we are grateful

we've been busy since i (ally) last posted on here. we had a wonderful thanksgiving with friends from hinkson...we cooked a 14kg turkey (30.8lbs!) which in of itself was quite an adventure with our shoebox-sized oven! it turned out great and i am now not fearful to cook a turkey in the states with conviences that we don't have here like meat thermometers, reynolds turkey bags and the little thing that pops up on the turkey when it's done! we received our turkey, most likely the same day it was killed, so we learned how to de-feather it too! always an adventure! we had a wonderful time and a full house and it was definetly a great time of giving thanks. we have so much to be grateful for and we are reminded of that daily. we are grateful for the life we are given and for our family and friends, we are grateful for this call to russia and the kids at hinkson, and we are grateful for your prayers for us and the relationship we have with you. we are also grateful for our friend, jesse, who joined us here for a week over thanksgiving!
he is from colorado and him and tim met in the marine corps, so it was so fun to have him here and celebrate with him. we took jesse to all the "touristy" desitnations in moscow, including riding an 8 hour night train to saint petersburg and spending the day there. there is so much unique history here, we defiently felt limited by time but we are so grateful that we get the opportunity to be here. here we are waiting outside in line to get into the state hermitage in saint petersburg. it is an incredible palace from which tsars ruled russia for one and a half centuries and is now one of the world's greatest art museums

since most of our life here this year is spent studying language, a night train to saint petersburg was a wonderful break! the cathedral shown here is the church on spilled blood, also known as the church of the resurrection of Christ. it is on the griboedova canal and is built on the spot where alexander II was killed by a terrorist group in 1881.


at these tourist destinations tim and i had great opportunities to practice our language, which is going great. we both felt very encouraged by the conversations we were able to hold, however broken they may have been. we're finding those little successes are important when working on learning a new language! one great example of getting use our language...as tim and jesse and i were walking down the busy street in saint petersburg, a little boy who was maybe 3 years old was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, alone, just looking around. there was no adult around who looked like this was their child or who was paying attention to the little boy so tim and i stopped because we couldn't just walk on. tim knelt down and wanted to say "pa-boodt sa mnoy" which means "stay with me" so we could figure out what to do next, but in the moment what tim actually said was "boodt zdarove" which means "be healthy!" you can use this phrase as a toast or cheer and it's also what you say when someone sneezes, like "bless you." needless to say, the little boy just looked up at him in confusion, and quickly tim realized what he had said and we all laughed hard. another lady came up to us and asked us if it was our son and when we said no and that we didn't know whose he was, we all walked with him down the sidewalk a little way to the open and frantic arms of a woman who was in charge of a field trip of kids his age. great language practice around every corner!

1 Corinthians 10:31 "...whatever then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God..."