First Week of School!

Hello everyone!

Matt and I are currently looking back on our first full week of school at IA! Things are certainly different this year for many reasons. Our administration is changing and evolving this year so this is also a year of flux. Matt and I are also teaching all new classes and this is the first year I am with the high school.

Our first day was Bell Day and we didn't actually have classes. First students brought in flags for each of the countries that we have represented in our student body. This year we have a British family so that was a new addition.

Everybody gathered on the third floor.
Each teacher took a different group of students and talked to them about policy, etc. Then we were off for some fun!

Below: The old Singer sewing machine building currently houses Dom Kinigi, a bookstore.

We went with a group of teachers to get food. Then we went with our friends Jarrod and Christina on a boat tour of the city. Since the city is built over water you can see a lot of the major sites of the city by boat. This is something none of us had done before and it was a lot of fun. We found a less touristy area and had the boat almost to ourselves.

Below: A statue that people throw coins onto.
The Venice of the North!
Below: The building with the green roof is a famous school. The men who would go there wore distinct fur hats and there is a well known song about them.
Above and Below: the Anichkov Bridge. Each corner features a man with a horse in various poses. It runs over the Fontanka Canal, a major waterway through the city.
We found that being on the canals really makes it clear that the roads were never intended to be the main way of traffic. The canals are huge and give access to a lot of important things while the roads are narrow and there is next to no parking in the city.

Below: One of my favorite churches in the city. The domes are a deep blue with gold stars. Dostoevsky was married in this church.

above: The St Nicholas Cathedral
Above: This is one of my favorite buildings. It has no significance at all but all the sides are painted in this abstract geometric pattern. Christina told us it is a hostel.
These pictures are of New Holland. It was an old shipyard and the waterway gate here is super impressive!
Below: The Moika Palace. (Warning: the following story is not for the weak of heart) This is where Rasputin was killed. Personally I find this to be one of the creepiest stories I have ever heard. Rasputin was a "religious" figure who rose to power in the early 1900s. He claimed that he could cure Tsar Nicholas's son who had fits. He would threaten that some harm may come to the boy if anything happened to him and so gradually he was able to gain significance in the royal family. There had been attempts on his life before but he always survived. The story goes that finally some princes became worried about his negative control over the royal family and decided to kill him. They tried to poison him but it had no effect at all (his daughter later suggested he may have developed an immunity to it). He was then shot in the back, beaten, shot some more, and then tied and thrown in the river. At the time it was concluded that what killed him was drowning (though now this has been contested). He was one seriously scary guy!

A lovely read bridge. We saw several of many different colors on this. It is funny too because you never notice they are colored when you are going over them.

Yesterday, after school, we went to AgroRus. It was described to us as being like a county fair and it was held literally four blocks away from us.

Below: You place a piece of metal between the two huge pieces and then hit it with a hammer. You get an imprinted coin you made yourself!
Camel and pony rides! The saddle below has a cartoon character on it that Matt and I really like.
We also had the Russian equivalent of fair food. Fried dough with meat and cheese in it.

There were many plant stalls and this lovely rosebud.

This stall is selling samovars which are traditional Russian kettles (of a sort). They vary from smallish to gigantic.

Above: hot corn stands are very common at events and sports. They also sell lollipops shaped like roosters (I have no idea why). :-)
Above: Perogis can be just shaped like buns but more often they are decorated. The full pies can be very elaborate. These are pigs and bears!

Below: One of the ways we started off the school year was with Matthew burning his lip and chin fairly badly. He has a new thermos and we had no idea how hot it would keep things. So he went to take a drink and it burned him badly enough that his lip and chin turned white and then blistered. He's doing a lot better now but here's a picture. :-(

Above: A cafe I must eat at because I think it is so cute!

Below: This is the store we do 90% of our shopping at. There are ones that are a lot closer but this one is much bigger and has a meat counter in it and another next door. We realized as we were walking home that we had never put up a picture of it!

So there is our first week of school! Classes have been going well and we feel confident that this will be a good year. Pray for us and the school as we all have a lot to do and a lot of transitioning!

Pictures of the Apt

Hello! We have a new camera that I (Amanda) love playing with and it has been a while since we posted pictures of the apartment. It does look very different than when we first moved here since we have added things and filled it with our stuff. The first pictures were from when we first moved in and things looked a bit barren!
So here are some pictures of the apartment for your enjoyment!

Living room. The corner chair is "mine" and Matt generally works from the couch.

Bathroom. Toilet is in another tiny room next door. Note the teeny tiny washing machine under the sink. :-)
Kitchen. The thing above the mircowave is a water heater and has an open flame in it. We know a family whose heater is placed inside their shower so this is a pretty good place for ours!

Bedroom.

Quick additional prayer request for everyone: we are in need of about $600 more in monthly support. Please pray that this need will be met!

Back in Russia

Greetings once more from St. Petersburg!

After a wonderful month in the U.S., we have returned to Russia and are settling back in to life here. We arrived here Wednesday evening safely and with all of our baggage, so thank you to all of you who prayed for safe travels for us!

