Three and a half hours of ironing would make anybody touchy

No particular reason--I just thought this was a pretty picture from my kitchen window. When I become discouraged, I look out this window at my city, and I pray for the millions of people here who do not know Christ.

O taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Psalm 34:8

I would love to tell you that every day I get up, I praise God for my day, I whip up a gourmet breakfast, and I speak fluently in the Russian language. However, that would be lying, and since I'm a missionary, that definitely breaks several rules in my contract. There are simply days I don't want to be here. Nothing is terribly wrong, nothing is happening that makes me not want to be here, and I'm not necessarily longing for the States. I just don't want to be here. Yesterday was that kind of day.

It began at the ironing board. My dryer is broken, my landlady is impossible to get ahold of, and everything in my house has to be dried on the drying rack. Because of that, everything in my house--including sheets and towels and wash cloths--has to be ironed. I'm sure the stiffness has to do with the heat in our apartment, but there isn't anything that can be done about it. I try to iron in the mornings so it's done and I don't have to think about it the rest of the day. So yesterday, I spent three and a half hours ironing underwear and t-shirts and jeans and wash cloths. By hour 2, I was not a happy camper. Why can't I live in a place where the dryer isn't broken and the landlady isn't impossible to contact? Why? You see how this went.

So I decided to take the girls to IKEA and the mall to have lunch. It's spring break, and we just wanted to have some fun. When I went to McDonald's to get ice cream sundaes, which I've ordered many times here, I knew exactly what to say: "Morojhanoye c chokolad, pajalcta." (That is the worst russian-english transliteration ever. Sorry.) The girl at McDonald's smirked at me and got the menu so I could point. She knew what I was ordering. She knew exactly what I was ordering. She just wanted to make me feel stupid. (Her manager did give her a look when she saw what was happening, which made me feel better.) When we went to Ashan, a lady hit me with her cart in order to make me move. That's rude in any language, and I was pretty ticked. Then we got on the marshrutka to go back home (which is a van that acts like a taxi), we got behind two giggling, snotty teenagers who looked us up and down and then proceeded to talk about us because they thought we couldn't understand. (In all fairness, I only understood some of what they were saying back and forth. They didn't like my hair or my coat, and they were sure we were foreigners. They pegged that one.) So you can imagine that by the time we arrived home (it takes us an hour to get to and from the mall because we are taking public transportation, though the mall is actually only about 10 minutes from my house), I was not having a good "I love being in Russia" attitude.

To top everything off, it was Thursday, which means English Club. Now, I love English Club so much, because it's something I can do. I am the English teacher. I am the one with something to offer at English Club, so it's a little boost for me each week. Plus, it makes us feel like we're doing something that's strategic, instead of just living and learning Russian. (Those are strategic, too, but not as fun as English Club.) But I would have rather cut my left arm off than taught English Club last night. When the doorbell rang the first time, and four people came in, I actually sort of hoped that would be it. Four people isn't hard. Four people isn't too much work. Then the doorbell rang again...and again...and again. By the end of the first 15 minutes, we had 13 people in English Club. It was amazing. We had a great, wonderful night, and we spent 30 minutes at the end, sitting around, drinking tea and eating the goodies everyone had brought, and just talking. It was like someone flipped a switch, and we went from being people who offered a service--learning English--to people with whom relationships were developing. One couple has a seven-year-old boy, and they want to get him together with John-John. Some of the guys want to take Marc to listen to someone who sings American Country music here in Moscow. Everyone was excited about next week. Did we get to share the gospel? No. It takes time here to develop relationships and "earn" that right. Russia is a hard, hard place, and the people are wary of outsiders. But I did get to share that we prayed about the chance to come here, and that we felt God had led us here. And nobody was repulsed or angry. So we're making steps. They might seem like baby steps if you don't live here, but to anyone who has lived and served in Eastern Europe, particularly in the large cities, they are amazing, miraculous, God-inspired steps.

Our team leader is working on his doctorate, and he has a really great presentation on "missional space"--the places we create by making relationships with people. Last night, we knew that we had created missional space, a place where God was already at work in ways we couldn't have even imagined. The folks at our English Club are not going to darken the door of an evangelical church, especially a Baptist one (communists taught people that Baptists sacrificed their babies...a big no-no in any culture). But they will come to our house, develop relationships with us, go to the club, go to have coffee, and then we have earned the place in their lives where there can be spiritual conversations. Missions looks different here. It is slow and frustrating, and the results take a long time to see. But last night, we got a glimpse of what God is doing. We got a refresher course in why we are here. And interestingly, the city looks different to me this morning.

Do you see how God has worked? I have been an English teacher my entire adult life. And just at the moment when I feel like throwing in the towel and going anywhere but Russia, God uses that gift to forward His agenda here. He has known my whole life that at this time, and in this place, I would need to teach English. And here I am. Teaching, which is nearly genetic in my family, is God's way of pushing forward His work in Russia. Did He plan this when my grandfather became a teacher? My grandmother? My aunt? My uncle? Did He know when my mother and aunts and sister went to work in school systems that a love for education was going to be important when I was forty and serving on the mission field? I believe with every inch of my soul that He knew. I believe this was His plan all along. And I believe that because I have studied the Bible and seen again and again that He is all-knowing and all-powerful. When I think about the years that He has worked in my life to bring me here...it makes the lady hitting me with her cart not seem so important.

What about you? How has God worked in your life for such a time as this? Where do you see Him in your family history? Because if you look closely enough, I'm pretty sure He's been at work in your life just like He's been at work in mine. I know this--the knowledge of His plan for you, even little bits of knowledge at a time, can work amazing miracles in even the hardest of hearts. Wherever you are in the world, I pray that you can clearly see how the God of Everything is at work, and that your homework is done for your language lesson this morning. Blessings to you and yours!!

His,
Kellye