completely freaking out. I was excited for sure, but then I was rather hesitant. Then, I was completely and utterly terrified. This horrible pit of dread formed itself in the pit of my stomach. I said something to my mom about it and she said simply "So don't go." I thought about that too and I realized that I can't not go. I mean I guess I wouldn't have to, but I would feel like that would be wrong. Besides, I need to "get back on the horse" I need to go back to Russia.

Today on Youtube, I found videos people had taken of Yakutsk. Fairly recently too. I cried when I watched one in particular. I'm sure that it probably won't have the same effect on you but I need to share it anyway. This guy went on a business trip to Yakutsk in April of 2010.

!!!

2010-12-02T23:00:00.002-05:00

I'm going back to Russia!!!!

Merrily We Roll Along

2010-11-01T12:20:00.001-04:00

It's funny but it seems like my life at the moment consists of waiting, then hearing something, then waiting some more. I went and had a meeting with Mister Doctor today about my final Russian classes for next semester. I'm going to be taking Russian Civ and Russian Lit in English. I'm pretty sure that a good chunk of Civ is going to be in English too. Fail. While we were chatting, Mister Doctor wanted to know if I was interested in possibly taking Advanced Translation Practice as well next semester. Apparently Tanya, my prof for Business translation this semester, told him that I was a really good translator. To be honest, Business Translation is my most pleasant surprise of the semester.

I've been avoiding translation classes since I came here. I had decided that translation was boring and I didn't want to do it. Hence the reason I was going to be an International Relations major and so on and so forth. I got into this business class though and found out that I seriously enjoy it. The only translating I'd done before was English to Russian which I wasn't so good at, and literary. Just for the record, literary translation is horrible. You have to stop and think about every word and what exactly the author meant and was trying to convey and blah blah blah. Compared to that, Business translation is pretty amazing. You read a text, you understand it and then you basically summarize it. Oh, and you make it sound good in English.

Tanya had told me that I was doing a really good job on the texts we'd been working on, and I believed her, but then to have her mention it it Mister Doctor was a compliment. Since taking business Russian, I'm kind of considering coming back to SPU in a few years to work on a Masters in translation. But I digress.

So Mister Doctor encouraged me to take Advanced Translation. Which I would love to do. I don't particularly care for some of the projects and things that we do in Bus. Trans. but I really enjoy the translations. They keep my mind occupied. I found out that Advanced Translation covers Business, Medical, Technological and Law translation. Which sounds really fun. My only problem is time. In order to complete my lovely Degree and Certificate, I'm already taking 15 credit hours next semester. Plus, I work like 14 hours a week. I'm not sure that I want to have to deal with a class that doesn't really count for anything other than fun. But at the same time I would love to take it and get more practice in. So, I'm thinking that I'm going to audit the class. That way, if I miss a class because of something, or don't turn in a translation or something, it won't really affect my grade or GPA or anything. Planning on e-mailing Mister Doctor to find out for sure if this would be a possible option.

In other news, I heard back about the FSOT. I didn't pass. Big surprise there. I was slightly disappointed, but it wasn't devastating. I would have been surprised if I had passed. The part I did the worst on? Experience. There's a section that asks questions about your skills and I just didn't have the skills for it. Which is okay. I'll go gain some more life experience and then try it again.

Ironically, the day after I heard about the FSOT, I heard back from WWW. Oh and I heard from the Missionary in Peter that I'd e-mailed. WWW was giving me information about registering for the class. I need to e-mail them and ask about that since I obviously won't be in Texas to take the class. Should probably figure out what my next step is. Joel, the missionary, said that there might be a possibility of working there. He also sent me a couple of mission reports and his biography. I was really super excited to read about the work that was going on there. Am going to have to e-mail him back when I get a chance.

Unfortunately, that chance might not come for a few days. I'm extremely busy and stressed. In addition to my daily homework, I have two papers I'm supposed to be writing. I have to turn in a proposal for one of these papers on the 17th. Not only that, but the weekends, which are when I would generally work on this stuff, are pretty much booked up until Thanksgiving which means it's going to be rough going. Thankfully though they clear out after and I'll be able to hopefully get the papers themselves written before the end of the semester. Oh my. I cannot wait to get out.

Subconscious Exposition

2010-10-23T13:33:00.000-04:00

I've been having a lot of dreams about Russia and Russia related things the past two nights. Russia's been on my mind a lot. I want to go back one way or another. I don't think permanently, but I do want to go back. Two nights ago, I dreamed that I went back to Yakutsk and was speaking Russian with some of my old classmates I met there. Last night I was in St. Petersburg and was working with a group of school children. We were playing this jumping game, and there were some other Americans there. This dream was mostly in English. I'm so ready to go...

Spiritual Biography

2010-10-20T18:26:00.000-04:00

I grew up in the church and was baptized when I was 11. Both my father and grandfather are elders. Church has always been a major part of my family's life, so I was in Bible class on a regular basis and I enjoyed it a lot. From the time I was little, it was important to me to do what God wanted and wanted to please Him, so my actions reflected that. This doesn't mean, however, that I haven't had my ups and downs.

When I was little, I could not wait to go to church camp. I watched the kids go every year and couldn't wait to be among their ranks. From third grade, I went every year and had a blast. It was great to be in a place with kids my age who believed the same things I did. Church camp also brought me closer to God. I remember one year, when I was in middle school, I started the week off and wasn't really into it. I felt far away from God, and that my faith was suffering. The first night I prayed before going to bed, asking God for stronger faith. I'll never forget how he answered.

During the middle and high school weeks of camp, the girls always did secret sister. This particular year, I made a little beaded necklace for my secret sister at craft time and wrote her a note explaining the meaning of the beads I'd chosen. I didn't really think much of it when I sent it off, I felt like it wasn't a big deal. That night she decided to get baptized and I found out that part of the reason she'd made the decision was because of the note I'd sent her. My world was rocked and I was humbled. It amazed me that God could use someone as insignificant as me, as simple as a note I had spent fifteen minutes on to change someone's life. I learned that even when I feel like my faith is failing, it still can have the power to move mountains, and I understood that you never know where you've planted seeds.

Just before I started high school, our congregation hired a youth minister. Before Matt and Stacy came, we were a group of kids around the same age who happened to go to church together. After their arrival, we became a youth group. They brought us together and we became a family. We spent a lot of time together worshiping, singing and just being teenagers. It was a time that is embedded in my memory as one of learning and growing. Through our mission trips, youth rallies and bonding, I discovered how important it was to be with other believers. It was comforting to know that no matter what happened, no matter how I'd messed up or whatever problem I was having, I could go to my brothers and sisters in the youth group and they would love on me, support me and pray for me. It was an awesome feeling! It was at this point I understood that it takes a lot of different people to make a congregation. We came from extremely diverse backgrounds; some of us had grown up in strong church, others of us hadn't. We were from all different social sectors at school, yet we found friendship through the common bond of Jesus Christ.Unfortunately, this solidarity did not last. There was some shuffling of leadership in our congregation and Matt became our pulpit minister. High school progressed and we began to drift apart.

High school is a rough time for a lot of young people. There are many temptations and life can be confusing. We were caught between childhood and adulthood and sometimes we acted out, trying to deal with things. In our teen Bible class on Sunday mornings, we began to talk a lot about some of the issues facing us as high school students. People in our youth group began to struggle with these issues. Not only that, but even the adults in our church were struggling with these same issues. I began to see the world with more adult eyes and I became jaded.

From the pulpit we were told to be better people and in Bible class the teens were warned about drinking, smoking and sex. Yet I felt like all of this talking didn't matter. People were still going to do exactly what they wanted. So what was the point?. I felt like the church was full of hypocrites. People who just sat in a pew on Sunday morning and did whatever they wanted the rest of the week. I felt a lack of sincerity and it made me wonder why I had ever bothered to try to follow God. I was tired of being the good girl. Everyone else was going out and doing these things so why couldn't I? I was tired of trying.

Looking back on it, I realize that I was just as wrong as anyone else in that congregation. I was being extremely judgmental with the same kind of contempt the Pharisee held for the tax collector. So while I thought I was so much better than everyone around me, I was still wrong. At the time though, I couldn't see it and I began to withdraw. I stopped caring about worshiping and only went to church because my parents expected it and because that's what we did in my family. This low point continued until about half-way through my exchange year to Russia.

While still in high school, I decided that I was going to spend ten months in Russia as an exchange student after I graduated. When I arrived, I didn't even bother to find a church family; I decided that I didn't want to deal with it. Instead, I just focused on being in Russia. A funny thing happened though. My exchange was extremely difficult and while I wasn't really paying attention to God, there were points when it seemed like He was definitely paying attention to me. There were times when it felt like He was just reminding me that He was always there and even though I was alone in a foreign country, I was never completely alone. I'm not sure when exactly the change came. It wasn't one of those sudden epiphanies, rather it was a gradual thing. There is a point where things began to turn around.

I am an avid reader and had brought several books in English on exchange, I finished them all about halfway through my exchange. I missed English so much that I was desperate for something, anything, to read. The only thing I had left was my Bible. So one day I sat down, opened to 1st Kings and started reading. I was hooked. I had read bits and pieces of the Bible before, but not in huge chunks like this. The more I read, the more I learned and the more I learned, the closer I felt to God. It was around this time that I realized I missed being with other people who believed in God. I wasn't sure what to do though. There were two Orthodox churches, a Catholic church and an Apostolic church in my city, but I wasn't sure I felt comfortable at any of these.

A few days after this realization, I was sitting in my social studies class and my teacher was talking about all the different types of religions and groups in the city. She mentioned Orthodox, Catholic and then Baptist. After this last group, I didn't hear anything else for the rest of the lesson. I knew slightly more about Baptists than I did about the other churches in my city. I knew they were somewhat similar to what I believed, at least in the states, and that was enough for me. After class, I asked her about it and she put me in touch with a girl at my school whose father was the pastor at the church. We met, I found out where the building was, and I decided to go the following Sunday. The first morning I went, one of the songs we sang was Amazing Grace as soon as I realized it, I started crying because even though the song was in a different language and the people were strangers, we had a common belief in God. I had come home.

In Russia I had some of the greatest spiritual growth I've ever experienced. I came to realize that it didn't matter whether other people in my congregation were worshiping God, didn't matter what was in their hearts. I realized that it isn't my place to judge and that I needed to make sure that I was right with God and a true follower of him. It was also at this point that my relationship with Him became my own. Sure, I had a relationship with Him before, but in Russia I realized that if I were going to be a Christian it wouldn't be because of my parents, my family or my friends. It had to be because I was making that choice.

There are other events in my life that God has used to strengthen me, conversations with strangers, attending a state university and friends who have offered counsel, but the events I have related here are the ones that have made the biggest impact on my spiritually. While they were extremely difficult at the time, and often I didn't know exactly why I was going through them, In retrospect I can see how they have strengthened my life and relationship with God. I pray that He gives me more such opportunities.

