The longest day

After many many tiring hours, we have arrived and have started working. We have so may stories to tell already and we have only been here for one day! On thing that we have to tell you about is the minor miracle (major to us) that occured on the way here. It happened like this. For about a month, our wonderful Russian teacher Galina has been working on getting transporation and accomodations in Moscow with a Christian friend from Moscow named Nikolai. Everything was going fine until about one week before we left, she lost contact with him. Because it was too late to wait, we had to contact the church that were were going to visit in Siberia to see if they could reach Nikolai or perhaps make other plans. Well, they were not able to reach him either so they called their contact in Moscow named Victor and set up transportation for us when we were to arrive. Victor was going to pick us up at one airport and bring us to another. We were never able to contact Nikolai. We were told that Victor would meet us at the airport holding a sign with my name on it.

We arrived at the airport, we saw the man holding the sign so knew it was Victor. We went to meet him and discovered it was not Victor but we could not understand him when he told us his name. We loaded all our stuff into his large van and were off. As we were driving through Moscow traffic, we learned that his name was also Nikolai. Isn't that funny? After talking some more, which was very difficult because he knew less English than we know Russian, we learned that Victor was not able to pick us up because he had to work.  Actually the only reason we were able to talk at all was because Nikolai has a lady friend who speaks English and he was able to call her on his cell phone.  So, we passed the phone back and forth.  Back to the story, Victor had called the church in Siberia to tell them that he had to work but that he had a friend who could help us and his name was Nikolai. Well, to make a long story short, this Nikolai was THE Nikolai that Galina had been in contact with. How's that for a miracle. We are now all set for the return trip and are very thankful for it. Here you can see us with Nikolai getting dropped off at the airport.

This next picture pretty much expresses how we all felt as we were about to board our second flight.

Here, we see Dave speaking to some children with the help of our translator. I would love to show and tell you more, but our schedule is non-stop. Keep praying.