I thought I posted this August 20... sorry

Traveling
I had several God-arranged meetings on the plane. The first person to sit next to me was a trustee of Kutztown University, who was interested in the work my dad is doing there (trying to start a chapter of Men Against Sexual Violence) and gave me a business card for him.
My second neighbor was an Egyptian who was returning to Egypt for his sister’s wedding. He told me he was a Christian and had fled to the United States because he was receiving threats if he did not convert to Islam. I was just reading the prophecy in Isaiah about Egypt turning to the Lord, so I showed it to him, and he said, "Yes, that’s what we were for nine hundred years." His Christianity was a beautiful tradition from his family and from Egypt’s past, and he was willing to suffer rather than give it up. But he couldn’t seem to understand why, when I could live in America, I would choose to go to Russia, where it’s economically harder and more dangerous.
Plans
Marina and Katya picked me up at the airport around 1:30 pm. Katya is one of the three girls, the only one who lived with Vera and Volodya at this home last year. The two new girls are at camp and Katya hasn’t met them yet. The two little boys are at their grandmother’s while we work on remodeling this apartment. On Monday Vera and Volodya will take a 5-day trip to get the boys (it’s a two-day drive ) and Katya will do go to camp, and I will spend five days at the other transition home with the American couple, Pam and Gary, and the three girls with them.
The Apartment
The kitchen isn’t done yet so we have only a stove. No refrigerator, so we buy one day’s food at a time. The bathroom’s done so we have a nice shower. So far the weather’s been very, very hot, which I wasn’t expecting at all. They are actually looking forward to the imminent cold.
We’re on the fifth floor, no elevator. They apologized a lot for that, but I’m enjoying it so far: I don’t have to carve out time to exercise. It’s a nice apartment. I’m to have my own room, but move around for a few days as we move from room to room painting them. We’re trying to get it all done before school begins the beginning of September, so I’m told the schedule is stay up late (12-1:00 am) to paint after Volodya gets home from work in the evening, and sleep later in proportion, and when school starts "we will have a regime then."
Shopping
We have an IKEA and spent all day Saturday there buying furniture for our finished rooms. All the beds are fold-out couches to safe space in the daytime. We have a Wal-Mart type store too, so there is very little I can’t get here.
The Program
Marina tuns three apartments in St. Petersburg, 2 for girls and one for boys:
-me, Vera, and Volodya, Katya, and two new girls coming
-Lucia, an American couple named Gary and Pam who’ve been here since May, and four girls
-Kolya and his family already have a boy named Misha, and an American student named Max is coming in September to help. They have two new boys coming.
On Friday night the workers of all three met together. It was an incredibly encouraging and eye-opening time. Everyone gave a testimony of what brought them here and what advice they had learned, and it’s so much bigger than me. People in America make such a big deal about me coming here, but for Vera and Volodya and Lucia and Marina, it’s their normal lives, and without any glory they’re doing this, just because they love Jesus, not because any American told them to or paid them to.
And they love long and hard; they said Katya resisted them for her entire first year and only softened this summer. "She knows how difficult she is," Vera said, "and everybody before us has given up on her. She was waiting for us to, and we didn’t. Especially for Volodya; she had no respect for him for a year, because she had no good opinion of men. I kept telling her, ‘He is my husband and the head of this family and I respect him.’ Now she says if she has to have a husband to have children, she wants him to be like Volodya. She’ll do anything he says."
Misha had an apartment from the government, and the mafia was trying to get him to sell it to them, with promises and threats. Apparently the government gave apartments in a brand-new building to many orphans and put it on TV, and now the mafia is going after them. Marina says 70% are no longer in their apartments.
Gary and Pam are spending two years here, and then going to do the same thing long-term in Siberia.
Extended Family
Vera’s sister, Tanya, is pregnant and in the hospital waiting for a C-Section, and her other sister, Nadia, is visiting us for two weeks to help out. She is my idea of the real Russian woman, the best of Russia. She arrived on an overnight train ride and wasn’t tired walking around IKEA all day afterwards, she built her own banya and grows her own vegetables and loves to feed everybody and take care of everybody.
Church
On Sunday I went to Vera and Volodya’s church. It meets in a conference building, and is about twice the size of our little church at home. It’s casual and has loud electric guitars and all ages. Both the pastor and his wife shared messages. It went from 11-1:30. People came in late at all times up to half-way through the service.
They have an emphasis on blessing things. Before they dismissed the children they had the whole congregation bless them. Beslan is still on their minds; there was a great deal of prayer for and about Muslims connected with the children. We also blessed the service, and the upcoming camp Katya’s attending, and the two people who came forward when there was an invitation to believe. I liked how they did that; those people who prayed were then asked to introduce themselves, given a Bible and a book, and then the pastor asked who’d brought them and instructed that person to make sure they met the others after the service – it was about not just joining with Christ, but His people as well.
