Christmas Time's a Coming!

December 20, 2007

Before we get into the meat of this post. We need to ask a favor. Our local facilitator here, Denis, has some health issues. His heart gives him trouble from time to time. Some of you may recall from this summer when the Gully family was here that this was a concern. He has been in the hospital again today with the same problems. Please pray for him that all will be well. He did not sound good on the phone today. He has done a good job for us, but I know the stress of it all can be sometimes overwhelming.

As you can imagine the blending of a family is no small endeavor. There are conflicts from time to time. Rules and behaviors have to be learned. The language has to be overcome. Those that have come before us know this very well. We have a very smart, intelligent and overall good girl. But it does become disappointing when the first conflict arises - as if we were expecting to never have any.... yeah, right! So before we left, I purchased some light reading for our time here.... The Practice of the Presence of God (Lawrence), The Normal Christian Life (Nee), and The Screwtape Letters (Lewis). I only began to read Lewis in the past couple of days. In the second letter, Screwtape is giving some practical advice to his nephew, Wormwood, in light of the fact that his "patient" has become a believer and is now in the hands of the Enemy. It goes like this...

"Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.......For once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt."

So this is where we find ourselves..... in the "laborious doing." Now this is no surprise. We were and are prepared (I think) to take on this task. Our moto for this trip was "prepare for the worst and expect the best." Please pray for our endurance and patience as we learn to live together. The children are getting along just fine. Its just this idea of having parents to tell you what you can or cannot do and when you can or cannot do it. It will work out just fine in time, but for now there is a little pain and learning involved.

So today we have been Christmas shopping. We have decided to give each of the children a sum of money and have them shop for the other two. It has gone nicely so far. KB is quite the miser. AG has expensive tastes. DC has never been able to such before. It will be an interesting Christmas experiment - unlike anything we've done before. It's hard to believe that we've been here for almost four weeks. It's interesting to see how the American kids react to the different culture. We haven't really had any severe homesick episodes. As long as we have Fanta, Ramen, and some decent TP we can survive.

An interesting thing happened tonight as we were coming home from dinner. We had been told by Chris Nichols of the incredible disparity here. A mix of several cultures from Soviet, to Ukrainian, to European, and even American. He tells a story of being on a bus in Kiev and hearing the Beach Boys on the radio singing California Dreaming. So we were sitting on the little bus here and the same thing happened to us. Keep in mind it's about 25 (F) outside. Everything is frozen and nasty. The wind will cut right through you - and then there's the Beach Boys singing to you from overhead. That is the icing on the cake. Although my dreaming has more of a southern flavor.

We will have an opportunity this coming weekend to visit another body of believers on the other side of town. We met them last weekend at another church. We are looking forward to it.

Please continue to pray that things move along smoothly next week. It will be a big one. We get the decree on Monday, Christmas on Tuesday, and then it passport and visa time. We should be back in Kiev by the end of the week and then I will be returning with A and KB.

We love you guys. Have a Merry Christmas if we don't get a chance to say it again!

Oh yes, almost forgot - more photos from the Snow Bash Yesterday. Remember the part of the movie Elf where Buddy went nuts on the mean kids in the park? Well let's just say it doesn't snow much at home.

Snow Bash

The Grace's