Winter Update

Hello again,

It's been almost a month since our last post.  My only excuse for the long delay is that we have been busy and nothing spectacular has been happening.  Our second semester is now well underway and we are once again back at it.  The new quarter has been going well.  As always it brings its changes and challenges.

One change this quarter so far is that we have had several new students enroll just as we have also seen several students leave, with quite a few more to come before the year ends.  An international school like ours always has high turnover, but this has been the most we have experienced in our time here so far.

We continue to keep busy with afterschool work as well.  I am teaching a course that meets twice a week on English grammar for five of our highschool students and Amanda is still tutoring three times a week at the moment.  The reasons for me teaching this course is more one of availability than of ability (no one else wanted to do it), so it has been a bit of a stretch at times as I re-familiarize myself with English grammar concepts or learn them for the first time altogether.  I think I have learned more about English grammar through studying Russian.  I certainly can't think of another time in my life where I could see a term like "past perfect progressive tense" and have it make sense. I continue my Russian language studies twice a week, which means that Wednesday is perhaps my favorite day of the week since it is the only one on which I get to go home at the end of the school day:-)  All of these activities have gone so well so far.

The past two weeks have been extremely cold for us here as temperatures have dipped well below freezing to -25 Celsius yesterday (about -15 Fahrenheit).  Our apartment has been quite cold even though our heat is working so we have had to resort to running the oven and using a space heater.  Still, after the extremely mild winter that we have had so far it is nice to have some truly cold weather.  We only have a bit in the way of snow which is a bit disappointing after the piles of snow that we had last year.

To go along with the winter weather, our school has been hit by the usual winter mix of colds and flus this past week and quite a few students and teachers have been out.  Amanda missed one day this past week after getting sick, but thankfully is feeling much better. Between all of this I got to sub for quite a few classes in addition to teaching my own. Your prayers for our health and for the health of our fellow teachers and students is always appreciated!

We have received two important pieces of good news in the past few weeks that we are happy to share with you:

1. Our yearly financial report from World Partners was very encouraging.  Thanks in a large part for the many one time gifts that we have received our financial picture has gotten much much better.  We are so grateful for all of you have given, particularly those who have given these unexpected onetime gifts. God is providing for us through you and we as always are humbled by your tangible act of faith in our work.  We will continue to do our best to use these funds wisely.

2. Our landlord has agreed to extend the lease on our apartment.  This is something that we have been praying about for a while and were going to mention in our next letter, but sometimes God works ahead of us:-)  Our current rental agreement ends this August and we knew that meant that we might have to move.  Since we love our current apartment and really like our landlord we were praying that we would be able to stay here for the remainder of our time in Russia, and thankfully this appears to be the case.  The new agreement will be formally signed in August, but for now we are praising God for this new blessing!

Looking ahead, we would appreciate your prayers again for all of our students who will be leaving.  Several students have left already, mostly to return to Korea, and there will be many more in the coming weeks and months.  At the current time, our high school will be greatly diminished next year.  It is sad to say goodbye to students we have had the joy of getting to know over these past two years.

Even in the midst of "routine" days we are very grateful for the opportunity we have to be in St. Petersburg and to be teaching, and we thank everyone who has helped us to be able to do this!

Thank you again for all your prayers, we need and appreciate them.

-Matt