Can you hear that sound?

Vika, Ksenia, and Sasha with the birthday card they made for Marc. We are very close to these three students, and we look forward to seeing them each week.
They also brought a gift--this t-shirt, which has the Russian flag and the Russian word for Russia, which is pronounced Ro-SEE-ya.
Zhenya, Dasha, and Sarah Beth were a group working on poems about Marc (it was an adjective exercise). Sarah Beth's t-shirt was new--a gift in a box from my parents and sister that we got that day. What fun!

O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139: 1-3

My version of the above verses: O God, You know everything about me, the good and the bad. You are interested in anything that is going on in my life. You know everything that happens in my life or will happen in my life. You knew I desperately needed a dryer, and now I have a dryer. Thanks.

Okay, a dryer may not be a big deal to you guys who live in the States, but to my mission friends around the world, can I get an "amen"? Nothing is a bigger luxury to me than having a dryer. We bought a "new" (to us) dryer from our friends who left the field on Sunday, and we got it to the apartment yesterday. By the time I went to bed (after calling my parents and making them listen to the glorious sound of it working), I had done more laundry in three hours than I'd done in the whole prior 48 hours. It's so nice. Oh...and the softness. The glorious softness. I don't know how to describe how fabulously soft our clothes feel. There's a part of me that's tempted to re-wash and dry everything in the house, just to get the softness. Alright, I'm done. But the sound in the title of this blog...it's my dryer working.

We are still working to re-arrange everything in the house, but we're getting closer to having it done. Our only fear now is that something will happen and we'll have to move. We're sort of caught between two thoughts there--on the one hand, we love our apartment, which is much nicer than the average Russian apartment. On the other, it takes us right at an hour to get to school. That's not terrible by Russian standards, but I have to admit it's a pain. So we're kind of okay either way.

I had a weird but really nice experience the other day as I was walking home. I had been at Kyle and Dan's house, helping Kyle with some of the cleaning she needed to get done in order to leave on Sunday. It had been a nice time with her--she's one of those people who absolutely anyone can talk to for hours. Anyway, I was taking a shortcut home, which takes me through this path with really tall, beautiful trees. I was listening to Travis Cottrell sing "Hosanna," and the words "Hosanna, Hosanna, in the highest" were playing through my headphones. I kind of stopped in my tracks and looked up at the trees. I was pretty much alone (in a city of 15 million, you're never totally alone anywhere), and I had this sort of weird moment where I felt like the trees, which were swaying in the wind and beautiful, were praising Him right along with me. They looked like hands raised to Him. And it occurred to me that even though I am likely the only person around me who is listening to praise music in her headphones, that He will be worshiped no matter what. Even though 99.5% of Russians are not Jesus followers, the trees and the rocks and the beauty of this place all speak to who He is. They are worshiping Him right along with me. If that sounds nutty, that's okay with me. It was a reassuring and comforting moment in my life here, and I'll take those where I can get them.

Well, Marc and Irina are in here talking about where the furniture is (it's part of his lesson), so I need to run. It's hard to be deep and spiritual while they are talking about the writing desk, which is to the right of the door. What an odd turn our life has taken. A year ago, I was discussing the great literature of the world with students. Now, I'm a two-year-old who doesn't know how to say something is behind something else. Nothing like a language lesson to humble a person! Wherever you are in the world, I pray that you are watching the trees as they praise the Father, and that you can hear the glorious, glorious sound of your dryer working, too. Blessings to you and yours!

His,
Kellye