Winkie Marching Song

2010-10-14T14:32:00.001-04:00

You know which song I'm talking about. The one in the Wizard of Oz where they guys are marching around the Witch's castle going "Oh ee oh YO oh..." That's how I'm feeling right now. The drudgery of school is killing me. I'm so ready to be done with it. I usually feel this way in the early spring when the weather changes, but I'm feeling it now. Crud. This probably means that I am going to be going insane come spring. I've been having a hard time focusing and getting my schoolwork done. I had a couple tests that I just didn't study for and then kicked myself mentally when I got them back and saw how poorly I'd done.

You may have noticed the layout change. I felt like it was time since my life is going to be changing again. Perhaps it's a little early, but oh well. I'll probably be continuing to tweak it the next few weeks or months as I get time.

I've started applying for things, testing the waters, fun stuff like that. I took the Foreign Service Officer Test just for fun. It was probably the most low-key "standardized test" I've ever taken. Why? Well, because what happens if I don't pass? Nothing. Life goes on and I've got a backup plan so it's no big deal. I kind of enjoyed taking it to see what it was like.

In other news, I've got things rolling for WorldWide Witness. Two weeks ago I turned in my application and chose my references. One reference told me that they'd gotten a hold of her and she filled out the reference form for me which makes me happy. The other thing I had to do as part of the application process is write a three page spiritual biography which outlines things that have made a major impact on me spiritually. I'm mostly done with it, just have to finish it up and edit it. Keep a look-out for it because I'll probably be putting it into a blog post once I get it done.

It's kind of funny but the only thing I don't feel like procrastinating is stuff for that program.

Masha In Wonderland

2010-09-21T16:03:00.001-04:00

I'm jealous of one of my exchange friend. Over the summer, she went on a Critical Language Scholarship to Ufa, Russia. She is now doing a year in Moscow. She started a blog for her time in Ufa and is continuing it throughout her stay in Moscow. I definitely recommend checking out Masha In Wonderland

I'm Lost

2010-09-16T16:39:00.003-04:00

So I feel overwhelmed. I mean, more so than just the usual rush of college life and dealing with the everyday stresses of that. My problem is that in the back of my mind is always this nagging thing. Something poking and prodding at me, reminding me that this is the end of my safe little haven. I have applied for May graduation. I will soon be leaving SPU behind. What does that mean? It means I'm going to be entering the real world. I don't feel ready.

I feel kind of like I did when I was getting ready to end my exchange year. That panicky thought that everything was about to drastically change and who knew if it would ever be the same again. It's not quite the same as the raw terror of going back to a culture that was supposed to be mine but no longer felt that way. But it's still this feeling that life is sneaking up on me and I don't feel ready to handle it. My entire life and education has prepared me for the time when I could go forth and become a productive member of society. The only problem is that I'm not quite sure how to do that. I feel like I have no plan. Feel like life is a little crazy.

So what's my solution?

A Train Ride

2010-09-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

This semester on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have two Russian classes back to back. A translation class for Business texts and then Modern Writers which is a lit class. As a result I end up hearing/speaking/thinking Russian for a block of about three hours twice a week. Why is this significant? Well, because I get Russian in such concentrated blocks it has caused one or two interesting dreams. By that, I mean bilingual dreams.

Last night, I had a dream that I was on a Russian train with a friend of mine. We were trying to get to Yakutsk, but were going the other way instead. Toward Moscow. About halfway through the dream I started just speaking Russian to him, even though he doesn't understand it. (In the dream or in real life) He wanted to drive from Moscow to Yakutsk in a car and I kept telling him that there were no roads. I also asked him about his passport and he didn't know where it was so we were searching for it. All of this took place in Russian. In very fluent Russian. It was super exciting!

I'm getting ready to apply for World Wide Witness, that missions program. Will be updating more as that process continues. Until then, catch you later!

Progress and Productivity

2010-06-23T14:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I've had a rather productive day. I'm not working this summer because of various family commitments and I don't have a car. This resulted in me spending several weeks sitting around doing nothing and dying of boredrom. When I woke up this morning, I decided that I am going to make more of an effort to be productive. I'd say I'm off to a good start.

The last day or two, I've been requesting information from a lot of grad schools. Getting my list of places I'm thinking about applying to together. My list so far is as follows:

- Eastern Mennonite University

- Nova Southeastern University

- Arcadia University

These programs all have focus on the International aspects of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution and they all have aspects to the program that I really like. These are all top choices for me, but the more I find out about the program at Eastern Mennonite, the more I like it. I would say that EMU is probably my top choice. I actually called them today to request that they send me more information and I told the girl I talked to that it would be really great if they would have someone call me to follow up. I have some questions that only a grad admissions person would know the answer to.

It's also important that I make sure I can get my admission deferred. I've officially decided to take a year and do mission work with World Wide Witness. I'm not nearly as excited about that as Grad school. I think because my exchange year was hard, and I'm a little bit nervous about going back overseas. But I did e-mail the guy I'd talked to about the program several weeks ago, letting him know that I wanted to go and asking about starting the application process. Anyway, I don't want to have to be doing paperwork and trying to apply to grad school from overseas. I did that with my undergrad and it was not a fun experience. So if I get it all taken care of and get it deferred, I'll be all ready to come back in a year and go right back to school.

Heh. I'm noticing a pattern in my life. Graduate from High School, take a year and go to Russia. Graduate from undergrad, Take a year and go to Russia. Life is a funny thing isn't it?

A Chance

2010-05-27T02:41:00.000-04:00

I had the weirdest series of events happen the last few days. It started with my Brother revealing some interesting information, continued with me breaking up with a guy I'd kind of been dating and because of these two events I ended a several year long quest. You see, since my exchange year (and during) I've been interested in doing mission work in Russia. But it never seemed to work out. I wanted something longer, like a year or two, but everyone I talked to didn't travel to Russia or the program wasn't long enough or they worked independently and so on and so forth. And then the other night I was just kind of hanging out and I was like "Well, maybe I'll see if there's anything new on the missions front. " And wouldn't you know it, after a search of not very long (Especially considering how hard I've been looking the last few years) I stumbled upon World Wide Witness.

Just for fun I called about it, but the director of the program wasn't in. So I left a message with someone in a completely different department and to my extreme astonishment I got a call back this morning. It was a very interesting conversation. Involving talk of Ukraine and St. Petersburg. And also the potential for me to go on a mission trip before grad school. I don't have the details worked out. It's still kind of a hazy idea. Something I need to pray about. But just the idea of being able to use what I learned in Russia the first time in a missionary setting excites me.

I've been thinking a lot about exchange today as a result of this phone call. July 14th marks the beginning of my third year back. I read through all my exchange blog posts this evening. They made me laugh and they made me cry and they made me remember. And I realized that there were so many good things to exchange. It's like I've spent the last couple of years burying it so I wouldn't have to think about it so it wouldn't hurt and re-reading my posts reminded me of what it felt like to be an exchange student. How it felt to be part of a place and a thing like that. I've decided that I'm going to start re-reading my paper journals because they go into a lot more detail than the blog. I'm so glad that I kept them. Oh, and I think I'm going to write a letter that's several years overdue...

Falling In Love

2010-05-01T20:03:00.000-04:00

It's not quite been a year since my last post. I don't know why I haven't written in so long. I think part of it was that I felt like I didn't really have anything to write about and part of it was that I was working on writing some other things. I've had this pressing, nagging desire to make a new blog entry for probably a week or so and just haven't done it. So what better time to do it than when I should be working on two Russian presentations and a ten page paper. All of which are due the latter half of next week. Fun fun.

Anyway, something very important happened to me last fall and something else very important happened several weeks ago. I think that's why I suddenly feel the need to write again. Namely, I fell in love. You see, ever since I got back from exchange and started on my career at SPU, I've been looking for direction in my life. Before I left for Russia, I figured that direction was in Translation. Ha. No. It didn't take me long to figure out how much I hate translating things. It's horrible. Moving on, what else did I want to do? Well obviously something with Russian since I worked so hard to learn it. So we'll make that my major. But what can you really do with a Russian major? Let's be honest, not much. So what did I do? Well I like politics and want to work for the government so International Relations is where it's at right? Um no. I discovered that I strongly dislike politics and theory, although political movements fascinate me. I think it's the social people thing.

So I dropped the IR major and continued to take my Russian. I decided that last fall I was going to take classes that sounded interesting and go from there. I made one of the best decisions of my life. I took a class about Conflict Management. SPU has a CM major due in part to it's little historical incident. (Which by the way, we well be celebrating...oops..."commemorating" in a few days) I had a friend tell me the Conflict Management class was good. I took it and oh my word I fell in love! I looked forward to that class every day we had it. I didn't mind doing the readings for it or the homework because it was fascinating and didn't seem like work. It was just fun. I would go out to eat with my parents and tell them all about the stuff I was learning and they would comment about how they could tell that this stuff was lighting up my brain. Reflective Listening, Mediation all of it lit up my brain. But the thing that lit up my brain the most was Nonviolence. It fascinated me, the way that people throughout history have used nonviolent techniques to effect social change, and how well it actually works. Yes, I'm talking Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King Jr. And others who you've probably never even heard of.

Right then and there I decided that I wanted to devote my life to the CM department and eventually go out into the world to combat violence. Or something like that. I still didn't have a clear picture. So I declared CM as my second major. Who cared if it would keep me at Kent another three years.

Then another funny thing happened several weeks ago. A friend came from Colorado to spend her spring break at SPU. She had attended here a semester because of the CM program. She's the one who had told me about it. Because of her, I knew that it exsisted. We were talking about graduating and going out into the world. And I was telling her how I was getting tired of being here, but my majors were going to keep me here several more years. I was like "Yeah, If I were just doing Russian I could graduate next May. But what can you do with a Russian major?" Besides, my passion was Conflict Management. My random observation got me to thinking though. What if I did graduate next May?

I tried to put the thoughts aside but they kept coming back. I started thinking about grad school. Grad school was always something I thought I might do, maybe, down the road some time in the future. But then it hit me. If I got my major in Russian, I could graduate from SPU next May and go to grad school. Within three years I could come out with a Master's in Peace studies whereas if I stayed at SPU I would only have two BAs in the same amount of time. This seemed like the way to go. So I started researching like crazy, and talked to the head of the CM dept among others. Suddenly I found myself with a lot to do in a rather short period of time.

I'm really excited though. I feel like Grad school is the way to go. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a direction of sorts in my life. A direction I'm really excited to be going. I don't know where it's going to take me career-wise but I know that I want to do something with Nonviolence and CM on an international level.

