july 20-21

July 20

This morning church began at 12 and the service was great. The building and the people just made it feel like family. We sang some songs from the hymnal, Michael, Brandon and I each spoke briefly before Olga, the pastor’s wife, spoke on community and what the church should look like. Ksysha translated the whole service, which was such a blessing. She has really done such a wonderful job of making sure we understand what is going on and including us. We sang some more songs and talked with people after the service and made some plans for later to meet up again. There was still some leftover soup and kasha from working the day before so some of us had lunch and tea there at the church before heading home. We had about 2 hours before we were meeting up with people again so we had a short Russian lesson, started some laundry and had a quick nap to be rested. Around 5:30 we met up with Anya, Nastya, Sasha, Vika, Misha, Nadya, Dima and his sister and her boyfriend at a Christian cafe for a pizza dinner and some more fellowship. It had finally cooled off a bit so we decided to take advantage of the weather and walk home. We stayed up chatting and putting out clothes to dry (which for some reason all turned blue) for a bit since we had no early morning plans. We were pretty tired though, so everyone went to bed pretty soon in our cozy ninth floor flat (which makes for great exercise when the elevator is slightly more than sketchy).

July 21

We slept in this morning and hung out around the flat before Anya and Nadya came over and we all went to lunch at the bellini cafe. Pavel and Olga (the pastors) came to pick us up around 3:30 to head about an hour outside of Syktyvkar to a Komi church. While there we shared a little about ourselves, prayed, sang songs and just had a wonderful time with the women of the church. The pastor there spoke a little English and since Ksysha wasn’t there to translate, she and Michael translated and it worked just fine. We sang some songs in Russian, some in English and some in Komi. The pastor of the church’s uncle had translated the Bible into the Komi language not too long ago (about 1981) and that was a really cool story to hear since the Komi people have their own language and culture and now they have the Gospel. The women of the church were a lot of fun and really encouraging to see new believers despite their age. They were encouraged by our youth, and we were by their wisdom. We walked down to the river (a journey all too similar to our last trip to the river in Syktyvkar, which I will not recount, only this time with mostly little old women) to wet our feet and watch the sun. When we returned, we had cake, bread and jam, and cucumber sandwiches with our tea and learned a little of the Komi language while practicing our Russian as well. It was a great experience being able to fellowship with the women in the Komi church and we ar so thankful that the pastors presented this opportunity to us!