European Birthday

As many of you already know that the laws here in Russia have changed making it even more difficult for us to stay in the country so we have been jumping through hoops. To save money from the year of expenses we have paid in bureaucratic red tape, we decided to drive out into Europe, versus a plane trip for 6 back to the states. We anticipated a rough trip but not on such a rough road! The pot hole filled freeway we had to drive on, through the Ukraine was almost more than I could endure! 30+ hours straight through on a bumpy country road! But as we crossed over to Hungary a numb feeling came over us...we felt like we were literally riding on butter it was so smooth! Thank God for Speed-the-Light! Our great blessing of a car got us through!

We spent a couple of nights in Hungary and 2 days exploring Budapest. Silas spent his birthday exploring a real castle and ice skating right next to it! Then we drove into Vienna, Austria where he got to go into a Toys R Us and pick out a toy! This will be a hard birthday to top!


Silas, we are so proud to be your parents. You have given us more joy and laughs, by just hearing you giggle! You have the best giggle! I loved that you wanted to buy all your siblings a "prize" for your birthday and the things you say like, " God is the king of you and dad and you are the boss over us and we have to obey you to obey God!" I am proud of your understanding and desire to understand new things everyday! You amaze me! We love you so much and pray for more blessings and wisdom for you in year 5.

These are pictures of the St. Stephens Church in Vienna. We took a short tour of the catacombs under the church where they have coffins and millions of bones of people that died from the black plague. It was so fascinating! I have never seen anything like it. Very creepy down there. I wish we could have taken some pictures but we were not allowed. The kids were a little scared and they will not soon forget that tour.


We will be driving to Innsbruck tomorrow and plan on stopping in Salzburg to see the city where the VanTrap family are from. What a dream for me!

russian history??

OK This is a funny story and I need to tell you all what happened today. I have been studying Russian again, which, by the way, will be a life long task! That is not to discourage you new students of Russian but even if you are linguistically talented, Russian can give you a 'run for your money'. I have to admit that I am not as 'well off' as I thought with the language and can't remember a lot of what I have already learned. My long time excuse has been, "O...well, when I came I was pregnant and ended up having two babies close together. Being a person of strong personal convictions I decided not to give up my responsibility and desire to spend those first years of there life, to a babysitter while I studied Russian." Which is still my conviction and I would not do it differently, but now that my babies are 6 and 5, that "excuse" doesn't jive anymore. So here I am trying to remember all these cases and the grammatical lingo that I have forgotten. The first 2 weeks I was a little lost and very humbled hearing verbs I had never learned and fumbling along trying to remember the rules. Well this week has been better. Today, especially, I was feeling very confident that ,"I know this stuff! I can do this no problem!" I was cruising along conjugating my prepositional objects with adjectives, singular and plural. Then we moved to ordinal numbers and I was really cruising with those, when all of a sudden the teacher gives us this paper with historical figures and the questions ,"in what century was this war?" and , "in what century did so and so live?" all of a sudden my heart started beating fast and I started feeling my face start to get hot thinking, "What! I don't know history dates! I am terrible at history!" So when it was my turn I confessed my deepest shame of not being good at history let alone the dates, as they all stared at me and then burst into laughter! -Horror- Then they showed me that, right after the question was the number/answer for the century you were to quote! I felt so dumb! I guess it was God humbling me, again! I have had lots of those "ditzy" moments and I am sure I will have more. All I know is that I spent all day Saturday, ministering with a team from my church at an orphanage and once again, felt like that little girl in my childhood, scared to open my mouth in fear of all eyes upon me scrutinizing me and the words that would come from my mouth, only for different reasons. But seeing those kids so excited to see us coming gave me confidence despite my selfish insecurities, that whatever I could give with words or deeds would mean the world to them. I ended up having a great time of ministry, but also more inspired to press on with my Russian! I have lots more pictures to share with you from my time with the orphans for the next post. Please pray for all of us as we press

on with our language proficiency.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

Today is Marks birthday. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to buy him something special, but since we have no Barnes and Noble near by, I decided that anything I would buy would be just a waste of money since there is nothing here that he would want and would be very over priced. So instead, yesterday I organized a small party of men to come have some guy time.
I set them up with some appetizers and they spent some time exchanging amazing stories of survival not just here in Russia but as crazy boys in there youth. Then they played a game that our friend Brennan brought with him, which they seemed to enjoy, I guessed from the yelling that was going on, I didn't hear any grunting but that might have went on too. They topped off the night with some more conversation by the fire and stayed until 12:30.
We are so thankful for our friends that we have made here. They are certainly some of the best people that we could ever be able to call our friends. We feel that they are like family. Thank you for the fun and "sharpening" that was shared on Marks behalf. You guys are truly treasures.
Now a few words for Mark: I am so blessed to have such an amazingly talented, compassionate, resourceful, passionate, giving, loyal, humble, gracious, protective, romantic, fun-loving, "hands-on" father, tough (with a mixture of sensitivity) man to share this life with! Thank you for journeying with me and making me a better person. I love you more with each passing year and that is not just a sappy line, but the honest truth!

What do MKs do for fun?

Well... after they do their chores of helping chop and pile the wood that is used to keep our house at a semi bearable temperature in the winter, they play in the half built brick house that is behind ours.
These our some pictures of our kids along with the Hayes' kids helping Mark with our wood pile. These were taken in November. He is not afraid to put kids to work even ones that don't belong to us. They are cheap labor and he can scare and impress them with his ax handling abilities. In his opinion, all children by the age of 6 should have some education on ax handling, especially boys. So with one eye closed I watch as the kids each have a go at hitting a log with an ax to make some kindling. (For all you who are concerned it is supervised closely by Mark.)

Jonah is running out of steam here.


Hard work builds character and respect and they will thank us one day!




This is the pile of wood they moved! The kids taking pride in a job well done.



This is what the kids do in there free time. They collect junk,oh... I mean treasures, from piles of rubbish and take it to the 'white house' . Cady and Haillie are having some 'dinner' on their makeshift table. I am always amazed by the imagination that flows from kids. I think MKs are even more imaginative then other kids only because of the necessity of having to create their own entertainment versus having it fully available at all times.



The White House in all its grandeur.




The kids found this TV that doesn't have its insides, but who needs it when your just pretending.




The beauty of living in this country is the ironic freedom from certain legalities.

MKs have such a different childhood that it is no wonder that they feel kinship towards other MKs with the same experiences of this nomadic life of pursuing the lost to the ends of the earth!
I know that they have had and will have more, times of mourning and of wanting a 'normal' life, but in the end I hope and pray that they will embrace the life God has given them and appreciate the amazing experiences they have had as MKs.