I think part of the reason for this post is not just a general update, but also to let you know that once again this Blog is evolving. From High School through Rotary to College, and now it's on to Grad School. I feel like more of my posts are going to be focusing on this in the future. Wish me luck! :)

At the Language School

2009-07-14T09:48:00.000-04:00

I owe you a blog post. Honestly I was planning on writing a lot more about the Language School, but then I got here, and I've been busy and have been working on writing other things and so I am only just now, in our last week getting a chance to write about it. Although you probably wouldn't have wanted to hear me complain throughout the last couple of weeks.

I dislike this job. Only now am I coming to terms with and accepting it. What do I do? Well, I sit in class while the kids learn Russian. I answer ridiculous questions. I speak Russian. I second guess myself. Yup that's it in a nutshell. Personally, I feel that there are entirely too many people working with the Russian class. There are three teachers and four Peer Mentor/Teaching Assistants. But enough about that. The language school itself is a cool idea.

It's a four week intensive immersion thing and then they have sessions where they meet throughout the following school year. Technology plays a big role, as the kids do a lot of Skypeing over the school year part. Basically, the kids are here to learn Russian, or one of four other languages (Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese). As a result they spend pretty much all of their time in class and with their class. A typical day in the Russian class is as follows:

Class starts everyday at nine a.m. During the morning session, Mister Doctor teaches them. They go over grammar points and new vocabulary and do a lot of speaking activities. At noon, they have Lunch for an hour. Lunch is eaten all together at long Tables in the SPU Student Center. They kids are only supposed to speak Russian, and so it is the job of us, the Peer Mentors to speak Russian with them. A lot of times, new vocabulary is introduced here too. After lunch, the kids have class again from about one until three. This session is taught by a Russian grad student who is a Native speaker. Generally, at the afternoon session, the kids go over dialogs and perform them for each other. They also go over new vocabulary and occasionally watch cartoons.

By three p.m. The kids (And teachers) are ready for a break. So they get two hours of free time. Dinner is at five and is eaten in our Russian lounge. Then comes culture time. Culture is taught by a Russian woman who lives in the area. Generally, culture is anything from making Chai, to watching movies, to working on projects, to singing. On the last day of camp, there is a closing ceremony where each language shows off what it has learned, generally by singing. So the kids practice that pretty much every night. A lot of times the kids will get to go outside and play Russian games during culture time as well. The day is not over yet though, because at 9 p.m. It's study time. This is where we PMs are used the most. During study time, the kids do their homework, practice dialogs and pronunciation and get ready for tests and so on. It is our job to help check their work and answer questions. They kids head up to their rooms for bedtime at 11.

So their days are long, but they are learning a lot. It's amazing actually, how three weeks ago they all showed up here, many of them leaving home for the first time. They came and they couldn't speak a word of Russian. Now here we are three weeks later and they can understand much more and can speak. The other day I sat at lunch with one of the kids and we had a good solid conversation about music for ten minutes or so. It was really cool.

It isn't all bad. It has it's good moments. Like what I just said above, or silly things the kids, or we do. Writing stupid fairy tales across the whiteboards, walking to acme, and good times at the red light. The kids are really great, and I'm going to miss them when it's over. I mean, we've got kind of this family thing going on. Which is really fun, and fascinating from a social standpoint. The job has some weird stresses though, and I'm not sure it's really my thing.

New Blogs

2009-06-16T11:06:00.003-04:00

I've started collecting blogs of various people who are going out. Time to swap some things out and whatnot.

The first blog is called Islands of Adventure. Cameron is a student from out district who is going to be spending his exchange in Japan. Cameron is a cool guy, and he's got posts and pictures. You can follow the link from this post or the one on the left hand side of the page.

The second blog Belongs to Bridget. Bridget is also from our district. I met her first at our Outbound Interviews and sort of became her mentor. She's really excited about going on exchange to Austria. She has some intersting things to say so I hope you all check out her blog too!

News of School

2009-06-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was standing in the shower, wondering why I hadn't heard any details about when I was supposed to be at the Language School. I was standing there thinking "Well, I could Facebook Puppy and see if he knows anything," Puppy got a job there too. As a tech person I think. But then I thought "No, because the Language School runs on Russian time because Mister Doctor is in charge of it." So I finished my shower, and went about my business. Later that afternoon, I logged onto Facebook, only to see that Puppy had asked me if I had heard anything about Language School. I found that rather ironic.

A week and a half. That's when Mister Doctor decided to tell us when we should be up there. A week and a half before we are supposed to be there. That's not so bad. I figured if I didn't hear Wednesday, I would hear either Friday or Monday. And if I didn't hear then, I had already decided that I would be sending Mister Doctor an e-mail.

The best thing ever is that I get a free parking pass. But that's really not important to my story. I'm just excited because I'm getting free room and board, I'm getting a free parking pass, I get to spend four weeks surrounded by Russian AND I'm getting paid for it. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Essentially, I have to be back up at SPU on the morning of June 21st. Which is father's day, but I'm not even sure that Father will be here as he is going to be helping Brother move back home from several states away. We have an hour to move in, then we are going to be having a meeting of some sort and then finally, we are going to be helping the students move in. And that's basically all I know about the whole thing. Which makes me laugh. I was expecting an e-mail with lots of details, but nope. It just had what time and where I check in, and a vague idea of what we are going to be doing during the day on Sunday. Oh well, it'll be another adventure. A very welcome adventure.

A job, A chance, an E-mail, and Why Exchange Messed Up My Life

2009-05-29T15:30:00.000-04:00

I almost died the last week of school. Not really. But there were a couple of days there where I wasn't sure that I was going to make it. The stress was absolutely insane! The good news, however is that I made it out alive and mostly intact and brought some interesting memories out with me. Which is all good.

The most exciting news during the last week of the semester was that I finally heard from the people in charge of the Language School. I got the job as a Teaching Assistant! I'm pretty excited about this although I haven't heard anymore details. I do know however that the camp runs from the middle of June to the middle of July. My guess is that I will be hearing all the details of what I'm supposed to be doing, two days before I'm supposed to be back up at SPU. But hey, I'm not complaining. Rather, I am very much forward to beating Russian into those little high schoolers. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not really that mean :P

It's ironic. I was writing a letter to Elena Ivanovna the other day. It's mostly done, just have to finish it up, put a picture with it, stamp and send it. This is ironic because today I checked my e-mail and there was a short note from Nina in it. I had gotten back in touch with her several months ago and she e-mailed me, but I never replied back because (My excuses were) my computer was having issues and then I got really busy at the end of the semester. But really there's no excuse. I'm planning on e-mailing her back within the next few days. It's just so hard sometimes. It's like there's a part of me that doesn't want to be in touch and I don't know why I should even feel that way...

In other news, there is a slight chance that I might be able to get a scholarship to go back to Russia and study in a university there for a year. I don't want to say too much about it at the moment, because I may not even get it, but hopefully there will be more details to follow.

Which brings me to the thing I've been thinking about lately. Namely, How Going on Exchange Has Screwed Up My Life. When I found out about, and got the application for this scholarship, I was pretty excited, but at the same time, I was hesitant. There was a part of me that definitely didn't want to apply for the scholarship (Perhaps that is related to the staying in touch thing?). I was like "yeah, I should apply for this" but it was like something within me said. "but you don't really want to." and I thought about it for a while. Exchange was a fascinating experience. It was filled with some amazing moments and experiences. So why did a part of me not want to take the opportunity to do it again? Then suddenly, it hit me. I realized that I was scared.

Though most of the bad things about exchange have been outweighed by the good, there was a part of me that still remembered it. Remembered how hard it was, how scary, how difficult, how lonely it could be. This part of me was projecting. I didn't want to go back to Russia because I didn't want to have to deal with those things. The Beauraucracy, the visas, breaking down the Russian facade. A part of me was going "NO! NO! NO!" while the sensible part of me was saying "Get back on the horse." And then, God stepped in. I had decided to apply, but wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I could have been. I was going over some paperwork with my mom and we were discussing things when I found something significant on the website for the scholarship. Basically what it sounded like was that the scholarship was going to be discontinued starting this next year. The wave of disappointment that washed over me was undescribable. I e-mailed my contact about the scholarship, asking for clarification and asking whether or not I should go ahead and reply.

I was in a mood the rest of the evening. I didn't even know for sure if I could still apply or not, but already I was really disappointed. Just the thought of not even having the slightest chance of getting to go back was heavy on my chest. I spent the rest of the evening playing all the Russian songs I know on my guitar and feeling rather down.

You may have guessed by now, what my contact's answer to the inquiry was. The next morning, I checked my e-mail the first thing and was overjoyed to see that I could still go ahead and apply. And that set it. I am applying. But I think it was necessary for me to have that moment of doubt. Because in that one moment, I realized that the overwhelming disappointment of not being able to go, completely outweighed the nervousness I felt about going back for a second round.

And this is how exchanged messed me up. I am forever tied to Russia. To the World. There will always be a part of me that takes great interest in what the Motherland is doing, a part of me that still lives there. A part of me that is always longing to go back. I am forever tied to the Global community, forever hungering to see and experience more. But is that necesarily a bad thing? I dreamed in Russian last night, and in the light of day, I cannot remember what the dream was about, but it was full of good feelings.

May 4th

2009-05-04T19:29:00.000-04:00

So much for anonimity, but this is something that weighs on me. May 4th is an important day in the history of SPU. It was on this day, 39 years ago that some students were protesting. The National Guard was called in and shots were fired. As a result, four students were killed and 9 other were wounded.

I like to see events. Last fall I went and watched a protest against the Iraq war. May 4th is kind of a big deal here, so I decided that I would observe some of the events of the commemoration. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. I thought that if I went and listened to the speeches given by those who were there and those whose lives were forever affected, I would learn something. Maybe something about the events. I'm big into listening to people's stories. So I went and stood on the hill where the guardsmen chased the students all those years ago and I learned, but I didn't learn what I thought I would.

It didn't take me long to realize that what I thought was going to be a memorial, a rememberance of those tragic events actually wasn't. I listened to two and a half speeches before I couldn't stand it anymore. The first guy, talked about zombies and how the guardsmen that day were zombies, and how the University President is a zombie and how our former president was a zombie and how if you stood by and let things like may fourth happen you were a zombie too. I wouldn't have a problem with this, except he was so venemous about it. The next person I heard speak was a woman whose sister died that day. I was expecting a celebration of life. Of a cause, a speech about how this tragedy should not be repeated. Instead I heard about how evil the government and guardsmen were, how wrong they were, how right the protesters were, after all they were "Burning down the ROTC building in response to Police brutality" Does anyone else find something wrong with that sentence? Two wrongs do not make a right people... This woman also went on to talk about all of the social protesting she's done because she was inspired by her sister. Perhaps I would've been able to relate to her better if she hadn't been so much about "Stick it to the man!" The last speech I listened to was a very loud, angry man. He basically spent a long time talking about the "May 4th Conspiricy" the "cover-up" and how a new tape had been found in which the order of the national guardsmen to shoot had been revealed. He also talked a lot about people who had mentioned hearing the order to shoot.

