Saying Stras-voo-cha to Babooshkas

Stras-voo-cha! (Hello in English!)

I can hardly believe I'm here in Krasnoyarsk, southern Siberia! God is good and has answered many of our prayers! All of our flights were on time and there wasn't much turbulance at all. Our landing in Moscow was a bit bumpy... it may have been the tarmack! We had just enough time to get from one plane to the next (the longest we waited for our flight was 45 mins in Frankfurt.) When we arrived in Moscow, we made our way through Customs without any problems or questions. We walked over to the luggage carosel and there was every single piece of our luggage! James Lesheid and Chad (SEND missionaries based in Krasnoyarsk) were waiting at the airport with taxis to take us to the domestic terminal 20 minutes away. They were flying with us back to Krasnoyarsk. We were so grateful that they were there to translate for us and help us get all of our luggage through security and the ticket agent. Our luggage was very overweight, even with Chad and James taking some of the baggage themselves. We ended up only paying 1/3 of the overweight costs.

We arrived at Krasnoyarsk airport Saturday morning at 6:00 and walked across the tarmack in -20 degree weather to meet Pasha, Paul and Molly. They had woke up early to come and pick all of us up at the airport. Along the way, some of us were able to sleep on the flights, but we as a team decided to try and stay awake until 9 pm Saturday evening, so we could get our bodies in sinc with Krasnoyarsk time. Janelle and Coralie only lasted until 6:30 pm, who both slept through the night and have been sleeping well ever since. Us guys have been waking up earlier than normal (2,3,4 am), so we're hoping our bodies adjust quickly.

Sunday morning we went to a Baptist church. James Lescheid sat behind us and translated parts of the service/sermon for us. I enjoyed the time of testimony/sharing. People of the congregation shared answers to prayer from the week. It was also Mother's Day here in Russia, so a lady from the congregation receited a lengthy poem. She was very expressive, so we "felt" and understood the meaning of the poem that way. At the very end of the service, our team was introduced and we sang "It Is Well" for the congregation. We then experienced Russian hospitality... the babooshkas pushed us guys straight to the front of the food line and made sure we had chai (tea) and sweets in our hands at all times!

Monday and Tuesday we've had time set aside to practice our material with Olga our translator. She is an amazing lady, only 2 months younger than myself. We've already begun to alter scripts to fit with Russian culture, and we've been relearning parts of our Russian songs. We've realized that we have a lot of work to do before we do our first 2 programs on Wednesday. We are very fortunate to have James L and Olga travelling with us for our entire time here in the Krasnoyarsk area. They are great resources!!

Well, our bedtime is drawing near. Janelle and Coralie will need to be alert tomorrow morning as they try out the Krasnoyarsk bus system on their own for the first time tomorrow. They're coming to the guys apartment on their own...CRAZY!

Prayer Requests from the team:
1. Adjusting and recovering from jet leg
2. School Programs - know who to talk to about coming into the schools and how to communicate gospel truths/virtues
3. Language understanding & learning of culture
4. Creative use of time as we will be travelling a lot and doing numerous programs

Spech-on-eh-noy-che (good night!)

YAY!!

HI EVERYONE!
I have now crossed the Prime Merridian!! Your today is my yesterday!! I made it to Krasnoyarsk!! Safe and sound!
More updates to come!!
Thanks for your prayers!

The Journey Begins!

Hello my faithful friends!
I will have some pictures on here soon of my last week of the training I had at VTI. Now, I am actually flying! I departed from the Calgary airport at 5:45 pm. I should arrive in Moscow some time on Saturday. CRAZY!! How am I posting this message while I am airborn? EAZY!! I have a lovely fiance who I can now get to do my dirty work...or...uhhh...who can help me out in that area! -_^ (I love you K!)
More updates to come...
Talk to you later.

There and Back again...

Well, we had a good trip. We left the training centre here about 2 weeks ago and traveled to Okatoks, Calgary, then to Prince Albert, then Nipawin. After that we went to Drumheller and Bysiker…I don’t know how to spell that… ;)

Here are some of the highlights!
Okatoks: This was a youth event, and our very first program on fall tour. We had a lot of issues with this program… Heh, the projector turned off in the middle of the songs… the laptop froze on a video…we did a song we hadn’t practiced because of a lack of communication… But anyways, everything DID work out really well. We stayed at Dan Schroeder’s place…(He’s the youth pastor). It was a great time being there as they are very very missions minded. It was really great.

