Some thoughts
Hi everyone. Thanks for sharing in our trip to Russia. Thank you so much, Dad, for being our scribe and writing so well. We appreciated having you relay some of our stories and prayer needs.
It was a good trip and very diverse in all that happened. It was just enough to whet our appetites to go back. We feel, along with our teammates, that it is difficult to make an impact when you are only somewhere for one or two weeks. The point is the follow-up, though. It’s continuing the relationships that we made. Adam and I plan to keep in touch with our 6 deaf boys: Mirian, Andre, Jenya, Alosha, Grisha and Nikita. We should write them this week. We also made good friends with our four translators– Adam especially connected with Misha who sings in a Christian Russian hard-core band and looks like he’s from Cali. Two other members of our team (that my dad accidentally superimposed over our translators) were Sergey and Grisha two 20-year-old orphans to whom Gary, our team leader has been a surrogate father and friend for several years. They don’t speak English, but they were definintely part of our team. They were with us the whole two weeks. Through them, as well as through the deaf boys at camp, I learned a lot about getting to know, befriend and love people with whom you can’t even speak. I liked how sometimes I forgot that Sergey and Grisha couldn’t speak English. It was good to watch how Cliff and Sergey became really tight. We have friends now in Russia who we look forward to going back to visit.
I think we did some good stuff on this trip, and I hope we can follow through with correspondences, but I think that the biggest outcome of this trip for Adam and me was that we learned some things and grew a lot. That’s pretty vague, I know, but it’s specific in my head. I’ll write more, but we’re going to Shakespeare in the Park tonight, and we need to get going. We really appreciate your prayers. God protected us, and we were also able to come through some very difficult moments because you were praying. Just curious, was anyone led to pray Tuesday, August 16 in the morning? That evening- your morning- was the most difficult time for us, and we made it through by the grace of God. Curiosity piqued? Come back. :).
Much love.
-Jessica
