A lot of catching up to do

They say that you start to slow down once you hit 40, so that is the excuse I am using for not posting since my birthday a couple of weeks ago. The truth of the matter is that part of the reason I have not written is that I have been pretty busy over the past couple of weeks. The other half of the reason is that nothing of consequence has really happened and therefore there is not much to write about. However, at the prodding of my family I am going to attempt to bring you up to speed on the not-so-exciting adventures of daily life in Moscow.


Let's start with my birthday. My wonderful wife, Kellye, went above and beyond to make this a special birthday for me. As you can imagine, living the missionary life does not leave you with a lot of money in your bank account for extravagant birthday gifts. So Kellye took this opportunity to make this a memorable birthday not with the expense of the gifts, but for the sentiment. At a dinner party with our Moscow missionary family, Kellye presented me with a scrapbook filled with letters from friends and family around the world wishing me a happy birthday. Many of you who read this blog contributed to the book and it was truly wonderful. I heard from friends that I have not seen in over 15 years as well as missionary friends from around the world. Those of you who know me well know that I am a "weeper" so it should be no surprise to you that as I read greetings from these important people I had tears streaming down my cheeks. In addition, Kellye's parents sent a truly amazing quilt made from t-shirts I have collected for 20 years. There were shirts from Oklahoma Baptist University, from radio stations where I have worked, from t-shirt logos that I designed and a variety of other memorable times in my life. It is really cool and very special. During English Club that week we had another party to celebrate my 40th and my students wrote acrostic poems using the letters in my name to describe me. Also very special. They also were very generous and gave me a few gifts, including a t-shirt with the Russian flag on it.

Our language lessons continue. And, while they can be very frustrating some days, I feel like we are starting to have some degree of success with the language. We even felt comfortable enough with our language skills that we returned a DVD to a store the day after we bought it because it was not working properly. And, while we did not get our money back, we did get them to let us choose another movie. All in all, a language success.

Our "new" clothes dryer that Kellye has been so excited about died a week after we got it. We are currently waiting for a service man to come out and tell us if it can be revived or not. Until then it is back to crunchy jeans and underwear from the drying rack.

I am about two weeks away from transitioning from the Moscow Arts Team to the Russia Field Administration Team. What does this really mean? It means that after nine months on the field I will finally get to start doing the things I came here to do. I will start working on media projects, traveling the country, and creating media pieces which will hopefully draw new missionaries to the field. It also means that I will spend more language learning time in OJT and less in the classroom and I am looking forward to that.

As Kellye has mentioned in her blogs, we have a lot of people from Moscow who are moving back to the States. Some are going just for the summer, some for a year and some for longer. While this is difficult, we are celebrating that God has brought friends from St. Petersburg to Moscow to live and our children are already becoming fast friends. Tomorrow is movie night at our house and we will have a full house as we watch Horton. We have also started a weekly Phase 10 night with friends and this is one of the highlights of my week.

Many of you have joined us in prayer as we were presented with the opportunity to host and facilitate a Bible Study/Church for Russians in our home. We have felt God's leading in this matter so this week we will start meeting with the existing group and three weeks from now we will officially move the group to our home. We are excited about this because it will be yet another opportunity to share our faith in a very real way. And, having the group in our home will also make it easier for us to invite those attending our English Club to our Bible study. Please continue to make this a matter of prayer.

Whew! So, that about sums it up. A lot of activity, but not much else to say. Life here continues to be interesting. There are good days and bad, but the days we want to get the suitcases out and come home have all but disappeared. I still don't like Russian food, but am starting to look like "an olive on a toothpick" because Kellye keeps my belly nice and fat with her great cooking and my legs are getting skinnier and skinnier from all the walking we do each week.

Know that we love each of you and enjoy hearing from you.

Blessings,
Marc

PS- Each Saturday we write a prayer letter update from the past week that is sent to the leadership of our partner churches. Some of you have expressed interest in getting this letter so we have started posting our weekly letters on a different blog site. The address is: www.hooksworldprayer.blogspot.com Please feel free to share this address or print these updates and share them with your Sunday School classes, WMU groups, etc.

Also, if you would like to read stories about how people in Russia are finding saving faith in Jesus Christ, you can read our new newsletter "Blessings 4 Every Heart." It can be found at www.hope4russia.org/blessing or you can subscribe to the weekly email by filling out the form in the top left of the page.