Car!

Will's grandfather is going to let us use his car. Praise the Lord! (And thank you, Pop!) Please pray for all the details of getting Will's driver's license, buying insurance, getting the car running and such.

Lena

Some of you know Lena, mother of Jaan’s friend Andrusha, sister of Ira. We prayed every week for quite a while for God to heal her infertility and bless them with another baby. Now she’s expecting twins in the springtime! ( ) Please pray for her and them, especially considering the low quality of maternity care here. And pray for me, too. One of my big struggles is that I won’t get to see her little girls.

(Oh, and the doctors couldn’t do anything for Lena’s infertility. These twins are the result of God’s direct intervention!)

For our children

Please also remember to pray for our children. They’re sick. . . again. It’s nothing serious, but it is just another little thing to deal with. (Jaan says that his nose is drooling. )

They don’t really understand what is going on right now, but they do seem to feel that something is happening. (It’s been funny to see what sets them off. For Jaan it was when I packed up and sorted through the books. He stood next to me and cried the whole time, “No, Mama! Not the books! What will we read?” Raia had a harder time with the clothes: “What will we wear?”) And it’s so hard to stay patient with them! If I have to leave the room for Asya, I’ll come back to find that Jaan and Raia have instantly resorted my carefully sorted piles, unpacked our carefully packed items, and just let their curiosity run wild.

Kolya

Our friend Kolya has been going through a really hard time. He lost his job, and his wife is trying to divorce him. We have told him that we’re praying for him and that we would ask our friends to pray, and he really appreciates that. Also, pray for wisdom for us. We want to reach out to him, but especially when he’s very drunk he uses up a lot of our time. Pray for wisdom! We don’t want to turn him away, but we can’t afford to spend hours focused on him every day. Pray for his physical health and safely, too. (Recently one of our elderly neighbors upstairs came home drunk, and his wife locked him out. He yelled in the stairwell until late, and then went out. The next morning his coffin lid was by the door! He died in the night. I worry that something like that could happen to Kolya.)

[Since I wrote this, Kolya has started writing a book. He wants us to take it to America, translate it, and sell it for $10,000. Not too realistic, but it’s keeping him sober and busy. Praise the Lord for that!]

Seryozha

I’m struggling with the thought of leaving Seryozha, “our orphan.” Please pray for him to do well and for us to be able to leave him!

Sad news

We lost the appeal. Please pray for our broken hearts and for the practical details that we're going to have to be taking care of.

Appeal Hearing

We have just found out that our court hearing in Vladimir will be tomorrow, Friday the 18^th, at 3:00.  We appreciate your prayers!!

Appeal

We'll be appealing the court decision on January 9th. Please pray for Will and Sergei (the missionary-lawyer) as they prepare the appeal and turn it in.