Pavel and Tanya

Our pastor here and his family are in the middle of their month-long trip to visit their friends and relatives in Ukraine and southern Russia. Please pray for a safe and profitable trip for them.

Also, Pasha needs to decide if he's going to apply for Russian citizenship or renew his five-year "green card" here. There are some other document questions complicating that, too, so please pray for wisdom and for the document processes to go smoothly.

Sleep update

Thank you for praying. I continue to have good and bad nights, but it seems like the good are outnumbering the bad. Don't stop praying!

Waiting on the invitation

My application for an invitation didn't go in at the time we had thought it would, and now we're being advised to wait. We would really rather get this settled, but we're going to wait a little while, to give more time in between the refusal and another application. Please keep praying that when we do apply, I'll be granted an invitation!

Sleep

I've been enjoying several weeks of feeling great, but now that it's getting hot again, I'm struggling more. I've had a few sleepless nights, and I really don't do well with that. Please pray for me to sleep well every night!

Applying again

Apparently we were told wrong that I can't reapply for a visa invitation. The Baptist Union doesn't want our consultant to get involved or any appeals to be made, so we're just going to try applying again. Will went back to Moscow on Thursday to give them the right documents, and they'll probably be turned in today. Pray that this time I'll get an invitation! It should be about a month before we know anything.

"Friends" in high places

Please pray for the officials who are interested in us and what we are doing here. Pray that they would be able to understand what we do here and that God would calm their suspicions.

Weather

Maybe this is frivolous, but please pray for a cooler summer in central Russia this year. We've already had some very hot weather, and it was hard for me to put up with it. Now we're enjoying cooler days again. Pray that the weather will stay more like this.

Moved!

We're moved onto the first floor! Thank you for praying. Now please pray that we'd be able to sort through everything and get settled. For the first part of last week, Will moved things down very slowly and deliberately, finding places for them and putting them away as he went. Then we ran out of time, and our friends came to help. In one afternoon, everything that was left came down the stairs. Now it's just lying around in heaps, though. We're working on figuring out what's what and where to put it.

I really like the apartment, and I had forgetting how nice it is to live on the ground floor. Thank you, Lord!