Softly does it

Life is continually changing in Russia. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not. It's important to not focus on the negatives, as it can suck you dry. It's better to pretend they don't exist and just focus on the positives. All easier said than done really. Sometimes the negatives just come along and bite you on the bum. I recognise that's it a spiritual battle though.

Sometimes it feels like you barely get started and then things fall apart. This has happened to us recently. We had a wonderful Summer of learning Evenki with a family that we got to know. We were accomplishing goals (albeit slowly) on numerous levels. We took some great initial steps with the Evenki language (and thankfully we have everything recorded).  We should be able to build on what we have learned. We initiated language learning of an endangered language with young adults. (A milestone of no small proportions in reality.) We began to develop deep relationships with Katya and her family.

The family went away to China in late August for holidays. We saw them after their holiday. Then in September Katya was away in Evenkiya on business. In October we were having trouble organising a time for lessons, mostly because University students have a lot of contact hours here, including Saturdays, and there was no real free slot. We fit one lesson in October. Things were looking shaky, and we began to worry that the timetable may have broken. (This is something that can easily happen in Russia- schedules disintegrate and fly out the window.)

Early in November after numerous attempts to organise another lesson, and three failed meetings that had been promised to us, things fell apart. We received an SMS after failing to connect on the phone. "Sorry, but we are no longer able to continue studying Evenki with you."  It came abrubtly and it hurt.  The dust has settled on our emotions a little now. We have no clear explanantion. We can guess that as a family they simply became too busy to fit it in. But what of the relationship that we had developed. We have spent over 40 hours in person in the company of this family. This is nothing to be sneezed at. Perhaps things got too close for comfort, perhaps they felt overwhelmed by us. So all we can do is step back for quite a while. We will not push the idea of further lessons. But we hope to contact them after a month or so, and we hope that it may be possible to see them again and give them a present.

We have much to learn about Siberian indigenous cultures. It is made harder by the fact that we are not immersed amongst them. But I do wonder what it would be like living in an Evenki village and the chance that we could be held at a distance for a long time, living the lonely lives of outsiders. To be honest, we are starkly feeling like outsiders even in Krasnoyarsk these days. It takes so much to break into people's lives and their culture.

We badly needed a retreat from the responsibility of work. Last week we were privileged to have this. We went away for two days with our team mates, Tim and Iris and our families. We decided that we would have no big agenda other than to spend time in God's presence, to worship and to relax. Praise be to God, this happened. We had some blessed times of worship, communion and bible story telling.

During this time away I realised that, once again my plans really didn't matter. Did God tell us to take steps towards this family? I believe so. Were we obedient? Yes. Do we have to understand everything that ensues and what God' future plans are? No. I remembered that God is far more interested in relationship with us, than what we can do for him. I realised that we don't have to understand what has just happened, and that God can bring good out of it all still.

So, it's back to the beginning in some ways. But not completely. We have made other fledgling relationships. This Thursday we will watch a Sakha friend of ours compete in "Miss Asia Krasnoyarsk." An old Evenki lady that we met at the festival in Summer will come with us. So we move forward, albeit slowly. Потихоничку.  (Softly, slowy, easily does it.)

Here's some photos from our team retreat last week. It's a beautiful slice of Siberia. We seriously invite you to come have a holiday with us there sometime.

There was a boat on the River Mana by the resort. Tim could not resist taking the boys out for a ride. By the point of this photo he was complaining that they were in trouble and could not get back. I think he's not happy until he faces some trouble. :) Maybe that's true of all of us who choose to live in Russia.

A game of "pong pong" as Abigail calls it.

Iris, Jonathan, Abigail and Melody.

Such an idyllic setting is just waiting for you to join us.