It was at this point I decided to leave. I waited for the man to finish, and as I began to head back to my room, there was a campus police officer standing there. I went up to him and I said "Sir, I'd just like to thank you for every thing you do," He kind of laughed. "It must be hard some times to be a police officer here." He said "thanks" and I left. I started crying when I got inside and couldn't figure out why. It wasn't the speeches. I mean they didn't move anything in me. I thought maybe it had something to do with the police officer? No, not really, other than the need to thank him, he really had nothing to do with it. I just felt really upset and I couldn't figure out why. And then I realized.

SPU is a liberal campus. Everyone is always going around talking about how you can't trust the conservatives, how they use people to push their agendas. They are preaching the purity of the left. How they aren't like that, they just want peace and love and all that. I realized they are hypocrites. They preach peace and love, while all the while, trying to stir people into violent action. "Down with the Iraq war!" They talk about the tragedy of four dead students, yet they place them on the pedestal of political martyrdom, and use them to focus their own agendas, to push their propaganda. Because that's what today was. It was a liberal propaganda fest, and that's what bothered me the most.

It's not that I hate liberals. Please don't think that I'm just a stuffy conservative. Understand that I am a people watcher and if it had been conservatives up on the stage today doing the same thing, please believe I would be condemning them just as much. It bothered me that what I saw as a time of rememberance was being manipulated to push a political agenda.

May 4th was a tragedy in the history of my University. I am not saying that the National Guard was completely innocent, nor am I saying that the protesters were completely innocent either. There are two sides to every story. I was looking forward to today's events because I thought it would be a time of reflection. I wanted the speeches to focus on what happened, why it happened. I was expecting people to be gathered around, remembering, perhaps discussing how we can prevent such a tragedy from happening again. What could we have done? What can we do so history does not repeat itself? I felt like it should have been a quieter time, that the gaggle of high schoolers who were filling out worksheets could have been taken aside and been told "Look, this is what it was like, this shouldn't happen again..."

Our school has a really good conflict management program. Did you know that? It was started because of the events that happened 39 years ago today. That, right there is something. That right there is someone saying "Look, this didn't need to happen, this is what we are going to do to keep it from happening again." I feel like that is what May 4th is about, and today it broke my heart to see that other people don't feel the same way...

More Work

2009-04-15T13:11:00.001-04:00

I think I've mentioned before that I feel that my job as a rebound is to share my experiences in Russia and on exchange in any way I can. This weekend, I will be using my knowledge to work with the outbound exchange students at our District Conference. I've been looking forward to this event for over a month. It should be a pretty good time. Especially from this end, when I know how things work.

The other thing I've done recently to help spread the word about Russia is through Roomie. Roomie is a journalism major and had a project to do. She had to interview a random person and make a multi-media thing for a website. So, one night she goes "hey, can I interview you about russia?" She had it all planned and I just did my thing. I played a Russian song I learned on Stanley, my guitar, and then she asked a couple of questions and I just talked about Russia. Finally, I gave her some pictures from my adventures and she took a bunch and when she put them all together, she had this. I definitely encourage you to go watch it, as it turned out very nicely. I felt all special and important and Roomie got her work done. In case you missed it the first time, the link can be found here! Hope you all enjoy it!

In other news, although I haven't heard anything officially about the language school, I've heard rumblings. Last week actually, it went something like this: I had asked JoJo, my russian professor if she would write me a letter of recommendation. Last Tuesday I walk into class and she goes "So, I was writing your letter and I got it half done but my computer died." And I was like "oh, okay." Because well, I still had time to turn it in. Whatever. So I go on with my life. On Thursday when I go into class, I decide to make sure that she got it done since the deadline was approaching. "Hey JoJo, did you finish my letter?" "No, actually, I talked to Mister Doctor and he said it was fine. You have a really really good chance." Basically without actually saying it, JoJo told me that I'm going to be working there this summer. Which is cool. But I'm not counting on anything because I haven't gotten the official word. I'm not stressing about it. Not officially counting on it either. I'm just biding my time, doing my school stuff and returning to everyday life until May first. Then we shall see for sure...

The Oddest Thing

2009-04-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

It was the oddest thing. Last night I was laying in bed, and I was waiting to fall asleep. I do that a lot. Naturally, it's kind of boring to just lay there and wait to fall asleep, so I did what any smart person would, I started thinking. I was thinking about all kinds of random stuff and then suddenly I was thinking about how I should write Elena Ivanovna a letter, and I should e-mail Nina and maybe I should just call Elena Ivanovna, and then all of a sudden I remembered Yakutsk so clearly. It wasn't just picture memory, I remembered how it felt to be walking down the street, or standing at the crosswalk. I remembered the school, and I felt the cold, and the heat and the polar days, and the smells and the sounds. And I remembered obscure things that I hadn't thought of in months. I remembered going for Sushi after Graduation, and how they wouldn't let me into the library. I remembered sitting bored in school, and cramming on the bus. I remembered Elena Ivanovna's apartment and everything I learned from our evening chats, and then I was crying, and I couldn't stop and I'm trying to be quiet so I don't wake my roommate. I can't close my eyes because everytime I do I just remember more and my heart just aches and aches. When I woke up this morning it felt like I'd been hit by an ice cream truck.

Official Application

2009-04-01T00:34:00.000-04:00

I have mentioned the Language School in several of my previous posts. The basic idea is that SPU has one in the summer and that I want to work there in the Russian department. The reason for this post is that I have offcially applied. In order to do so, I had to have a letter of recommendation from a language professor and write an essay about my qualifications for the position. Not to brag, but I was very proud of my essay when I got done and I sent it via e-mail to Mister Doctor, who is not only the head of the Russian department at SPU but who is also one of the head guys at the School. On Thursday I am going to check with my Russian professor and see if she sent Mister Doctor the letter of recommendation. They said I would hear in May if I got the job. I'm really hoping I do because that would pretty much make my summer.

In other news, I decided that I no longer want to be an International Relations major. It's interesting in some ways, but I'm not really into it. I still have my Russian major so it's not like I'm running around undecided, although I do consider that a secondary major. Next fall I'm going to be taking some classes that are just fun for me, and then I'm going to decide on my "Primary" major. I'm excited about my classes for next fall as I am going to be picking French back up. I'm also considering minoring in French it won't take too many classes for me to get one.

That's about all the updates for now, Look for more in the next few weeks.

A Phone Call

2009-03-25T12:45:00.000-04:00

I'm vising my Cousin, Aay, in Nashville for spring break. Monday we were driving back to her campus from Centennial park when my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Private Number? what in the world is that? If it was one of those stupid advertisements, I was going to be pretty ticked since I have a tracphone and every minute counts. I prepared myself to give whoever it was a good browbeating in Russian and then I answered. "Allo?" An echoy voice from the other end, introuduced the speaker as a Rotarian from District 5010 who I'd met last year. "Which district?" I asked both incredulous and due to the fact that the quality of the call was not so good. "Five zero one zero." That's my Russia district! Once I realized what was going on I got into business mode. "what can I do for you?" They were calling me to ask some questions about my Experiences with the Rotary club of Yakutsk last year. Apparently the Student who is there this year is having a little trouble. A lot of trouble. And they were wondering what my experiences were. I was honest, but at the same time I felt very protected of the Rotary club in my adopted city. I mean, sure they had issues, but what club doesn't? And they did a lot for me while I was there. I couldn't just completely degrade them. So I gave a few negatives, and then reinforced the fact that other than that the club was excellent and worked really hard to help me out when I needed it. I stressed the fact that I attended the meetings and that when I had visa and registration problems, the club was really good about contacting people to get my stuff extended.

I told the Rotarian that if I could help in any other way, to feel free to get a hold of me. Through e-mail, phone or Skype. I really don't mind offering what help I can. It's part of my job as a rebound. When I got off the phone, I felt important. I don't know, it just makes me feel good, and accomplished when I can over insight and I guess, advice in a way. It's like that's my purpose now that I'm stateside. When I got off the phone and explained to my cousin that the call had come from Vladivostock, she looks at me and goes. "Only you would get a phone call from Russia."

Rebounding

2009-03-08T16:11:00.004-04:00

So I'm supposed to be studying for this huge midterm right now, but thought that I just would take a few moments to reflect since I haven't for a while (Love how I disguise my procrastination ha)I went to a Rotary overnighter last night. The first one I'd been to since I went through my own training program a year and a half ago. It was a different sort of experience. I really enjoyed hanging out but it was a little awkward at first. I did know some people who are outbounds from interviews and Facebook and a fellow rebound who went out when I did was there, but he's still in high school and in some ways seemed so young. Almost everyone did, actually. The inbounds, the outbounds, a couple of the rebounds. Did my exchange really make me that mature or is it just a matter of me being a different place in my life now? I'm not sure. I hung out a lot with two fellow rebounds. One who did his exchange the year before I did, and the other who went out with me but is a lot more mature about stuff. I don't know. It was just interesting.

I sat in on the Outbound training sessions and I was like (and I don't mean this in a bad way) "They are so young in their world views." It was like weird, because they haven't had those experiences yet and so their view on things is just different. They're all excited and full of hope about their upcoming exchanges. I just watched them and was sitting there thinking "Oh my goodness was it only a year and a half ago that I was the same way?" And I think back on it and I'm like yeah I was. Because honestly they can prepare you for exchange all they want, but are a bunch of teenagers actually going to listen? Not really. And they can listen to the inbounds and learn from them, that helps because those are their peers, but honestly, I remember in my first two months of Exchange I grew a whole new appreciation for what the inbounds were going through. It was something at the time of my training I couldn't understand.

It's not just the inbounds and the Rotarians who are important to training. This is something I came to realize last night. Rebounds are just as if not more important. As a Rebound, I am living proof that you can come out of exchange whole and carrying with you a new world view. I am proof that despite the experiences good or bad that happen on exchange, they have become part of me. As a Rebound I am a mentor-friend with stories and experiences to impart. The inbounds listen to us because we are peers, but we are so much more.

Not that I'm saying the Rotarians aren't important. They are the ones who do the training and the paperwork, and essentially make everything happen. The inbounds teach so much to the Outbounds about their countries; help prepare them. The Inbounds also show what happens when you are going through exchange. They are the first hand account. It's just that we rebounds have a special place in the hierarchy of exchange.

What I've Discovered about Language

2009-02-21T15:48:00.002-05:00

I've been very bad at keeping up with blog posts since break. Forgive me but it's a combination of very busy-ness and computer issues.(My course load is harder than I thought it would be) But anyway, I've noticed some things in regards to the Russian language, and the way it pops up that I would just like to share with you.

