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| Sorry, blogger is better. Check it out.
cruciformitythoughts.blogspot.com
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| Right now I'm sitting in Chicago O'Hare Airport, where I'll be staying the night. Apparently there's some bad weather in Dallas so they cancelled my flight. All of our flights went pretty well so far, but I'm like a zombie right now... no bed to sleep in tonight like I had hoped, oh well. Love you all.
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| Well, today is the last big meeting I'll be at with the Church.
Yes, I'm sad. Today is Easter and we're doing a special service... thing. It's going from 11-3. I guess I'm excited to see everyone today, I just have so many mixed emotions.
Part of me is ready to go because living in Siberia is hard and long somtimes, and because I miss people, I miss speaking in English, I miss comfortability. But the other part is sad. Over the last 2 months I've just finally been able to live in this place without being lonely or depressed, be comfortable in my surroundings, and our ministries have really taken off. I don't want to leave Sergei, Emille, Alosha, Ira, Timur, or anyone else. I'm also a little scared about going back home. I have to visit a lot of cities and see lots of people I haven't seen in a very long time. It's been a year since I've seen Amber, and I have no idea how that's going to go. I've got to prepare for college and moving to a new city. Starting over isn't fun for me.
For someone who hates moving I sure move a lot.
I have about 9 days left until I leave Siberia. My home. I sat out on the balcony a few nights ago just looking at all the buildings, wondering about the people behind the lights in the windows. I wondered if any of them knew God, or if that even mattered to them. People seem to be sleeping through life, and sometimes it just seems so difficult to wake them up. It's so hard to spot those who want to be awakened.
And then I started thinking about if I was one of those people. It's easy to point at others and wish things or feel sadness, but I guess right now I'm asking those questions about myself. Why do I wake up every morning? What do I do with my days? Why? What I believe in is shown by what I do, so right now I'm asking myself what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. "Why?" is one of my favorite questions to ask, because it always produces a change in my life for the better.
I didn't baptize anyone in Russia. I studied the gospel officially with 2 people, and shared it in conversation in detail with maybe 3 more. Looking out my window I just feel so powerless sometimes... so weak. I don't even like meeting new people. Isn't that weird? I'm a missionary and I don't like meeting people. There's always that awkward silence when you run out of small talk questions and you have to move on to something deeper. I get worn out meeting people because I get bored really fast talking about surface-y stuff. I can be kind of intense sometimes, so I guess I get worried I'll turn people off if I say what's really on my mind.
I think I've gotten better at it, though. I used to be very reclusive, not really enjoying spending time with people. That's a hard person to be when God says life is about loving Him and other people. That's not natural for me. But I asked for help, and God gave it. I used to feel uncomfortable saying "I love you" to people, even those closest to me. I don't know why. Now I can look at Sergei and tell him without feeling awkward that I love him. And I can mean it, too.
I've asked a lot of questions about God and mission work this last year. What I do and what I see Paul doing in Acts seems to be very different. I'm here on other people's pocketbooks with the sole occupation of "ministry", whatever that means. At first that was really hard. I don't speak Russian, I've never lived here before, I don't know anyone. What am I supposed to do with my time? God always opened doors, and I am so thankful for that. I would have felt lousy if I had had nothing to do.
I think the most important thing I learned to do was love. When I first got here I know I saw everything with the eyes of the world. Russian hairdo's are so crazy. I remember sitting on the bus and wishing I was thinking about these people's souls, but instead I was staring at their mullets. Seriously, mullets? The guys have like big random chunks from their hair missing, and I guess it looks stylish. It looks like the haircut Phil, Zach, and I got in Lubbock when we decided to shave our heads to cover it up.
But over time I stopped looking at people's appearances. There's bums always rummaging through trash cans here, and after a while you tend to just overlook them. One thing I love about Jesus is that it seemed He never overlooked. People would expect him to, but he wouldn't. He had eyes of faith, and I want those same eyes. I didn't want to look at people depending on if they were cool or poor or smart or weird. I wanted to respect every person... and I wanted them to feel that from me.
That's one of the things I got out of going to the homeless shelter. There were many times I just didn't want to go, because I was tired or I felt like we never did anything. But it was those times that I would leave the shelter feeling like I just made contact with God. Maybe it's easier for me to love these guys than people who have money. They know they need God... there's no need sharing with them that they're sinners in need of a Savior. Duh, they'd say. They need help to stop with the alcohol and fighting and stealing and everything else they do to ruin their lives.
