I officially finished my university classes today. How do I feel? Well language learning is an ongoing process, and I still have a long way to go to master the Russian language. I am about to face the biggest test of my Russian language yet, and in some ways one of the biggest tests of my life. More on that in a little bit.
After my trip north, we immediately have a conference. Then after then conference we have 3 weeks until we leave Krasnoyarsk. Everything is coming to a head. My head is swimming. Truthfully I am looking forward to being able to step outside of Russia and being able to reflect on these 26 months in Siberia. A lot has happened, but I won't allow myself to fully reflect quite yet.
A nice little interlude for you, is the latest variety of wild flower to spring up in out local forest. Once again I have no idea what it is called. I would have to say, it is easily my favourite of the flowers I have seen so far this Summer. It looks like a wild rose, but there are no thorns what so ever. Melody tried to pick some but was told off by a local. Perhaps we will sneak back again tomorrow.
The big adventure starts Monday. For most of the time I will be incognito. Apparently at the first village there may be email at the policeman's house, who we are supposed to stay with. My Finnish friend Mika knows the policeman who is a Lutheran. Mika and some others stayed with him last year. I have tried calling Vladimir, but the phone number is not working. I will still try to chase him up tomorrow some how, but it is proving to be a bit of an impossible challenge to trace him at the moment. If we turn up unannounced, it won't be the end of the world, somebody will put us up, that's the way things work, I am told...... :)
Our itinerary:
Friday 6th- Yura our intrepid Evenki reindeer herder arrives by plane from Baikit, Evenkiya.
Monday 9th- Mika and Samuli arrive by plane from Finland/ St Petersburg at 9am. Hopefully their plane is on time, because we have a tight schedule. We then take a bus 5 hours later at 2pm, after stocking up on food for the boat trip ahead. Thanks Tim for the rides in your car!!
The bus will take us 7 hours north (sounds a long way, but it will be a painfully slow 250km), to the town of Yeniseysk. The boat will have left Krasnoyarsk at 7am, which is too early for Mika and Samuli.
At 11pm our boat should arrive and we can board. We will travel for 29 hours further north. (Sounds a long way, but it is about a further 600 km north.)
Tuesday 10th- on the boat we hope to share the good news with some indigenous peoples. Mika is bringing a portable DVD player on which we can show the J film in Russian. I have some Evenki language good news stories to give away on CD, if people have a cd/ dvd player. Samuli is bringing his guitar, so we should have some good fellowship and worship times, which will be very important on this trip.
Wednesday 11th- arrive in Verkhneimbatsk, and stay with Vladimir. Vladimir oversees 7 villages and should be able to help us somehow with our goals.
Monday 16th- the helicopter flies once a week to Kellog, capital of the Ket. We will have one week with the Ket people and a handful of believers. Kellog is an extremely isolated and unreached village, full of depression, alcoholism and hopelessness. I am fully expecting to be shocked by what I see. Needless to say, I am a little nervous about all this. I will be away from my family for 2.5 weeks in total, which will be very difficult. I will be translating for two Finnish people which will be a real challenge. I hope that Yura and the other village dwellers will be patient with me if I do not understand something. Pray for me to have a real gift of understanding the Russian language.
We have already put the word through to the believers to set up an appointment with the administration of Kellog. They may have been able to do this, or perhaps Vladimir from Verkhneimbatsk may be able to do this.
Then Yura is on stage as he will explain to the Kellog administration, that some men can come over to Evenkiya and learn for a season, how to work with reindeer. If the Kellog administration take this on board, they will be able to later on receive the gift of 150 reindeer to start a new herd. If this all comes together, it will be the first time that the Ket have reindeer in nearly 70 years.
The Ket are a dying people, there are only 1200 of them left. This could be the start of something new and beautiful for them. Please pray that they would be excited by the offer and that everything might come together.
This will be a huge adventure. Once I am into it, I will probably calm down a little more. :)
Monday 23rd- we are scheduled to fly to Turukhansk, the district capital. If the weather permits we will fly that day. If not, we have a couple days up our sleeves.
We will stay with some believers in Turukhansk.
Thursday 26th- fly back to Krasnoyarsk.
I will be totally exhausted, I am sure, but then we are off to our Russia area retreat, which will actually start the day before.
Please don't forget to pray, I couldn't be asking at a more important time. The spiritual darkness is real, but so is the Light of the World.
The blog will probably be very quiet for a few weeks. Melody may be able to post some of my emails, in the first week, and I may be able to make a phone call in the second week, from a satelite phone?
Otherwise look back in early July.
2 comments:
Wow, this really is a big adventure. You have planned for it well and I'm sure everything will turn out even if things don't quite go as smoothly as they could. It's a very special thing to be doing and these are special places to be going, the boat trip alone up into that part of the world will be amazing. I think I can understand a little of your apprehension though - we recently returned from a week in Morocco where i gave a paper at a conference and there were a few details that I could only work out once we were there such as catching buses to various places at carious times. But everything just worked out beautifully and I quickly felt at home even though it's such a different place (not unlike South Australia in landscape though i have to say).
I advise taking a good book to read so that you can pass any tedious hours, and also a notebook so that you can jot down all that you see and do (you'll probably do this anyway). As for speaking Russian, you'll learn so much just by doing. A little tip - learn vocabulary! write down the words that keep coming up or any that you think you will need especially and just memorise them (another way to pass the time with all that travelling) so that they might come to you even if you feel a bit stressed or anxious. Little goals, five or ten words a day, or less or more depending on what you think you can manage.
Will be thinking of you and look forward to hearing of your safe return. Thinking too of Melody and Abigail who will miss you. Hope Melody is able to find some warm company with which to share the summer days.
The flower you showed is likely rare and protected so they didn't want you to pick it. Like the wild tiger lily and the ladyslipper here.
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