A reason for everything

Yura and Alona are still staying with us. It has been a bit of a cultural eye opener for us, in that they arrived with about 3 hours notice and are kind of here indefinitely. In speaking with Kostya on Saturday I discovered that it is a bit of a village mentality, not exclusive to indigenous peoples, Russian villagers do the same thing when they come to the city. Alona has gone to the airport to try to get on the plane today, but we fully expect to see her later today. She does have a ticket for Thursday though. At the same time, Yura could easily be here another week after she leaves. It's all in the cultural experience, and we have started to grow accustomed to having them in our home.
We realised that God had a purpose for Yura and Alona coming to Krasnoyarsk. Not the least is that they do not have fellowship in their home town. To cut a long story short, the unregistered Baptists and traditional Pentecostals up there are exclusive and legalistic and have rejected Yura and Alona. Alona believed that she was unworthy as that was what she had been told.
Early in the week she expressed her desire to get baptised. She had some hesitations because of the things she had been told. But we were able to encourage her and explain that we are only accepted by God's grace and that she was free to get baptised. Of course she was very pleased about this. So yesterday we rented out the local sauna and swimming pool and with our fellowship we witnessed her proclamation of faith. These are great moments of joy and remind us of our reasons for living in this country.



We have had plenty of time to get to know Yura and Alona and have shown them nearly all of our collection of videos about Siberian people groups, which they have greatly enjoyed. I was surprised to learn that Yura goes hunting in the Winter time by himself for three months! "I have my dog with me," was his response to my amazement. It turns out that even though he is the administrator for the reindeer herds and he used to spend a lot more time as a herder in the past, he visits the herds more these days. I guess he goes hunting to provide for his family through out the year.