I have officially become known at college as "That Russian girl." apparently my friends will mention my name to people who go "Who is that?" the friend will then mention something about "The one obsessed with Russia" to which the response it "Oh okay her!" I have been called "Half-Russian" I have been called "Communist," and I have been introduced as "Russian." And I'm okay with that. I've talked to people about it and have been told that it's just a neat thing because Russia's not typical, and that it automatically makes me cool. I've never considered myself "cool" but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Not only am I known as "The Russian girl," I am also know as "That girl who yells at people in Russian." Honestly though, it was just that one time, when that person was bothering me. My point is that I wasn't even really yelling. When I seriously get ticked off with people in Russian, I actually get quieter. But I can see how the yelling thing would come in because my words also get sharper and so while I'm not actually yelling, I imagine that to anyone on the receiving end, it's a little scary.

I get scared, because even though I'm trying hard, I'm still forgetting. I'll have someone ask me a word, and more and more often I have to stop and think about what the word is in Russian. Yet at the same time, it's really interesting the way language works. For example, my friend, M.K., lived in Macedonia and the Czech Republic for most of her life. Since Eastern European culture and Russian culture are similar, we've had some interesting chats. One thing we enjoy doing is speaking English with these really thick accents. The more I do it, the more I slip into it without thinking about it. Last night, I was hanging out with Puppy randomly speaking English with a Russian accent. I was saying something and then all of a sudden, I realized that I had gone from English to Russian. I just stopped and went, wow, I was just speaking Russian. It was a good feeling.

I've had other stuff too. Puppy, as I think I've mentioned doesn't care when I babble on in Russian so I do it a lot whenever we hang out. It's resulted in several cases of "What language are you speaking?" "Russian" "Oh that's so cool!" I've also had times where I'll be speaking Russian to Puppy or M.K. and then looked at someone else, said several sentences then all of a sudden stopped and gone "Wait, you don't understand Russian." Naturally, everyone present during these happenings finds it hilarious. I do too in a way, although mostly it just makes me feel happy when stuff like that happens.

The above generally come about because I tend to forget that other people don't understand Russian. I mean, I know I'm not in Russia anymore. But I've been studying now for three or four years, and I can't remember what's it's like to not understand it. So I forget what it sounds like to those outside.

There are two other things I've come to realize about my language in the past week or so. One is that I have a horrible Russian accent. No, I don't mean in English and I don't mean when I speak Russian (The latter I know). I've thrown out a little Spanish, and a little French with a friend and her comment is "Wow, you speak with a Russian accent." Puppy likes to give me a hard time about how atrociously I pronounce German words because Russians roll their Rs. I even know a girl who takes Latin and I was reading her homework out loud and she's helping me along with pronunciation and then suddenly she starts laughing and goes "You sound so Russian!: I suppose if Sign language had an accent I'd probably have a Russian one when I do it with Chatter.

The final thing I've come to realize is that I use Russian as a shield. I'm one of those people who when I'm in a new situation I get quieter until I evaluate the situation. I've come to see that a lot of times, if I am uncomfortable in a situation and I am with someone who understands, I will use Russian and then, when I become more comfortable, I'll go back to English. Perhaps this is because not everyone understands Russian and so no one can hear my uncertainties.

I don't know, but it fascinates me, the way that even now, my exchange is a part of me. When I started college I don't know that I intentionally planned on defining myself in this manner, and I certainly never expected to learn these cool things about the way my language works, but you know what, it all makes me happy. And I'm okay with that.

School

2009-01-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

Well, here I am again. Back at school and it's about time. That last week was a killer because all my friends had gone back and I had no car, and well, there just wasn't a lot to do.

Since I am back at SPU, I decided that I should update you on my life here. My course load this semester is hopefully going to not be too terribly hard. My hardest class is probably going to be the four day a week "Math Requirement." I'm not particularly looking forward to that class. Probably the second hardest class I'm going to have this semester is Soviet Lit which I'm taking with the same professor as last semester. She makes you work, I tell you what. My other classes include "Europe's Governments" "English 2" and "Leadership". The latter is a class I'm taking for fun. It's a two hour a week class that is leadership training and then you get to help next summer and over the fall with new student orientation.

Another interesting thing this semester is the addition to Roomie. See I was supposed to have a roommate last semester, but she never showed up so the entire semester I had a room to myself. This semester though, I was assigned a new roommate. Roomie seems very nice and once we get over the initial stage of awkwardness I think we'll get along all right. This isn't a long post, and wasn't intended to be, just wanted to let you know where I was at college-wise.

Cynicism, Jealousy, and Influences

2009-01-17T00:12:00.001-05:00

So, I've been thinking a lot about Russia the past few days. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I dreamed about Moscow, maybe it's that several of our District's future outbounds have IMed me over the last several days, or maybe it's because I've been following the blogs of several inbounds from various places. Most likely it's a combination of all of them.

I think Russia did something to me. Because I came back and while I encourage exchange students no matter where they're going, there's a part of me that has an almost superior attitude that borders on being cynical. It's like a part of me is like "Oh, yeah, you're going to [Insert Country Here] but it'll never be as good/hard/worthwhile as going to Russia." which is a stupid attitude to have. No Exchange is created equal. But then Russia's not for everyone either. I've been hearing from people who are in Russia now and they are complaining. Complaining about the same things I complained about, actually. And I want to slap them and tell them to get over it because that's just Russia. Russia seriously does things to you. It's an exchange where you hate it a lot. But then suddenly you realize how much you come to love and care for it, it gets under your skin so to speak, and once it does you can never forget it. I know I've probably said this before, but maybe I feel the need to explain because maybe this time someone will understand better what I mean. Or perhaps not.

I was thinking about why I would feel this way; Why do I go around with this attitude. I thought that maybe it has something to do with the fact that surviving Russia is an accomplishment, it's a particularly hard exchange. So part of me looks at other exchanges as 'wimpy' though that's not true as each country poses its own challenges. So I think it has to do with that, but at the same time I think a part of me is jealous. "Oh this person is in Spain and isn't homesick and is having the time of their life." Perhaps I'm jealous because that wasn't my exchange.

Please don't get the wrong impression. I loved my exchange with all its crazy ups and downs. I got to see some of the coolest things in the world got to experience things, learned a cool language. But I think the jealousy stems from the fact that my exchange wasn't roses and sunshine. I had to Work at my exchange. Whereas it sometimes seems like the people who pick other countries get there exchanges handed to them on a silver platter. That's part of the jealousy. The other part is that it's really depressing to read all these interesting stories of adventures that other people are having and have your adventure already be old news. It's one of the most depressing feelings in the world.

One of the blogs I've been reading is a friend of mine who's spending her exchange in a very well known European country. She's having a great time and in one of her recent blog posts, she mentioned all of the cultural things she was going to keep doing from her host country when she came back to America. A bittersweet feeling welled up within me as I read this. She doesn't yet realize how much you are influenced by the world around you, and how hard it is to do something out of cultural context.

When I was still in Russia I had determined that I was going to bring some cultural things back with me. I was going to kiss people when I greet them, I was going to eat Sour Cream on bread with jelly, I was going to continue to drink chai all hours of the day and I was going to answer the phone with "Allo?"

Since coming home I haven't eaten a single slice of bread and sour cream, I don't really kiss anyone on the cheek to greet them, I rarely drink chai. The first day I answered the phone and automatically said "hello" was rather traumatic and now when I pick up the phone if I don't consciously think about using "allo" half the time I say "hello." But these things have no context in this culture and so it's hard to keep doing them. Not doing these things is just another grim reminder that I'm not in Russia anymore and every day I'm forgetting, every day I'm losing something else.

Moscow Never Sleeps

2009-01-15T12:22:00.000-05:00

Last night I was in Moscow. I dreamed that I was stopping there on my way home, maybe from Yakutsk, I don't really know. I do know that I was in and around Red Square. It was a particularly vivid dream. I wandered past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and I saw a girl from my class at school in Yakutsk. We wandered around together. The worst part of my dream was that when I first opened my mouth to speak to her the Russian didn't come out smoothly. It took me a bit to get it going. It scared me, the fact that I was having trouble saying the most basic things, although it did feel really good to be in Moscow, even if it was just in my head...

Changes

2009-01-12T23:54:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated in a while. For that I am sorry. People must actually follow this though because I started hearing rumblings about how I hadn't updated in a while and I should.

I left Russia six months ago. I know. It's weird. I can hardly believe how fast the time has gone by when it went so slowly in Russia. A lot has happened in the last six months and I think when I look back on it in the future. I am forever going to associate these six months with major changes in my life. Not just changes dealing with the people around me, but changes within myself as well.

I was decieved. Or maybe God was watching out for me, knew I wouldn't be able to handle it at first. You see, while I was still in Russia, there was a part of me that thought everything would be different when I got home. That my house would be different and my family would be different and people would have changed completely. This was true to some extent. I mean I come back and the five dollar bills are purple and McDonalds was now serving oven fresh cookies and one of my cousins turned into a tree. But I mean for all intents and purposes things were generally the same as they always were. Until recently.

The Thursday before Thanksgiving my mom called my cell phone while I was still in class. I called her back as soon as I got out. "Your Grandma isn't doing to well." Grandma had gone to live at the nursing home full time just before I got home because it was becoming too much work for my parents to take care of her themselves. "Do you want to come home?" And I didn't know if I should. "I have a class in twenty minutes. Can I think about it and call you after?" When I got out of Russian class, I called back. Mom told me she had discussed it with Dad and thought that since they were planning on getting me the next day anyway, I should just stay on campus. So I did. Just after eight the next morning my dad called to tell me that Grandma had passed away. In some ways, though it sounds odd to say it, it was good timing. My brother was coming out anyway because we hadn't seen each other in over a year. Hadn't seen each other at all since I got back from Russia. But it still made for a downer of a Thanksgiving. I mean it was really nice to be home with my family, but it was a long day, all I wanted to do was sleep because we'd been dealing with stuff for the funeral. (The funeral was the day before Thanksgiving.) At least it didn't happen while I was gone. That could've been very bad. When I left for Russia I was still unhappy with having my Grandma living with us even after two years. By the time I came back, I was okay with things, and I got to see Grandma several more times before she died.

Another thing that really hit me hard these past six months actually just happened recently. Over Christmas, my cousin, Aay, got engaged. You have to understand that neither Aay nor I have sisters. We are eleven months apart and grew up together. Lived next door and everything. She is as close to me as a sister. I'll never forget that phone call. I knew what she was going to say before she said it, and when she told me I was so excited for her. Yet at the same time I was so...weirded out. I mean we'd talked about marriage and stuff, all girls do. I knew she was pretty serious about this guy but for some reason them getting engaged always seemed like it was down the road years. Yet all of a sudden *BAM* here it is. I forget that we're adults now and capable of making adult decisions. For some reason I still think that we're 16 and 17. Sometimes it makes me sad that we're not.

