Three Weeks

Thursday was our most adventurous 24 hours yet. We took the night train north and took the night train back south at the end of the day. On the way and in St. Petersburg, we met so many beautiful people, saw an enormous and overwhelming number of incredible works of art and buildings, and walked until we couldn't anymore. We had cheap Soviet doughuts and  ate deer burgers in a restaurant with cats and explored the Hermitage and took a tour on the Neva and I fell asleep on boat and in a park and on a narrow upper train bunk with no rail. We found a random hipster rooftop restaurant where we sat next to people smoking weed and doing who-knows-what-else and somehow during the day, I got over that point where in conversation, I stop translating and just listen and absorb and somehow, I understand and words come to me to respond with. It was a really amazing day.

Three weeks here over. I am being deeply impacted by so much-- but especially, the relationships I have found here. Tonight, over dinner and dessert and crossed-legged in the park holding babies and watching kids play with new yet precious friends, I found such openness and wisdom and kindness and love, and I get to have this so, so often. I am learning words to explain the gospel in this other language- Иисуса есть путь, истина и жизнь! and how to tell stories, oh stories. Like how God (The Eternal One) made the world- he spoke and created все-everything. Here, I am just soaking in a community that has a lived-out love for Jesus that is challenging and hard and leads to pain and tears and loss and sorrow. Yet I see a community bound together by deep cords of love based on the reconciling and seeking love of Christ and it astounds me. I see an earnest life-encompassing passion for people who have never know Jesus to meet him, bow to him, and share him with their communities. Just like Jesus calls us to.  I see women who chat over potlucks not just about men or make-up but about how to best approach this people group and culture with this particular story, or the joys and struggles of welcoming a homeless family into their apartment. I am so moved and challenged by the depth of character and depth of generous, pouring-out love that I am both receiving and watching being poured on others.

And at the end of every day- wow, what an absolute incredible privilege to be a part of the actual body of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom he is bringing here. No place I'd rather be.