Looking for the footprints

Righteousness will go before Him and will make His footsteps into a way. Psalm 85:13

I haven't written in a few days, both because I've been very busy and because our internet was out for almost two days. If you're looking for a good, but difficult, way to practice your new language--call the internet repairman to try and figure out what's wrong with your internet. Good times! We have been busy, too--language lessons, meetings, new families coming into Moscow, friends leaving for Stateside, sleepovers, picnics--you get the idea. In fact, as I write this, Hannah is at her friend's house spending the night. We have a break in language lessons next week while our teacher is on vacation in Turkey, and then we have three more days and I'm done and Marc is done for the rest of July and all of August. In September, he will go back to do some part-time language, but will be done with full-time. You cannot imagine the sigh of relief that is for us. Because we are working under the International Service Corps and not the Career appointment track for the IMB, we have had to do full-time language with no help for our children. If we were career, we would have had school paid for so the kids would be out of the house during our language lessons, and we might have had a house helper. We have had neither, and it has been extremely difficult on the entire family. Please know that I am not complaining--these are simply the facts of the program under which we came. But now that it's summer, it is very hard on the kids, because they are basically stuck in the apartment while we are doing language and homework. My kids are from Florida, and they need their outside time! So we made this decision prayerfully and carefully, but we have no doubt that it's the right decision. We will never be fully finished with language, and if we come back to Russia as career missionaries we will have to go back into language school for at least a year. I have to be honest...that's a hard idea to wrap my brain around. But if that's what God calls us to, then that's what we'll do.

One of the things I have really, really struggled with here is what success looks like. When we were in a meeting the first month we were here, a good friend, someone whose opinion I value highly, said to me, "Kellye, my concern for you is that you put such an emphasis on being successful. Success does not look the same here as it did in the States." Truer words have never been spoken. When we were deciding whether or not to take on house church after our team leaders head home for a year of Stateside, my only concern was success. I even said to Marc, "I don't want to fail at one more thing here. I just don't think I can handle any more failure." When he asked me what I felt I had failed at, my response was a long list of things: language, homeschooling, making friends, getting the house organized...you name it, and I feel I've failed at it. Then last weekend, I made the mistake of looking at some very, very good news about some programs I started in a couple of the schools I worked in at home. Those programs are thriving, students are being successful, teachers seem satisfied...and I'm stuck in Russia, where I can't even speak the language above the level of a five-year-old. I know what success looks like in my field. I know what success looks like in my home church. But it's not at all clear to me what success looks like here.

I'd love to say that I have this all figured out now, that my search for success is all in the past tense, that I feel comfortable and encouraged and wonderful about how I fit into God's plan for this huge city...but I can't. Marc is gregarious and outgoing, and Russians adore him. He has work stacked up for the next twenty years. He clearly fits into the IMB's strategy for this megacity. My particular gifts--organization, leadership, even music--don't seem to be of any use here. But I know that God has a purpose and a plan, and that somewhere out there in this city of fifteen million, His footprints are laying out a way for me. I just have to find where the footprints are, and then follow. Of course, that falls under the heading of "easier to say than do," but I think He'll honor my efforts.

Well, everyone in my house is up and moving, so I should go. There is enough cleaning to be done to keep me busy for a long time, so I should probably get to it. Wherever you are in the world, I pray that His footsteps are clearly marked out for you, and that your coffeecake turned out as tasty as mine did this morning. Blessings to you and yours!

His,
Kellye