My Role
I told Vera I’m afraid of being yet another child for her to take care of, since I really don’t know much about "independent life skills" in Russia. She said that was fine with her because an example of a respectful and cooperative girl would be invaluable. I was really praying about my online college course because I didn’t want it to take away from the family that I had to spend time studying. Vera said I had already impressed Katya that I wanted to study and would do so in summer and of my own volition, and she was glad. I was amazed that God used the thing I was most afraid of being unhelpful as the first thing that helped!
We are all to cook once a week. This is scaring me the most right now; I haven’t cooked much since I was 14, let alone without an English cookbook or familiar ingredients, on a gas stove that you light with a match and an oven with just one setting, for 7 people, in metric measurements… pray about this one.
After the redecorating is over, we’ll have evening devotions again (right now we have them in the morning without Vova) and she wants me to lead every other one, and lead in singing once a week – they have a guitar. And especially, she wants me to go with the girls to the church’s youth group "so they connect to the life of the church" and she hasn’t been able to do this well since she can’t join the youth group herself.
People I am hanging out with and will be referring to, so you can keep them straight! : )
Volodya/Vova – husband at my apartment
Vera – wife at my apartment
Nickita – 6-year-old son of Vera and Volodya
Sasha – 3-year old son of Vera and Volodya
Tanya 1 – Vera’s sister
Kirill – Tanya’s husband
Nadia – Vera and Tanya’s other sister, who lives south of Moscow
Marina – director of the program
Lucia – head of the other girls’ apartment
Gary and Pam – American couple at Lucia’s apartment
Katya – girl at our apartment
Natasha – girl at our apartment last year, now engaged
Tanya 2 – new girl soon coming to our apartment
Nelly – girl who was at our apartment last year
Liza – Nelly’s twin sister, who was at Lucia’s last year
Lyuda – girl who works and lives in a dormitory, and spends half her time at Lyuda’s
Little Marina – the newest girl at Lucia’s
Katya – girl at Lucia’s on her second year
Gulya – 12 year old girl who stayed with my family this summer in the states
Sasha and Olya – pastor and his wife who take in Gulya every weekend
Galina – orphanage worker who came to Christ while escorting Gulya to America
Excursion to visit Deaf Orphans at Camp
On Monday the 20 Lucia took me, Gary, Little Marina and Misha to a camp where six deaf orphans are staying. They are adorable. They communicate with sign language to each other, and can do some lip reading of us. I got them to teach me my name in their sign alphabet. One of them has an American woman who sought to adopt her, but the Russian caretaker believes the Americans want her for body parts and won’t let her go. The woman brings her clothes and shoes, and she calls her "mother." The rest had shoes with holes and asked us to bring some, so we wrote down their sizes.
This camp is north of the city even farther than the one I was at with my dad last summer; it took a total combination of four buses and two trains to get there and back. One train was delayed for an hour and a half; we sat on the platform eating sunflower seeds and I heard Lucia’s story. So we left at 11 am and returned at 8 pm, getting one hour with the kids and a lot of experience on public transportation!
Amazing stories:
Lucia
I have one brother – he works at camp; he also loves children. My mother died when I was fifteen; then I had no one. She was an alcoholic and we were very poor. I lived on the street. I begged, washed cars, collected bottles. I know the street children’s world. Each one has a place to beg and you have to pay for this place. Everyone has a leader.
When I was nine I went into the church, and the pastor and his wife there became parents for me. My mother came to the church with me. She repented and threw away her drink. But then she became very sick, and couldn’t walk. We prayed and the Lord healed her and she stood up again. She started a group for alcoholics in our home, for all her old friends.
But after one month she grew sick again and died. I was fifteen. Again I went out on the street; I sang songs, I gathered bottles. I prayed, "God if I just had some money we could buy food and some furniture" – we had no bed and slept on the floor - "and then I will serve you all my life and help the children who are like I was." I started to work as a counselor at an orphanage; I stayed there at night and in the daytime I studied at the university - my brother never saw me at home! Then Marina met me and invited me to run a transitional home. I couldn’t believe I could be mama or big sister to the girls. That was when I was nineteen and now I’m 24.
Little Marina
Lucia tells me Marina comes from a smaller orphanage with a family-like setting, a kitchen together, etc. "The only thing is, they lock the children in. They don’t let them go anywhere unless they can say where and why, and every day they are told ‘you are too stupid to go out and to use the metro.’ Marina is 20 but she is like 8." I wouldn’t say she is that young. She’s very sweet and has amazing faith. When I met her she was returning from a sleepover at her friend’s, and had been crying. Gary said she always cries when she parts from her friend; that her life is so insecure she is never sure she’ll see her friend again. He also told me,
"The story of how we got her is amazing. Lucia went to pick her up at camp, but she arrived a few days later than they’d planned. When she opened the door Marina was sitting in a room with other children saying, ‘There IS a God and somebody does want me and she is coming for me, there IS a God and somebody loves me.’ At this moment Lucia was opening the door, so Marina turned around and said, ‘See, I told you! Here she is!’