Updates of One Sort or Another

I (Jason) was invited to go with Samir and Nick to the local museum the other day. I was very glad to spend some more time with them. They were my personal tour guides through the museum. I can't say that I retained everything I learned, but I am inspired to do a little more research on the history of this region.

We continue to pray for the Baptist church we attend here. They have decided to move forward with the "40 Days of Purpose" program! So there is a group of brothers in the church reading and praying daily and meeting regularly for prayer. Just this morning at church many were encouraged by a brother who spoke the importance of sharing the Good News with those we know. I am encouraged in seeing the desire to see God move in their lives!

This past week I have been reading the university's newspapers at home and reviewing them with our Russian teacher, Irina. This has been both challenging and encouraging for me. Our language learning is progressing steadily and I was encouraged this morning at church to have several conversations in Russian which seemed to go well.

Another encouraging note is that our next door neighbor, Lyuda, knocked on our door today to ask for help with her son's English homework. We helped her understand the meaning of "You and I are thru. And so are our fake fun times" (or something like that). She does pretty well with English herself, but language can be really weird sometimes. Thru won't show up in a lot of dictionaries and even if it does, it probably wouldn't help anyone understand that sentence at all. We were very glad she asked for our help, and she told us to ask in return if we ever needed any! As we closed the door Havah stood waving and saying, "Dassi dani!" (da svidanya) : )