We've been trying to re-synchronize our body clocks and start preparing for classes for the coming year. So far jet lag hasn't been too bad- we've been sleeping well, but we feel tired a lot. It's good to be back, but it was definitely sad to say goodbye to everyone that we got to spend time with this summer.

Leaving people behind never gets any easier and in fact the opposite seems to hold. Its bittersweet knowing that we won't see many of our friends and family for at least a year if not longer, but we also recognize that this is simply normal life for most of our students here. Experiencing the ups and downs of living abroad helps us stay more in touch with the reality that has shaped the lives of most of the students in our classrooms, and I know that it will help us to teach and to care for them with greater depth and understanding.

We still have a week before our first teacher meetings begin and then school officially starts on August 22nd. We both have quite a bit to do in terms of preparation for our new classes before that day arrives, so most of our time will be spent working on lessons and brainstorming about how to structure our classes.

Before we turn our backs completely on our experiences from over the summer and zero in on our work here, we want to post some photos that highlight some of the best moments of our time in the States. Once again, thank you to everyone who prayed for our time there, who met with us and encouraged us, for the churches that gave us opportunities to share about what we do, and to all of the friends and family who made time for us. I know we couldn't meet with everyone we would have liked to, but we are so grateful for all of those that we could!


The park where we were married.


My dad practicing a percussion piece for an upcoming recital.


One of the world-famous Bethel College squirrels that we saw when we paid a quick stop to our old college:-)


This picture shows off our new camera's ability to make almost anyone look very athletic:-)


Miniature golfing with Amanda's side of the family.



The children's department at Grace Church in Mooresville threw us a special party since they have been praying for us during the Wednesday night service during the past year. It was a great time!


Me posing with one of the signs that the kids at Grace made for us.


A penguin at the Indianapolis Zoo. We went there with Amanda's family.


Once again the camera is deceptive. I threw that Frisbee about five feet and then straight into the ground half a second after that photo was taken:-)


We had the privilege of speaking with the youth group at Grace as well! We also had the joy of speaking briefly at services at St. Mark and at Grabill, but sadly we forgot to bring our camera on those days:-(


Amanda regales the crowd with stories of teaching in Russia.


Me in the middle of a long-winded explanation of our life in Russia:-)

There are more pictures that you can see here in our Facebook album.

Once again, thank you to everyone who made our brief trip back to the U.S. such a joy. We have returned to Russia refreshed and eager to continue our work at IA!

-Matt

Brief Update

Hello again!

It's been awhile since we've posted an update here and with good reason- we have been busy traveling in the U.S.! We arrived in America on July 5th and since then have been on a whirlwind tour to visit family, friends, and churches. We leave to return to St. Petersburg a week from today.

Once we get back in Russia and have a chance to think back over our time here, we'll have a bigger post with some of the pictures that we've taken in the past month. We finally got the new camera that we ordered awhile back, so look forward to crisper, more beautiful images in blog posts to come:-)

It's been so good to be able to see so many people and talk face to face after a year of only communicating via email and Skype. Technology is a wonderful thing, but so far it has yet to surpass the actual experience of physically being present with someone and having a conversation.

An important part of our time in the U.S. has been our work to raise additional support. As we have mentioned before, our financial needs for the coming year are somewhat higher than last year's due to the fact that we are now eligible for Russian taxes and our sending agency will begin deducting an administrative fee. So while our actual expenses to live in Russia are essentially unchanged, we have found ourselves in the position of needing to increase our funding between 1/4 and a 1/3 of what it was last year.

To that end, we have been speaking at the churches that currently support us and also had the opportunity to meet with another church as well. We had the privilege of being able to speak with a children's group, a youth group, and a retired persons group at churches, so we've gotten to experience a full spectrum of people:-) Everywhere we have gone we have been received warmly and graciously and have greatly enjoyed our chance to talk about our ministry and to meet many new people. We feel very blessed by the kind words, prayers, and encouragement we have received!

With just one week to go before we leave, it doesn't seem like we have been in the U.S. for only three weeks. With all that's taken place it seems like we've been here so much longer! I always say that a perfect trip is when you've had a wonderful time and when you come to the end of it you are ready to be back home. This trip is shaping up to be just that. We have loved every opportunity we have had to spend with family and friends and sharing about our experiences, but we also know it's time to start shifting gears and preparing for another year in Russia. A new school year will be starting soon and we both have a full slate of classes that we need to prepare for!

If you are someone we met over the summer and are reading this for the first time, please keep checking back. We'll have more to come in the future!

-Matt

Heading Back

... to the United States!

Just a reminder to everyone that we will be returning to America for a month-long trip before heading back for the new school year in St. Petersburg. We leave tomorrow, July 5th and arrive back in Russia on August 3rd. In between those dates, we will be BUSY visited friends and family and talking with churches!

We are excited to see many people who we have been missing over this past year and are also looking forward to meeting some new faces as we speak about our work in Russia. God has blessed in so many amazing ways during the past 11 months and we are eager to share about what He is doing in our lives and at our school. Please pray that this month will be a time of relaxation and fellowship as we reconnect with many people and that it will also be a productive time as we share about our work. We are still in need of some additional support for the coming year and we would truly appreciate your prayers that God would speak to the hearts of those whom He would have partner with us.

