You are God alone!

You are God alone. From before time began, You were on Your throne, You were God alone. And right now, in the good times and bad, You are on Your throne. You are God alone. You’re unchangeable. You’re unshakeable. You’re unstoppable. “Not a god (God alone)” Billy and Cindy Foote

Prevyet from Moscow! As unbelievable as it seems to me, I am sitting on the bed in my flat in Europe’s largest city. How great is our God. If you have been on this journey with us for the last two years, I think you can appreciate my great joy at being here. If you have not, let me just say that it has been a long, arduous journey, but God has been at work every step of the way.

The trip wasn’t horrible. The flight from Dulles to Frankfurt was about 7.5 hours, and then we had a two-hour layover in Frankfurt for the 3 hour trip to Moscow. The kids did not sleep much, so we haven’t quite got their sleep cycle back on track—we were all up at 1:30 this morning watching Hogans Heroes and longing for sleep—but other than that, they’re doing fine. John-John has already made a friend on our team, Hannah and I went shopping with friends all day yesterday, and Sarah Beth went to a birthday party last night, so their social lives are already up and moving.

Some interesting ways God showed Himself (beyond getting our visas, which is nothing but a miracle):
1. At the airport, the lady who checked us (and our 19 bags) in studied our ticket, asked if we only were going one way and how long we were staying. When we said we were staying 3 years, she looked at us and grinned. She never weighed a single bag. In fact, the action packers we took—9 of them—never even went on the scale. So while we were charged for our excess baggage, we were not charged for our excess weight.
2. At Moscow customs, we could not get our bags through at once. Of course, customs was what we dreaded the most. Finally, Marc approached a customs official who had been looking at all of our bags. He said later that he just knew in his heart that this man meant us no harm. He explained that we were moving to Moscow, that our bags contained all of our possessions, and that we could not get through with all of our stuff on one trip. He asked if we could break the rules and he could come back to help get the rest of our stuff through customs. The guard asked what our two boxes were (our desktop computer), studied us for a moment, and then agreed that Marc could come back through customs to help me. We were stunned by the way God just worked out what looked to us (in our jet-lagged fuzziness) an impossible situation.
3. Our flat is amazing. It only has two bedrooms, but the kids’ room is large enough to split into two rooms with the finagling of some furniture. It was already set up that way when we got here by the IMB office here.
4. We have already made good friends with some of the folks on our team. They have blessed us in huge ways.
5. Hannah accidentally went through the wrong turnstyle at the metro and set off all kinds of alarms. Much to our surprise, the guard simply looked at us and waved her through.

Do you see how God is at work in every detail? I’m so amazed by Him. As I stood sipping tea this morning and looking out over the skyline of Moscow, all I could think was what a wonder He is. I am a girl from a small town living in a city of 15 million. For reasons unclear to me, the God of Everything has asked me to come alongside Him and work here, in this amazing place. How is that possible? All I know for sure is this—what He has for me is way better than anything I could dream up on my own. I was pretty content with my life in Florida. But maybe I was more complacent than content. When God used a series of events to get my attention, when He called me to this, He snapped me out of that complacency. And while life hasn’t been perfect since then, and it certainly hasn’t been easy, it’s also never been boring or dull.

Well, we are headed to the mall to eat lunch and buy some groceries—if you knew what I had in my house, you’d feel pitiful for my children. John-John had cheese crackers for breakfast! Oh, well…I’m pretty sure I forfeited my mother of the year award a while back. But we are practicing catching the bus in front of our flat and heading to where we need to go. I hope your day is as worshipful as ours has been. I hope that when you read this, you are encouraged that our giant God is at work where you are just like He’s at work here. And I hope that you know that you are loved beyond words by me! Blessings!
His,
Kellye