Calgary: - Here we did a children’s program in Foothills Alliance Church. That is a BIG church… wowee! We stayed at the Good’s house…Melissa Good was on Karina’s team 2 years ago…
The next day we went to Rhys’ church. They meet in a community hall and it was great to see all the different cultures and peoples that met there. It’s a very ‘cultured’ church :D…This was also the first day I spoke a sermon on tour… that was scary… heh.
Oh, I had forgotten to mention. While we were there, we had a big snowstorm. So we had to drive real slow as to make sure we didn’t run over anyone. It’s absolutely crazy…the weather here in Calgary area. Weird.

After Calgary we did the … 8 hour drive I think it is, back to Prince Albert. It gave us time to listen to some of the Chronicles of Narina by C.S. Lewis on CD. That was fun. 

Prince Albert: It was great to be home again. All the guys were staying at my place and it was fun to hang out there. lol, Mom kept spoiling us there... lol, I was always full. It can get really hard to eat all the time!

While we were there we were able to tour NCEM, Northern Canada Evangelical Mission. Dad works there doing a lot of camera and computer work for Tribal Trails...come to think of it, Mom does a good deal of work there too.
Anyways, at NCEM we met up with Tim Gradin, Karina's father. He did an overview of prison ministy and the missionary work with Native people. He's the one who took us to both prisons. heh, he had previously joked about taking me to jail... ;D Mrs. R, (Howard Rensberry's wife) took us into the woman's jail. It was a really humbling experience. We did three programs in the ladies jail and 1 in the mens. They were all very well behaved and particularily attentive in the men's jail. It was a real great time we had to be with them.
On Friday we had a youth program at the Community Bible church...(Karina's church) It was fun and it was great to see so many new and old faces. There were several other groups who came out too. That was real fun. :)

Nipawin: After leaving PA, we arrived in Nipawin, my other home. We spent several days there and I was glad to hang out with Grandma and with all my classmates from last year who were attending again. There were some new people there that I knew, and some that I was able to meet for the first time. It was great! :D It was hard to leave both Nipawin and PA...

lol, on the way back to Alberta, we got ourselves lost and it probably delayed us almost a half hour. What was interesting though was that was what God had wanted for us. We showed up just in time to help a couple vehicles that had ended up in the ditch. There was ice all across the road. One huge layer. It was absolutely awful to drive on. Anyways, it was a great adventure to push out these people.


I'm running out of time... so I'll just say, ALberta was good! We had a few programs in different places for all ages and it was a real blessing to be there. We found that when we don't tape our programs we do them consistantly very well... whenever we tape them, something goes wrong. O.o Wierd.
At Coralie's place they celebrated all our team's birthday's this month. That's Coralie, Janelle and myself. It was great to be a part of another person's family get together.

And now we're home...my third home. VTI. Keep praying that God will move in the people the different places we go...and beyond for that matter. Consistanly we saw God move. It was incredible. People everywhere are so thirsty for something more than what they can get from tradition or religon...or attending church all the time. We want to go to these places to let God refresh them and revive them to do the tasks that He's given to them.
Keep on praying! God is doing amazing things!!!
Take care everyone! Go in God's grace!
~J

WE BE BACK!

We made it home... I'll fill you in on the details later!

It all started when...

Bryce found his sock that was lost but now was found...and there was much rejoicing...on his part anyways ;)
We finally made the tour to PA a few days ago... and today we are leaving again...:( We had a couple prisons that we did programs in and both went really well...Better than even our host Tim Gradin, Karina's dad, had anticipated. We had a really good time with all that and then we finished off last night with a youth event at Karina's church, the Community Bible Church. There were near 80 people and it was a great time. We were all very drained and fatigued, but the Adrenaline got us through. Don't worry we had a great sleep! :) I'm up a little earlier than some of the guys today though. I wanted to send this before we head out to Nipawin today.
Keep praying that God will do amazing things in the hearts and llves of people as we're going. I'm real excited to see what He'll do.
Take care everyone! Oh, and get this! The two girls and myself have our birthdays in November! Crazy!
Have a good one!
Go in the Grace and Peace of the Father
~J