I guess that's the main thing that I've come to realize the past six months. I'm not a kid anymore. Recently I read the book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and I don't think it could've come at a better time. Jo goes through some of the same feelings and emotions that I've been going through as the things around her begin to change and she can do nothing about it. It scares me sometimes...How fast these six months have gone. It scares me that the whole rest of my life is going to go this fast. I don't want it to, but someone told me once that life just goes faster and faster. I haven't given up on my dreams yet, but I have come to understand that sometimes our dreams take a different shape than our childhood fantasies imagined.

Interviewing: A View from the Other Side

2008-11-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, I went through a Club Interview and a District Interview in order to become an exchange student. Yesterday, I got to see the interview process from the other side. It was an interesting experience.

Several weeks ago, one of the Rotarians in charge of the district exchange program got a hold of me and said "Do you want to help interview potential outbounds?" I answered with a very enthusiastic "Yes!" The interviews were yesterday. I was on an interview team with three other people and we interviewed four students, two guys and two girls. Three of the students were interested in Spanish speaking countries, and one was interested in India. It was a really fun experience. The interviews themselves were tiring, but it was fun to interact as well. We interviewed two students, broke for lunch and then interviewed two more. In some ways, my favorite part was that break for lunch. It gave me a chance to walk around and talk to some of the potentials that I wasn't interviewing, see where they were interested in going, and share some of my stories. Actually, what's great is everyone knows me as "The girl who went to Russia last year and almost got deported."

There was a meeting during the noon hour for all the parents and their students. One of the Rotarians told me that he was going to tell my Korea story. I went to eat lunch and then I popped into the meeting to see what was going on about half-way through. The Rotarian had already told my story, but he had me talk a little about the training program that the students will go through before leaving, and told the crowd that I was the student he'd mentioned earlier. I also got to talk a little bit about the orientation things that go on in-country. The Rotarians embarrassed me because they said that they'd heard from people in my Russian district about how integrated I became and how well I spoke the language. If it was Eleonora saying this, she had a tendency to exaggerate, and if it was the Alaskan in charge of Youth Exchange, he didn't know Russian and wouldn't know. I did mention though how one of the most interesting experiences I had on exchange was at district conference. It was interesting because I was able to speak Russian to the Russians and feel completely Russian and then turn around and speak English and deal with Americans no problem. It was cool how I was able to slip between cultures.

An interesting thing about the interviews was seeing it from this side. We'd call the kids in and they'd be all nervous and that sort of thing, and they're all so naive in some ways. Naive not in a bad sense, but because the unknown is before them. They don't have those experiences yet. Part of me just wanted to be like "wipe those expectations out of your head because it's completely different when you're there" But I doubt it would do much good. I didn't listen when I was in their place, so why should they be any different. It's one of those things you just have to experience and see for yourself.

Our team kept up more of a dialog with the students rather than an actual interview. We asked them questions, of course, but we also just kind of talked to them as well, about their interests, things they'd written on their applications, expectations for exchange. That sort of thing. My favorite question to ask was pulled from my own experiences "What do you do if you get there, and you hate the city and you go to school and you have no friends and feel like no one likes you?" Most of the students had to stop and really think about this question. This is something most of them don't think about when they're getting ready for exchange. They're prepared for questions about homesickness, tolerence, and why they want to do exchange but the fact that they might get in-country and not have the time of their lives from the very beginning is something they never considered. I sure didn't.

It was odd. Several of my exchange buddies, people who trained with me and went out in 07-08 were there, but I didn't spend a ton ton of time talking to them. I didn't quite feel connected and I don't know why. Is Russia that scarring? (Ha!) Was my exchange that different? Did it mature me in different ways? Or am I just at a different point in my life now? One thing I did enjoy was talking to a student who was in the Czech Republic in 06-07. The languages are similar and the cultures in some ways are similar and so it was a very enlightening conversation.

I enjoyed yesterday's experience a lot. It made me feel like I was being useful and using what I learned in Russia to help people out. I'm hoping to go to some of the overnighters that are coming up in the next few months.

My College Posse

2008-11-15T11:49:00.000-05:00

So, I get these groups of friends. The ones I hang out with the most are the ones who I am closest too and therefore become what I call "my posse." Don't ask me why I use this term I just do. There are four of us in my posse here. Me, Puppy, Zhin, and a newer addition, Chatter. I knew all of them individually and then Puppy hung out with Zhin and I once so they met. I knew Chatter from the karaoke night here, and took Zhin with me one week and so they met, and Puppy and Chatter met each other one day when we had lunch and ended up sitting in the Center from about 2 in the afternoon until 5:30. So it was just a matter of bringing them all together. Which I did last Tuesday. Tuesday, we didn't have class and after going to lunch with Chatter, I wanted to walk Downtown to the music store. We decided to invite Puppy because he's into music and he's hilarious, and I said let's make a party of it and so we invited Zhin too.

I honestly cannot tell you what we do when we hang out, because in just telling you, it doesn't seem like much of anything. We walk around and hang out different places. We often end up at The Diner which is a place on campus open all night that has decent food. Also, almost every time we hang out, we end up in the Music building so Puppy can play the piano. But I mean other than that we hang out, and we talk, and we act completely stupid, and we pretty much speak almost entirely in inside jokes which means that anyone listening either thinks we're really creepy, or has no idea what we're talking about. From playing catch phrase, and the bottle game in The Diner at one in the morning, to wandering around aimlessly, being loud and people telling us drunks to go home (though we really aren't drunk. I promise) hanging out with my friends is always a very very interesting experience. It's memories like these that you look back on later and think "man, college was a great time!"

Dealing With It

2008-11-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

I recently got a Facebook message from one of my fellow Russian exchangers. She needed someone who understood and so told me how she was tired of people not listening to her view on Russian politics, of people implying that even though she spent nine months in country, she was too far from Moscow and therefore didn't really know the political situation in the country. That got me thinking about some of my own experiences and I decided to do this entry about it, so you would know. For those of you who may be reading this and are in Russia right now, this is what you have to look forward to. For any other exchangers who might be reading this, you will probably go through something similar. For the rest of you, I hope that by reading this, you get a better understanding.

It's really hard coming back from Russia. Not just because of the general leaving your second culture behind thing. It's hard because you don't realize how prejudiced Americans are against Russia until you get back and start facing it. It also doesn't help when barely two weeks after you get back, the front page of the newspapers are splashed with headlines about Russia invading Georgia. Immediately the questions started. "Were you in Russia when that happened?" "no." "Did you see this coming?" "Not really." And my least favorite of all: "What do you think of this whole situation." Apparently having just come back from Russia, Everyone wanted my opinion and my insight into the conflict. It quickly became my least favorite question though when I had several conversations that went sort of like this:
"What do you think about this whole thing?"
"Well, I think it's interesting."
"Yeah, Russia's so power hungry right?"
"Actually, you do realize that Georgia started it...?"
"What? No!"
"They invaded the Breakaway regions first."
"Yeah, but Putin is evil and power hungry and trying to grab up land!"

I started avoiding the topic. How can you explain your side to someone who doesn't want to listen? To someone who just wants you to confirm their stereotypes? Because you get a lot of that. This is what we're taught, this is the way it is. I got very tired very quickly of, as soon as I said anything to defend the Russian government in any way, people looking at me like I was a communist, or making comments to that effect. What most people don't realize is that Russians know their government is corrupt, but their attitude is that this is the way life is. There is no history of democracy in that country so most people don't know any way to change it. Oh and by the way, if you actually ask the Russians, many of them will tell you that they approve of Putin because he's done some good things for the country. And I know what you'll probably say "It's because there's a history of Putin eliminating any and all competition and opposers." I'm not saying that this isn't true, I'm just telling you what it's like.

The other thing that really bothers me is the actual "communist" comments. I have a few friends who make this sort of comment, mostly because they know it gets to me. You fake smile and shrug, or make threats under your breath in Russian and go on. I hide how much it really bothers me and I think this is something I need to stop doing. Hiding. I need to stand up and be like "look, this really bothers me when you say things like that. " Because it does and maybe if I spoke up people would understand better.

I guess you could say this is where I'm at right now, piloting through the remnants of my exchange. It seems so long ago, sometimes it just feels like a dream. Some days I wake up and I think "Was I really in Russia? Oh. I guess so." It's rather depressing in some ways.

Scientific Experiment #2: Showing Your Stripes

2008-10-29T14:46:00.000-04:00

As you know, I am a Republican. If you've been reading my blog you know that SPU is a very liberal college. Also if you've been reading my blog, you know that I was planning on showing my support of McCain and Palin on the whiteboard outside of my dorm room. For those of you who are interested, Here are the results of that experiment, i.e. The things that people wrote on my board.

This is what the original sign looked like:

McCain
Palin
2008

Here are some of the variations I got (italics are things that others wrote):

McCain (Old guy)
Palin (Bimbo)
2008

McCain
Palin
2008
Wanting to F*** the U.S. The next four years
--The interesting thing about this one is I erased all but the F of the bad word. The next morning it had been replaced by "screw"

McCain
Palin
1908

McCain
Palin
2008
Yes! Yes!
--This one made me feel less alone.

McCain
Palin
2008
Eat the Poor!!

McSame
Failin
2008
--This liberal does get points for creativity

I ran this experiment over two weekends, and Happened to go home. When I got back the first time, the board looked like this:

Obama
Biden
2008
Change we can count on

The second weekend I came back and my sign had been completely erased to be replaced by more pro-bama slogans. I rewrote it and when I left my dorm the next day the board looked like this:

McCain
Palin
2008

and here are the last few collected:

McCain
Palin
2008
Because one Depression just wasn't enough

McCain
Palin
2008
Honoring the time cherished value of lying

And the final one which was written just yesterday:

McCain
Palin
2008
Is this for the Hugh Hefner look-alike contest?

Now, one other interesting thing about this, is not just the reactions I got when I wrote it, but what happened after I did. When I wrote this on my board, there was only one other person in my hall who was showing their political stripes. It was an Obama supporter who had signs outside their door and their board said "Obama Biden" etc. Not long after putting up McCain/Palin, I realized that a lot more people had written on their boards which candidates they supported. Yeah, 90% of them are Obama, but I just think it's really interesting. Even the guy who had stuff up before me got more elaborate. He drew one of those O's on his board with the flag thing that is a symbol of all things Obama. I felt kind of bad because people came by and kept erasing parts of it. When I came back from this last weekend, he was out fixing it, and I talked to him a bit. Well, actually mom started it. She said something about "Oh you have the same problem she does, people keep messing up your board" and then he was like yeah, and said something about the Conservatives are all hiding and I said "that's because we get beat down by liberals every time we mention who we're supporting." What was interesting is that we both came to the realization that we were tired of people putting us down for whichever candidate we were supporting, and we can't wait for the election to be over. Okay, so maybe not all of the liberals at SPU are crazy.

Generally, I think this was a very interesting experiment and I learned some interesting things from it.

Losing It

2008-10-24T10:31:00.001-04:00

From "And the Words Poured Out..." the author's paper journal.