Returning to the U.S. fills us with mixed emotions. We are obviously very anxious to see those who we have only been able to communicate with via email and Skype. However, it also makes us realize that in many ways we lack a sense of "home." Moving to Russia after only being married for two months means that we have spent the vast majority of our married life (as admittedly short as that has been)in Russia. Still, it seems inappropriate to claim Russia as our "home." Every time we are asked a question in Russian that we don't understand or fail to catch on to something that everyone else around us seems to immediately grasp is a reminder that we are strangers and guests in a foreign land. At the same time, to call the U.S. "home" also seems wrong. We don't have a house or apartment in America and now that we have graduated from school and our married the places that we used to call home are now most definitely our parents' homes. Obviously we are Americans, but most of our "adult" life so far has transpired in Russia.

On some level it can be frustrating to feel kind of rootless and unsettled, but it is a powerful reminder that this is what life is like for all of our students. While it is not always fun, it allows to experience the world that is simply normal life for our students and helps to better comprehend their experience and relate to them. These are just some thoughts that I have been kicking around in my head for a while and this seemed like as good a place as any to express them:-)

Thanks again to everyone who has supported us through prayer, encouragement, and financial giving through this past year. God has blessed us through you!

-Matt

Schlisselburg

Hello again!

Our departure to the U.S. for our month-long visit is less than two weeks away. We are working on things to get ready for that, like the prayer cards that Amanda recently posted as well as a video that unfortunately we have been unsuccessful in uploading here so far. A more relaxed summer schedule has been nice (although it was punctuated by some unwanted excitement earlier this week when we found out that someone had stolen our debit card information and attempted to route some money to the Ukraine. Thankfully our bank caught it and we have been able to work it out, but I send a sincere evil eye to the anonymous villain who did this), and continues to give us a chance to do things that we wouldn't have time to do during the school year.

After our trip to Tsarkoe Selo a few weeks ago, this week Amanda and I decided to go to the town of Schlisselburg and visit its ancient fortress. Our friends Jarod, Christina, and Katya came with us, making for a great group of traveling companions. Once again, we took an elektrichka (communter train), and it took a little over an hour to reach Schlisselburg. The town is located at the very bottom of Lake Ladoga, the enormous freshwater lake that is the source of the Neva River that flows through St. Petersburg. The fortress sits at the head of the Neva, guarding the entry into Lake Ladoga from the South.

The Oreshek fotress in Schlisselburg dates back to the early 1300s and has played a role in many significant moments in Russian history, including being the site of a peace treaty between Sweden and the ancient Russian state of Novgorod in 1323, bring lost to Sweden once more and recaptured by Peter the Great in the Great Northern War (1700-1721), serving as a prison for important political prisoners (including Tsar Ivan VI, members of the Decemberists uprising, the assassins of Alexander II, and Alexander Ulyanov, the older brother of Lenin who was executed in the fortress for his role in a plot to kill the Tsar). The fortress was also an important link in the defense of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) during World War II, and suffered extensive artillery and bombing attacks from the Germans but did not fall to the Nazis.

In order to reach the fortress you need to take a boat across the water. Once inside, there are numerous memorials, passageways, and buildings to go through. Several of the structures in the fortress are in states of semi-ruin, reflecting significant damange from the Second World War as well as general disrepair I suspect (although reconstruction work on one wall section and tower is currently in progress).

We took lots of photographs, and I'll place comments under them to explain what all there is to see in Oreshek.


The fortress as seen from standing on the shore across from it on the western side (click on it to enlarge it and bring it into sharper relief).


Amanda, Katya, and Christina on the dock waiting for the boat with the fortress behind them.


The main entrance into the fortress.


Amanda walking through the main entrance.


A crumbling portion of the wall on the inside of the fortress.


The interior of the fortress as seen from on top of the portion of the wall we were allowed to climb.


The remains of the church that stood in the center of the fortress.


Inside of the ruins of the church is a memorial to the soldiers who fought to defend the fortress during World War II.


Inside one of the prisons of the fortress. It was here in this prison that many of the conspirators in the plot that led to the assassination of Alexander II were held.


This tower is the only part of the current fortress that was built by the Swedes. There is a dungeon underneath it that you can walk down into which is freakishly cold.


The tree in this photo makes for an unsettling contrast with the original use for this area as the scene of executions of prisoners sentenced to death. A memorial stands on the other side of the wall with the names of all who died and were executed in the fortress during Tsarist times.


Jarod, me, Katya, and Christina.


Lake Ladoga stretching onward before us standing on the northern edge of the island the fortress stands on. Lake Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe and the 14th largest lake in the world (it is comparable in size to Lake Ontario).


The ruins of the barracks for the troops of the fortress.



Staircase leading up to the walls of the fortress.


The walls again.


The walkway atop the walls.


Amanda on the walls.


The back of the barracks.


Slow train coming- our elektrichka to take us back to St. Petersburg.

As always, thanks for reading!

-Matt

Hello to everyone!
We are heading back to the states for the month of July and have some new odds and ends to put up here for that!

First, some new prayer cards:




Hope you enjoy!