Switch to new blog

I am going back to Russia this summer, 2009. Due to difficulties with this blog I am now blogging at http://blogspot.elizarussia.com,(just elizarussia instead of elizarus).

I'm Back!

I arrived home at 8 something pm on Saturday evening.

There were two short-term missionaries, Nancy and Dave, staying at our apartment for two weeks and leaving at the same time I was, so Vova drove as all to the airport at 4 am. Nancy and I stayed up to sleep on the plane. My first flight, to Munich, there was nobody next to me and I slept.

My second flight there was a woman next to me and I asked her "do you speak English" and she said, "no." So I figured she was German. Except when all the German flight attendants came by she just pointed, so I didn't know what she was. She pulled out a magazine with some Russian letters, though it wasn't Russian, and I asked, "Russki?" and she said, "No, Bulgarski." Then they gave us customs declarations form and she asked me if I could write it for her, and the Bulgarian word for "write" was the same as the Russian. She gave me her passport and a letter from her daughter explaining that her mother was traveling to visit her in Florida and what kind of visa she had and etc. Of course the customs form wanted to know the value of her property and whether she was bringing livestock and other intersesting questions that I just guessed on. She understood the Russian word "money" and "birth day" and I felt very smart that I could speak Bulgarian too, ha ha.

In Chicago I made my first purchase with American money in 3.5 monthes. I got dried mango - isn't that random? It was snowing but we boarded on time and then waited over an hour for freezing rain and I figured my parents were panicking but there was nothing I could do to tell them so I went to sleep. The captain was coming on saying "thank you for your patience, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature," so I just said, "Father... you know better than that. Please get me home." And He did.

At home I have been in this time warp, it's so weird. They left my dresser untouched and on the top of it was my last minute packing list to leave for Russia! I noticed everything that is different in the house since August 16 - "oh, you got a new frying pan!" and they're like, "we did?"

I think the biggest shock was how differently they responded to gifts then the orphans like Katya that I'd been getting used to. On my last week I took Katya and developed 50 of the photos she'd taken of herself on my laptop so she'd have them, which she really really wanted, and then we went to another movie. My last night I asked Vera, "Katya has been nice to me for over a week now - is it because she knows she's getting rid of me?" Vera said, "You developed her pictures and took her to a movie, you could live here in peace for another year. You've showed her that she matters to you. It's the psychology of children without a mother. They have no security inside and you have to prove that you care about them, because nobody needs them. Now that you have, she'll stand up for you if anyone speaks against you." Katya had even said, when returning my earrings, "I wish you wouldn't leave, who will I borrow earrings from?" and when I bought Kristina a birthday present, "I wish you would be here until my birthday!" I was glad of what Vera said because sometimes it felt like buying love. Gulia too, I would wonder if she loved me or just my things. Katya did also say however that she wants me to visit when she has her own place someday, and she wants me to email her.

Then I had bought all sorts of presents and souvenirs for my family, and they didn't even want to open my suitcase! My sisters pinned me down on the sofa and said, "give us presents later, first we just want to talk to you and hug you and kiss you and see that you're real!" I'm thinking, you love me just for who I am without giving you anything? and then, why is that so strange and amazing to me now?

Then I was talking to my mother and I said something like, "I'm getting a drink of water would you tozhe like some?" and she said "what?" and I said "also, also also! would you also like some? I can't believe I said that!" And when I was alone with my dog I started speaking Russian to him.

For my first breakfast I couldn't pick what kind of cereal. I ended up eating three little bowls instead of one big one so I could have all of them. My sisters thought I was nuts.

I can still drive, praise the Lord.

I feel very loved.

Victories in Russian

I have achieved some amazing skills right before going home where I no longer need them. An American named Dave is here helping us finish the apartment repairs, and he wanted to buy fabric softener and a special instrument to remove the wallpaper. He explained the instrument as "a roller with spikes to punch holes in the wallpaper." Complicated enough in English, and I didn't know the word for either roller or spikes.

I told Vera, "Dave wants a liquid that you put in laundry to make it soft" and she understood that, phew. They sent me and Max, who has had one semester of Russia, to the little "home products" store to buy fabric softener, see if they had a spiked roller, and if not, ask where we could find one. Which means we'd have to ask for directions, understand them, and follow them.

The conversation between me and Max was something like this:

"Well, those bottles with kittens and babies on them are definitely fabric softener. Which one do we want?"

"Probably the strongest, since we're trying to destroy wallpaper."

"I'd guess the one without pictures of kittens and babies is the strongest."

"But if it doesn't have kittens and babies, it might not be fabric softener. I think it's floor cleaner."