Thursday, October 16th 2008

I was really down yesterday. I realized that I don't feel Russian anymore, and it feels like part of me is missing. It's the most depressing feeling in the world. I remember how it felt, to be living there, to be part of that and to go to the district conference and be able to slip between cultures, though i really felt more Russian. And yeah, I can interact with Russian speakers here and I can remember my language, but I'm not Russian. I mean, not that I ever was or could be, but it's just this feeling, a sort of pride. Pride in the fact that you are comfortable in your language and culture, a language and culture that used to be so alien to you. The ability to be able to say "Well, this is how we do it in Russia," and I've lost it. My heart feels purely American and it makes me want to weep. Of all the things I was worried about losing/forgetting when I came back, I never thought it would be my sense of Russianness. I told mom last night and she said it doesn't mean I might feel that way again. I know that's true but I'm afraid that the only way I'll feel that way again is if I go back and who knows when that will be?

I wish I could describe it better than "empty"but it's sort of like that. It's this sort of sensation that you carry around with you and you don't realize how it filled you up or how heavy it was until it's gone. For some reason, I've always felt Russian as heavier than English. I don't know why. Now, with my Russian self gone, I feel too light, as if I'm just going to float away into the sky, or blow away with the wind. I dislike the feeling.

Spreading the Word

2008-10-15T14:01:00.000-04:00

The past few summers SPU has hosted a Language School for four weeks in the summer. Juniors and Seniors in high school pick one of a variety of less common languages such as Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi. They then spend a month on campus taking classes and doing their best to learn the language. When the four weeks are done they then have Saturday sessions once a month where they spend all day expanding their knowledge of the language. By the time they are done, students have completed the equivalent to two semesters of their basic language. This means, if they are in Russian for example, that when they start school, if they choose to continue study of their language, they will already be in an intermediate program. Puppy has connections to the Language School (or as he calls it, the concentration camp. I told him gulag was more appropriate.) He attended it two summers ago and then last summer he worked as a tech guy/student helper. So he knows the people.

Saturday was one of the weekend sessions. Puppy invited me to go eat lunch with some people he knew who were attending the school in the Russian program afterwards, he was going to be helping with some stuff and invited me to tag along. Since I wasn't doing anything else, I thought I would. It gave me something to do as well as show me how the school works since I'm hoping to be able to work there as a Teaching Assistant next summer. Mister Doctor who, as I mentioned in my previous post is the head of the Russian department was there because he's also one of the people in charge of the language school. He also works with the Russian program. Obviously. So I showed up and got put to work which was fine with me, since it was better than sitting there being awkward. When there was a bit of a lull, Mister Doctor came up and asked how my semester was going. I told him well, and told him which Russian class I'd ended up in. then I said something to the effect of "I'm going to see my adviser on the 20th and I'm planning on declaring Russian." He was like "oh that's good! Then I'll be one of your Advisers" and that was the extent of the conversation.

Yesterday, I walked in to my Russian class and my Russian Prof. Starts talking about all the classes she's teaching next semester. In the middle of it she goes "by the way, I heard that you were going to declare Russian." I love our small Russian department!

Moments of Triumph

2008-10-14T13:41:00.001-04:00

I'm listening to Sufjan Stevens and feeling pretty pleased with myself. It is amazing how much I encounter Russian here. The hard thing though is to make myself interact with it. It was the same when I lived over there. I had to force myself to interact with native speakers. It was a matter of survival. Here, I have no problem interacting with non-native speakers. Most likely because if I make mistakes they won't care or won't notice. At least I think that's my sub-conscious reason for doing it. I don't know, but I really have been trying to interact more with the Russian speakers I encounter.

Last week, Mom and I went to a Russian festival at a local Orthodox Church. Naturally, I had to make a little fun of the stuff, and criticize the "Russian food" that they served (although the Borsh was really good!) but we happened to run across some Russian speakers. My mom said "go on, go talk to them" and I was really nervous about it. Even though you do it all the time as an Exchange Student, it's really really hard to go up to random people and just start speaking to them in their native language. Especially since that's probably the only thing you have in common. So mom, being her personality type, took the lead and went up to the woman, and said "hey, my daughter speaks Russian and wanted to talk to you." so much for introductions heh heh. So I chatted a bit with one lady and then another. I talked about where I lived, and the Moscow metro and Another random thing or two. They told me I spoke Russian well, and that was about it, but I felt good about it afterwards.

Sunday night, I went to an Orchestra concert here on campus. It was free with my SPU ID and one of my friends was playing so off I went. The seats weren't assigned and so I sat myself down and was waiting for the concert to start, half listening to the people around me. The two people sitting behind me were talking about "Something something twenty something" and I'm sitting there thinking "that's nice..." when all of a sudden it hit me that they hadn't been speaking English. (funny how when you know another language your brain just processes it.) So I turned around and looked and met this guys gaze and realized I was staring so I turned back around, although I definitely continued to listen to the conversation. I told myself I would regret it if I didn't talk to them and so at intermission I got up the courage and asked the girl where she was from (in Russian). She told me, and then asked where I was from. I told her I was American but that I'd lived in Russia last year. And the usual kind of conversation followed. The girl was from Turkmenistan and the guy was from Central Russia. It was fun to just chat with them. They told me that except for Mister Doctor who's the head of the Russian Department here, I was the best American Russian speaker they'd heard in a while. I told them that I didn't speak well (because I don't feel that I do. I make so many mistakes and things) and they insisted that I did. It was really fun to just talk to them, and once again I felt really glad about it afterwards.

The last thing happened just today. We were talking about Europe in my "Where in the World Are We?" lecture. We were talking about different languages and then the teacher decided to show different alphabets. The first one was the latin alphabet. Then he showed the Cyrillic alphabet. I got all excited, especially when there was a little blurb in Russian up on the screen he asked if anyone could read it and I raised my hand. So he asked me to read it and I did, I translated it and read it in English. Was very proud of myself because I read it right out. Sometimes when I'm translating my brain does weird things to my English. It was a little thing about some registration for a conference in 1997 or something. Afterwards, the teacher told me good job and told everyone to clap for me. It was pretty funny.

I guess my point is that even when you're not on exchange, those little moments of triumph still matter. You still find them in random places, and they still tend to just make your day!

New York and McCain

2008-10-13T10:13:00.003-04:00

Found this video through The Drudge Report today. It'll take you about five minutes to watch. I thought it was very interesting.

Here in my dorm at SPU we have white boards outside our doors. Some people went around and were writing Obama 08 on them. I wanted to, as an experiment, write McCain/Palin 08 on mine to see what would happen, but I was a little scared. Think I'm definitely going to though. I'll let you all know the results.

Another Sort of Culture Shock

2008-10-08T11:49:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend I randomly had the chance to go to see my cousin Aay who is going to school down in Tennessee. Naturally, I blew off everything else to that I was going to do and headed down there with Aunty and Uncle. It was a good trip, and I really enjoyed getting to see Aay. Hadn't seen her since she went down in August and didn't expect to see her again until Thanksgiving so it was a nice treat. Where does the culture shock come in? well actually we were talking about dorm rules. See the little thing I didn't mention about Aay's school is that she's attending a small Christian college. So we got to talking and naturally, her dorm is all girls, yeah okay, I can deal with that. I can't remember how we got on the subject but she mentioned something about how guys are only allowed into the room for like fifteen minutes at a time and they have to keep their feet on the floor. This just blew me away. I mean, I'm a hard core Christian and I understand why they do it, but it was just completely mind blowing. I guess because I'm used to the whole "guys living down the hall from you and people having their boy/girlfriends coming and spending the weekend with them" thing. I never thought I would experience that kind of culture shock here in America. I guess I see it as here, we're all adults and so you have to act responsibly. Where Aay goes to school, they're still all adults, but being a Christian school they have different Moralistic Ideals. Or whatever. I just thought it was interesting.

Which brings me to another point. I've decided that God is good, and I've been praising him, actually before I even went on this little weekend getaway. Because I've come to the conclusion that good old SPU is exactly where I need to be for college. I mean I've met some really cool people here, I speak Russian almost every day and I'm learning to stand up for myself. I was always one of those people who wanted a good education from a christian college, but I don't know, in some ways being at SPU is causing me to grow more spiritually than if I were at a Christian College. So I'm really content with where I'm at.

There was one more story I wanted to tell you last week, but I didn't get the chance because I went off to Tennessee. It happened last Wednesday in Comparing Governments. As you know, we are doing different presentations about different countries. Last Wednesday was the Germany presentation. One of the most interesting things that happened was that a girl mentioned that in Germany, they are very proud about their German heritage and even if you were born in Germany and lived there all your life, if your parents were foreign you would be considered foreign too. I raised my hand and said something to the effect of "I think that's very interesting. Do you think perhaps this comes from part of Germany being occupied by the Soviet Union because Russians feel the same way." Then, a guy in the group went on to talk about how he'd been reading and how the reason Russia reacted like they did to the Georgia thing is because they still considered those people Russian. I seriously was like "Thank you! Because I tell people that and they don't believe me!" What was great was here was a guy who's never been to Russia, he just reads a lot and he came to this conclusion. See, often we as Americans just take what people tell us as the straight truth without ever looking any deeper than the surface, and I'm not just talking about in regards to Russia I'm talking about the world and politics in general.

Protests, Movies and English

2008-09-30T13:49:00.002-04:00

I went to eat lunch in Campus Center yesterday. I happened to be sitting by the window reading a book and when I looked up, there were people gathering on the plaza outside. I watched them set up speakers and people hanging out. Naturally I had to go see what the hubub was. It was an anti-war protest. Okay, and I'm not going to lie. I knew it was going to happen and that's why I chose to eat lunch there and to happen to be sitting in that particular spot.

I wanted to see a protest because I'd never seen one, and besides, my brother saw the Republican National Convention riots. I was behind. (Up until that point I'd been ahead because I sat jury duty) Plus, SPU is a hippie school so might as well go watch them right? What else are you going to do when you have homework to procrastinate?

When it looked like they were getting started, I went outside and about laughed. First, they had this guy play a song on a guitar and sing about how horrible it is that we're in a war and how we shouldn't support the troops or whatever. Then, this girl got up and read this whole thing about what they all did at the aforementioned riots at the Republican National Convention. I really really wanted to interject a few comments, but I kept my thoughts to myself. To be perfectly honest, the whole protest thing was rather disappointing. I don't know what I expected to see, maybe something straight out of the 70s but it definitely didn't happen. After a few more little speech thingies, they all grouped up, grabbed signs and started chanting about how we shouldn't be in Iraq. They then went marching off across campus. The Campus newspaper today said that there were about 100 people, but there was no way there were that many unless they picked up people along the way. There were maybe maybe fifty people. Generally, I just shook my head and supressed a laugh at the whole thing. Yeah, if you ask most of the students on this liberal campus, they will tell you that they don't support this, and we should get out of Iraq. Yet, do they care enough to do something about it? not really. The hippies do though. This event was sponsored by a group on campus called "the Anti-war commitee" My question is, what do they do when there is no war?

