Snow Day!

When I awoke Tuesday morning to my surprise there was snow! It had been about 50 degrees the day before and very nice. But this morning there was a couple of inches of snow. Feeling like I was back home, I got out and shoveled our walk way. It has been cold since, but no more snow. Shrek, Tanya’s dog was not much help. He is very cute and very playful. But has a thing for my mittens, and wants a pair of his own I think, because he kept going after mine.


On Tuesday mornings we have team meetings, and whenever there is a meeting there is food. :) The six of us- Dima, Sergy, Tanya, Natasha, and myself and Sasha, our team leader. We have a time of worship in song and then a Word study. Afterwards, they discuss the week’s events and things that are happening in their ministries and what we will be doing as a team on Saturday. Here I will explain that each of them have separate ministries during the week and on Saturday mornings we do something together as a team. This month, March, I will be visiting and taking part in eachone’s ministries to see what they are doing and where I may see myself serving. So please pray that God will direct me to where He will be able to best use me! I was also assigned to make breakfast for this Saturday morning meeting! I’m a little nervous about this because I don’t really know what is a typical Kyrgyz style breakfast nor do I really know what foods are available to me. We shall see.

The later half of this week has been pretty full, which is a good thing. On Thursday, I went to the bazarre, or outdoor market with Natasha to pick up somethings I was needing and she had some shopping to do too. It is a giant maze of venders. Selling everything from toys, food, clothes to meat. (fresh meat). It was very neat, though I was glad to have Natash with me to help navigate to the items on our list. You definitely want to bring your own bags and make sure they are pretty hefty. She also brought me to the post office and to, what would be like a mall back home, there they have ATM machines which is a good thing to know. I just need to get a map of Bishkek so I can see how to get to everywhere. It will be a while before I know what number marshruka(minibus) to take where. Or where the trolley bus goes. Speaking of marshrukas, they are like vans, with so many seats and when the seats are full you stand up and hang onto the overhead bars, but you can’t always see when you stand straight up in them so you hunch over so you can see where you need to get off and to let the driver know where to stop. It is much fun!

So that was my morning into afternoon. Usually in my down times I do my language studies. Which tire out my brain. I’m still in the process of finding a language helper to meet with on a regular schedule. And thanks to Krista, I have started learning how to knit. And my knitting skills, like my Russian, have much improvement to be made.

Thursday evening, I went with Tanya and her youth to tennis club (ping pong). We meet up with Dima’s group at a church. It is quite a ways to get there. The tennis club was good. We play tennis with the guys and girls and also got a game of hacky sack going in the next room. Hacky-sack in Russian is ‘langa’ , and in Kyrgyzstan they make their langa balls out of leaves. Which during the spring/summer I hope to learn how to make. But at the church we had a typical hacky-sack like in the US. We stop the games after an hour or so, maybe longer? And have tea and snacks, then Word study. Many of these boys that come, have graduated from the orphange, which the team has a ministry to.They now go to school to train in an occupation, and also work. They live in the school dormatories. But others, like Sasha, who have run away from the orphanage, live on the street. Tanya says that sometimes they visit church but usually have to work so they come to the Bible clubs that happen during the week.

On Friday I went with Leeza to the Beta store to buy the food for Saturday’s breakfast that I was making. Natasha had informed me that they had had eggs the past two Saturdays, so scrambled eggs were out. So I thought why not home fries. Well, I brought my back pack because I figured it would be a lot easier to carry everything on my back than in plastic bags, and I’m glad I did! I didn’t remember the store being so far away. :)
When we got back it wasn’t long before it was time for Tanya’s youth club. And incase you’re wondering, each of the team members have volunteers that help with the ministries. I have been meeting many of them and they too go with us on Saturdays, some of their names are harder to remember because they are Kyrgyz names. But in time I will know them all! At youth club it is many of the same boys. Which is good because I’ve gotten to know some of them by name already. One of Tanya’s prayer requests is that there may be more guys in the leadership and involved in her ministries because there are so many boys that come out, and only a few girls. As with many of the ministries, food comes first. We prepare a meal for the youth that come out, with tea. Though probably they have not much to eat elsewhere. So it is good. It reminds me of something my Bible college professor used to comment on- a lot of Jesus’ ministry was done around food, and eating.

Well, Saturday came, the big day for breakfast. I was feeling the pressure early. I got up around seven, and we weren’t to eat until 9. But I knew I had to peel potatoes which I do not do speedily! Eventually all the potatoes were peeled and cut and the onions too. So I put them into two pans(a little after 8) because there was so much. And I season them with salt and pepper- what I know we had. And they seemed to take forever to cook. So we eventually ate around 9:30ish, to which I just claimed adapting to the culture because nothing and no one is ever on time. Which I think I was already adapted to back home. But I guess it was good, everyone ate it and some even had seconds. It seems weird to stress out over cooking breakfast. But I wanted to make a good first impression. I guess I did ok. Praise God!

I’d like to take time and reflect upon some things I’ve learned and have made some conclusions about. The first is, when cooking on a gas stove, make sure you have a match before you scramble your eggs. Luckily for me, I found an unused match among the used ones. Next, I have made a conclusion from crossing the streets in Bishkek and from riding in vehicles while others are crossing the streets in Bishkek, and this is that the creator of the game Frogger obviously has tried crossing the streets in Bishkek. I have also found that as I work on my Russian, my English tends to get worse, as far as sentence structure and phrasing. Hopefully by time I home visit remember I enough English will to communicate well.