"OK then, kittens or babies?"

"Kittens are cheaper, let's go kittens."

I ask the woman for a bottle of that stuff on the far left. Success one.

Then we look around. There are only sponge paint rollers and one roller in a box.

"Maybe that has spikes on it. Let's ask if we can see inside the box," suggests Max.

"I'm almost positive that is a roller for shoe polish, because everything else in the case with it is shoe polish." We laugh at how Dave would like rolling shoe polish all over the wall.

"OK, here's my strategy. I'm going to read on those paint rollers what the word for 'roller' is. Then when we go to the other store, I'll be able to ask for 'a roller with sharp things on it.'" I figured it would be whatever word that all the paint rollers had in common. But I couldn't see them close enough (these little stores keep everything behind the counter so that foreigners have to learn how to say the word for everything before they can have it).

I asked the woman in Russian if she knew where they sold instruments for removing wallpaper. She said if we turned right, there was a shop just around the corner called something very difficult like "mstrOKE." I kept repeating this sound as we went around the corner, hoping I'd recognize it. I couldn't picture how it would be written. I had this nagging feeling that it was the Russian pronounciation of something in English."Do you remember what the store was called?" "something 'oak' - sorry I wasn't listening."

The sign around the corner said "Master OK." Then we laughed. "Oh, it's 'master' and 'OK'!" "Stupid Russian lady," said Max kindly.

Inside I saw clearly printed that a roller was a "rolik." I asked for a rolik with teeth to take off wallpaper. The man said he had roliks with teeth for doing something else I did not understand, and we said that would be fine. We took a beautiful spiked metal roller and a bottle with kittens on it home, where Dave said they worked better than anything he had in America.

I am so amazing.

back from Moscow

I had a wonderful time and visited a lot of museums with my friend Katya. The work there is going gangbusters with English club, Spanish club, the Alpha Course, and a church plant. I definitely miss that place.

praise about Katya

On the vacation Vera and I discussed my doing something with Katya and we went to the aquarium together and then bought food and went to a movie. She asked me, "why are you doing this with me? I am bad." I was floored. I've been trying to do good for her for so long and not finding anything I could do, and I had given up hope, and tried to just avoid her, and then tried again because avoiding her wasn't serving Vera, and this was so much grace. Maybe if it had happened like in a moralizing story book where K is mean and E responds with kindness and K melts I'd feel like, aren't I amazingly Christlike? But this was just my inability and Katya's inability and grace. Which is what it still is, every day. Thank you for praying, I know that's part of this.

Then Vera assigned her to write her life story, and she read it to me. I didn't expect her to, but she finally shared with me. She made me stare at a jar of peanut butter the whole time she read it cuz she said she couldn't read it if I looked at her - it was so funny.

Nothing is hopeless. Praise God that He is alive and doing things!

going to Moscow

I have tickets traveling with a group going to a church conference. I leave Thursday night and arrive in Moscow Friday morning, and I return Sunday night to Monday morning. I will be staying with a missionary I knew before and visiting friends there.

Poem

My King of Thorns

Why did it have to be a crown
Of thorns pressed upon His head?
It should have been a royal one
Made of gold and jewels instead.
It had to be a crown of thorns,
Because in this life that we live
For those who would seek to love,
A thorn is all the world has to give.
– Michael Card

I know that you are hurting me
Because someone else hurt you;
I feel like they pierced you with thorns
And the thorns went through you
And they stick out the other side,
Pricking all who would try to get close to you.

And I see my King crowned with thorns;
The hurtful words passed around the world
Go into Him and do not come out again,
Melted away in His love and pain.

I can’t let myself hear your barrage of criticism
Or I’ll start to believe I’m ugly and stupid and worthless.
I feel like you are giving me a hedge of thorns
And hidden in its center is the one true word
That I should hear and change, the real reason you resent me,
But it hurts too much to dig through thorns with bare hands
And find it.

“That is not your job,” says my King. “It is her job to tell you.”
So I grab His hand and walk towards you and ask you,
“Have I sinned against you? Are you angry at me about something I can apologize for? And if not, please stop treating me like you hate me.”
We pull some thorns up. I think they’ll grow back.
But maybe we got some by the roots. Love believes all things.

I can’t move tonight
I’m lying here paralyzed, surrounded by walls of bristling thorns.
And my King reaches into the thorns and pushes them away
So I can walk through.
And I know for certain that I am beautiful, precious, and forgiven,
Or He would not have such bleeding hands for me.
And for you.
For you.
You.

How beautiful you are, my Thorn-King! How I love you!
We shall walk together in a smooth and flowering world
When you have taught us the bloody price of love.