Last night was Russian movie night. The movie was called "The Barber of Siberia" it's really long (i.e. 3 hours) and it's typically russian (i.e. Rather depressing) but there's enough good stuff in it to definitely make it worth the watch. Plus, it's mostly in English and there are some well known people in it such as Julia Ormond and Richard Harris. The best part was when I went into the room where it was being held. I asked the grad students (in Russian) if it was a good movie, and they were like "yeah, but it's long" and they spoke slowly and they said one word for long and then decided I may not know that and so used another (Understood both) I nodded as they spoke and said something about how I'd heard it was a good movie, and then one girl randomly goes "How do you know Russian" because this is America and these are grad students from Russia and they teach beginner courses and so most Americans they know don't speak Russian. And so I said "I lived in Russia last year" and they asked me my name and I don't know it just made me feel special. I miss rapid-fire Russian.

The only other news really, is how irritated I was in my English class today. Not that that's news, but this time it was at the students, not the professor. We've studied some books on the ideas and theories of Postcolonialism and now we're reading fiction. So today we're sitting in class and he's just about to let us go. "Any other questions?" And people start asking the most ridiculous things ever! like "Do we find out about this in the book?" And I'm like just sitting there thinking "why does this matter? Read the book and you'll find out" and then someone else asked a question about something really insignificant like "Is such and such important later?" I'm like "are you all idiots?" At least we're reading fiction now which is more along my lines. I get into the whole analyzing the symbolism thing and stuff, so I'm going to be enjoying the rest of the semester. At least, I hope I will.

Goals and Dreams

2008-09-27T18:07:00.001-04:00

I remember how excited I was the first time I dreamed in Russian. It was such exciting stuff. I then went on to tell you every time that I dreamed in Russian. I've sort of slacked off because since I've been back I've had several dreams in other languages.

I can't remember exactly when the first one was, I don't think it was too long after I got back, but in it, I had to go back to Yakutsk for some paperwork or something and I was in my third host family's house. Instead of my little host brother though, a little girl from my church was there and she said something to me in Russian and I answered back. Odd.

The second one was not long after I met Puppy. We were wandering around campus and I was speaking a lot of Russian. That night I dreamed that I was speaking Russian on a cell phone and my family was freaking out in English, trying to figure out what I was saying, or wanting me to stop or something. I don't really remember.

Finally, last night I dreamed in Yakutian. Yeah. I know. that's really odd. Especially since I don't really speak Yakutian. What was weird about it is that the people in the dream were speaking to me in Yakutian but when I said that I didn't understand, instead of speaking to me in Russian, they spoke to me in English. Complete with accents if I remember right. That's probably the strangest dream I've had. I don't typically dream in languages that I don't really speak.

Speaking of dreaming in other languages, as I was getting ready to write this post, I remembered that several years ago, when I started this blog, I had several goals for myself. I went back and looked at them, and realized actually, I've completed many of them. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, here's what they were.

1. Learn Swahili
2.Go to France
3. Dream in another language
4. Read "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in French
5. Speak Fluent Russian

I can now cross the following things off the list.

1. Learn Swahili
~~2.Go to France~~
~~3. Dream in another language~~
~~4. Read "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in French~~
~~5. Speak Fluent Russian~~

The only one I haven't done is learn Swahili. I went to France right after I graduated from high school. Went with Madame, and a group of classmates. Spent two weeks there and it was a very eye-opening experience. Number two I've mentioned several times so you know about that. In my AP class we took care of number 4. Number 5 is the only one that I might not technically cross off. Technically, I'm not fluent in Russian, but I speak it well enough to survive day to day situations and such. So while, I've realized since the time I wrote these goals, that I'll never be fluent like a native, I would say I'm conversationally fluent. Or almost.

I made those goals in 2005. It took me what? Three years to complete four out of five? Not bad if I do say so myself. I think I'm going to have to work on coming up with some new language goals for myself.

Social Time

2008-09-26T17:02:00.002-04:00

People I know tend to hang out in my room. I'm not sure if this is because I'm very hospitable and easy going about people being in there, ("I don't care how long you stay, just be warned that at some point I'm going to bed") or if it's because I don't have a roommate and so it's pretty easy to just come in and hang out. Perhaps it's a bit of both. Generally it doesn't bother me, and when it does, I just don't invite people in.

Last night Zhin and I got together and made brownies and cookies in the dorm's communal kitchen. We got rid of most of the cookies and some of the brownies. To get rid of the rest, we wandered up and down my hall randomly asking people if they wanted one. It was pretty entertaining. She then came back to my room and we just talked and she bounced some ideas around for a paper she was writing. A little after nine, Puppy got a hold of me and wanted me to help him go over some German for a test he was having today. I reminded him that I don't know German, but to come over and I would help him however I could. So he came over and the three of us sat here and had a good time. Around 11, Puppy decided that he was hungry and I wanted a milkshake. I convinced Zhin that she should come with us and we went to the Diner which is cafeteria food but it's open 24/7. Oh and they have really good milkshakes among other things. So we walked across campus and got our stuff and then we walked back and said goodnight. It was a really fun time. This is another example of reasons why College is great. More of that random hanging out stuff.

In Russian, we're watching a movie called Brat or Brother in English. It's a pretty good ganster movie, but my teacher decided that it would be really fun to pile on the homework for that class over the weekend. Not only that, but I have a test in "We Come From Monkeys" on Monday and several other assignments and things for other classes. Needless to say school-wise I'm pretty stressed out at the moment. I did find out that there's going to be a Russian Movie night on Monday. I'm pretty excited and definitely planning on going.

Other than that, I don't really know what else to say. Russia's been in the news a lot lately. Seems, they've been making deals with Venezuela about Nuclear Energy and working with the United States on keeping Iran's Nuclear Energy under control. It's something I'm going to have to keep my eye on over the next several days.

Medvedev On Georgia

2008-09-24T14:30:00.001-04:00

Several days ago, I came across This article in which the president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, comments on the Russia-Georgia conflict. I encourage you all to take a look at the article. While I don't agree with everything that he says, I personally thought that Medvedev had some very interesting points. In particular all of the things relating to prejudices that the United States has against Russia because of the Cold War. Let me quote a few things.

" In a put-down to Miss Rice, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the military of the USSR, he said: "The world needs fewer Sovietologists and more experts on Russia." "

Personally, I agree with this statement. Many people here in the States still think that Russia is still a communist country that is still out to get us. While I don't know all of the things going on in either government I know that many of America's views of Russia, many of the sterotypes are wrong. I also found this particularly interesting:

" "Some think that not only are we the legal successor to the USSR, but we are also the ideological heirs. This is simply not true. We have a completely different set of values." When Russia offers mediation or peace-keeping, its motives should not be called into question. "We have no messianic ideals." "

This is also a good point. I've felt for a while that one of the main reasons relations between Russia and the United States are not as they should be, is because there is a trust issue. Neither country really trusts the other.

And that is my little view of the political world for the day.

What College is About

2008-09-24T14:12:00.001-04:00

I'm settling in nicely. I feel like I actually have friends now. Actually, to tell you the truth it's only been the last week or so that I really feel like I've got people. Some of them are closer than others, but you'll have that. I've got a group of people I talk to in Comparing Governments, I've got people in The Sisterhood, which is a women's service organization I've joined, and then there's my dance class. The people in these places I primarily interact with in said setting. I might say hi to them if I see them "out of context" but I don't usually hang out with them otherwise.

I do have some tighter friends and I'll get to them in a minute but first I want to tell you one amazing thing about college. The randomness. An aquaintance of mine who I met during Orientation week was having a game night. I wasn't going to go, but I felt like I needed to get out of my dorm room for a while. So I went, and had a good time. Played Mafia and Uno attack, and then a few of us went to the field behind the dorm and played hide and seek followed by a discussion that covered everything from politics to religion to cheese whiz and ended up in me not getting to bed until like 2 a.m. It was a really good evening. I love that about college. How people are on generally the same level and you can just hang out randomly with people. College, the great equilizer.

Now, on to my friends. I figured I might as well tell you about the people I hang out with on a fairly regular basis since I might be mentioning them again.

The first is Zhin I met her randomly during Orientation week. SPU had all the freshmen read a book and then they showed the movie version of it. I wanted to see the movie version but at the time couldn't get anyone to go with me. So I went by myself and plopped down in the middle of the theater where I'd have a good view. A few minutes later, this girl comes by and asks me if the seat is taken. I say no and she sits down and we begin to chat. It takes us about thirty seconds to realize that we're both in the honors program and that our dorm rooms are pretty close to each other. Pretty cool. So we watch the movie and walk back and go on with life. Except I kept running into her. I stopped eating at one of the main cafeterias because it was too crowded and started going to a smaller one, where I happened to run into her. So we ate dinner together and I invited her to join our dance class. From there, we just kind of eased on into the friendship. Probably the major turning point was the one night after dance, we had a "study party" we didn't get much studying done, be we got to talking and had a good time. Zhin and I usually meet for dinner at that little cafeteria twice a week and we are actually planning on hanging out some this weekend since we're both staying on campus.

I met Puppy through a girl I'd met who is taking Russian here. She and Puppy had both participated in a summer language academy that SPU has for high school students and they are now taking Russian here. Puppy and I exchanged phone numbers and he is now my "I feel like doing random things at random times" friend. He's into languages and though German is his main thing, he doesn't mind when I sit and randomly speak Russian to him and he'll speak it back. He also doesn't seem to mind my constant references to what life in Russia is like.

As I mentioned above, there are other people I talk to and interact with on a regular basis, but these are the ones who are closest at the moment. Even though I get frustrated with college at times, I really do enjoy meeting new people and learning new things. Both inside the classroom and out.

Downfall

2008-09-20T16:30:00.002-04:00

I should be studying which is what my life is now that I've started college, but I'm home this weekend and felt like telling you about a movie I saw yesterday before I hit the books.

Downfall is the story of the last ten days of the Third Reich from the point of view of Hitler's secretary. It's a German made movie and is therefore all in German, so you'll be reading subtitles, but it's definitely worth seeing. They've done a really good job portraying the mood that hung over Hitler and those closest to him during the final days of Hitler's reign. You get a sense of how hopeless the situation was. The movie is a little scary because it brings the end of the war to life in very vivid detail. I definitely reccomend that you see this movie.

Housecleaning

2008-09-20T15:09:00.004-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, I've been playing with the template, fonts, and so on. I figured that since I hadn't really updated the look of the blog since I started it in 2005, it was about time that I did, so please just bear with me as I'll be playing with various things over probably the next couple of weeks until I decide on something I like. Do not worry, neither the quality nor the Frequency of my posts will be affected by this. It's just something I feel I need to do. Need something different for a while.