Pirates, Bible Study & Cold Feet

Avast, Mateys!  

Today is one of me favorite days...it's International Talk Like A Pirate Day.  (Don't believe me?  Check out www.talklikeapirate.com )  However, I for the sake of this blog I will keep my pirate talk down to a minimum.  

Kellye is outside of Moscow for a few days with the teachers from Hinkson during their annual staff retreat and that left the English Club teaching duties to me last night.  So guess what the theme for last night's lesson was?  You guessed it....pirates!  We watched a few sections from Muppet Treasure Island, learned some pirate vocabulary, and created a comic strip about pirate life.  But the best part of the day actually came this morning when I received an email from one of our students written entirely in pirate-speak.  Now, how cool is that??

Bible Study Update

In my last post I wrote about our attempt to move people from English Club to Bible study and I am pleased to report that we had one of our students show up the following Sunday.  He had never read the Bible before, so I gave him one (an NIV Study Bible that had been translated into Russian) and we started with the basics.  "The Bible is divided into two sections.  It contains 66 different books, etc."  After which, we started to read the Gospel of Mark together.  We have been reading a chapter a day and then discussing on Sundays.  And, last week the student who came brought his younger brother with him.  So, just like English Club we started with one person, then went to two.  And, in the near future, I am hoping that we will continue to expand and have more and more people coming to our home on Sunday's to study the Bible.  One of the things that we, as a team, have adopted as one of our core beliefs is that "The Word of God is the change agent in people's lives."  While I considered using some books, study guides and other tools, I have to believe that if we really put stock into this statement that spending time reading and talking about God's word with lost people will result in life-changing faith.  So, that is exactly what we are doing.  Is it church?  No.  But it is the first steps of exposing a group of people with no religious background and no knowledge of God's word toward finding out the special purpose God has for their lives.

Please continue to be in prayer for these two special men.  Pray that the Word of God will penetrate their hearts and minds and that the Holy Spirit will draw them to Himself.  Pray also for Kellye and I as we lead these discussions and teach.  Sometimes explaining Biblical concepts can be difficult enough in your own heart language, but even harder in a language that you are learning.  (Our lessons are a strange mixture of Russian and English and sometimes there is a dash of German thrown in.)  Pray also that as these men study that they will feel led to bring their friends with them so that we may study together.

Cold feet!

No, I am not nervous or scared.  My feet are quite literally cold!  The weather really took a turn last week and the temps dropped and the rain and wind moved in.  Everybody in the house got sick and Kellye and I are still coughing and have runny noses all day long.  (Nice visual, huh?)  Even though it is a little warmer this week (low 50s), this is still my least favorite time of year in Moscow.  Usually once the snow starts there is a strange sense of warmth about the snow, even when the wind is blowing.  Ugh, but the rain, now that is another story.  It seems that no matter what you wear you always feel cold and wet.  And on a related matter, I think I am going to write a book called "Moving to Moscow: What they don't tell you in the brochure."  One of the first chapters will be called "A thermostat?  What is that?"   If you didn't know before, now you will know that the heat inside all buildings  is controlled by the government and no matter what the weather is, it only operates from November 1 to March 1.  Not only does the government control the heat, they control the temperature, so you can usually count on the inside temperature being anywhere from 80-100 degrees.  I only wish I was exaggerating for effect.  Chapter two will be called "What do you mean I have to take a cold shower?"  Another quirk about living here is that  the government (remember the guys who control the heat?) also controls the hot water.  And, in the summer months they do maintenance on the city's hot water system.  So for around two weeks (if your are lucky) each summer there is no hot water available in your apartment.  Fortunately for us, our landlady installed a contact water heater for the shower, but that still does not help with things like washing clothes and dishes.

There are more chapters to the book (those of you who are hoping to visit or live here will have to stay tuned for more), but right now my feet are so cold I cannot remember what else I was gonna write about.

Next weekend is the big Cub Scout father/son camp-out, so my blog will be delayed by a few days, but I suspect that it will be chock-full of John-John stories.  Speaking of which, Long John Hooks (his pirate name) is waiting for the Captain to make his way to the galley and fix him some pizza and grog 'else I may have a mutiny on my hands and have to walk the plank!

Arrrrrrr!