I felt so honored when three of them came to our house church. I remember that one of them's eyes was bloodshot and he could hardly hold his cup of grape juice without shaking, obviously suffering from a tremendous hangover. Sometimes people in our Church forget about giving to the contribution, and I usually just mention the bin is over in the corner and remind them. Lenny, the older of the three, would always take out money and hand it to the other two guys so they would have something to give. They asked for help from us, and I had no idea what to give. I've never even been drunk, what do I know about quitting an alcohol addiction? Fortunately Vasya was more than willing to study a Biblical course on addiction with them. They look like new men every time I see them. They no longer ramble on in loud voices about mostly nonsense. They sit calmly as we sit together on their beds talking about Jesus and God and what life is about.
It's easy to love when you're appreciated I guess. Looking back I feel like we didn't even do much, really. We just showed up. This is why it's hard leaving. I feel like we spread a lot of seed that can be reaped really easily. A Church plant in this shelter would not be difficult, but that's kind of hard to do in 9 days. This is where I have to walk by faith. I have to believe not only in God, but in His use of people.
I guess mostly I learned a pure faith this last year. I don't think I've heard a single doctrinal argument in the entire time I've been here, though I've heard a lot of talk about Jesus. I wanted to go to a place where I could focus on the world and God... two things opposed to each other that I could see clearly. It's hard in the States, because somehow most of my religious discussions were about third-party things. "The Church" is doing this and that. I am the Church. I have focused much more on my personal journey with Christ, and helping others on that journey the best I can.
When I stopped viewing the Bible as a set of foundations with which to build my beliefs and arguments upon, it came alive. Now I see it as a map. Just knowing the map isn't enough, you have to go see the mountains and the trees and the oceans that it talks about. I love the Word. I love the smell when I open up my big study Bible and I have my highlighters ready to go. Most of the time I don't write any notes, I just read. It really is like food to me... and I start feeling sick if I'm away for very long. And I'm ok with that. I'm dependent on the Word to survive and I like it.
This experience has been special for me. I don't want to go. I know this will all continue when I go to America... and that takes faith, too. I spend most of my prayers praying for the strength to come back and keep my focus on Him. I don't want to conform to what's going on around me, and I don't want to be distracted from Christ and His kingdom.
God is good.
Well, I better eat breakfast before I go. Bye.
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|  | Currently Listening
Arriving
By Chris Tomlin, Steven Curtis Chapman
How Great Is Our God
see related |
Well I get asked enough about it, so I thought I'd write out our future plans for everyone to see.
In 2 weeks Anthony, Phil and I will be going back to the States. Originally we were going back for our visa renewal, but because of many factors we decided to finish up June-August in Cocoa, Florida, which I'll explain in a second. Amanda will also be finishing her time there, though she decided that back in December. Alissa will be coming back to Tomsk for about 7 weeks in June and July to finish up her AIM time, then she's moving back to the States.
Now for the reasons.
We started having visa problems back in January when Russia passed some new laws that made it more difficult to get a one-year visa, which we were trying to renew. So, we originally decided on getting the three-month one and just coming back until August instead of staying longer. We decided a while back that us guys wanted to finish our AIM time all in the same place. We found out a month or so ago that Phil's sister, who is in the army, would be shipping out to Iraq in July. He would not be able to see her until then, and he really wanted to say goodbye before she left for obvious reasons. But that put him coming back in June for a really short time, spending a lot of money for a short trip, so he started looking at other options.
We have loved our time here. We have had some really hard times, but also some of the best times of our lives. Us leaving has nothing to do with any sort of resentment or anything negative like that whatsoever. There's no secrets at all... us leaving is full of the good kinds of tears. It's breaking our hearts right now to leave.
However, we also thought that for this short time we might have more opportunities in Florida than here. They're not having summer camp here like we previously hoped for, and during the summer many of the Russians leave the city to go to their dachas (summer greenhouses). In Cocoa they'll be going on many trips with the youth group, and there's also the fact that we can speak and relate to people right away. Here our ministries are kind of selective. Still, we've been torn. We just started a homeless ministry that's just amazing seeing how God is working, and we love house churches and all our dear friends. We love what we're doing here, we just prayed and talked to many people and felt like it would be a wiser decision to finish in Florida. We're also planning on going to college this next semester, and we can prepare for that while in the States.We'll also be wrapping up a lot of things while we leave for a month
and a half, so we would (in a way) have had to sort of start over when
we came back.
I don't know what God's plan is for us right now, but looking back on these last 10 months I would not have wanted any other experience. Our future is full of uncertainties, but we are confident that we tried to make the most godly decision we knew how. We just want to help the kingdom and to know Christ more and more personally, and I pray that God allows us to have that in our future.
So now we have 2 weeks left in Russia, and honestly I'm freaking out a little bit lol. I can't stop hugging people here, and of course we've questioned our decision and it's just breaking our hearts to go. But fortunately I don't have much time to focus on that since we're incredible busy. I had to schedule time to write this post since I thought people would want to know. Thanks for all of your concerns and prayers, I appreciate it very much. Anyway, may God bless us as we say goodbye to our home and people we have grown to love so very much.
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