NYC

Hello USA!

We flew in from Moscow yesterday on a 10.5 hour flight (or 9.5 maybe?). And EVERYONE is glad to be back. I scheduled a stop in NYC to take in some sights and I walked around all day yesterday. I was worn out, but maybe that'll help beat jetlag.(?)

Here's a God story from our trip; we all packed a lot of gifts and aid materials to take to Siberia with us. So we all had 2 checked bags, 1 personal bag with clothes and gifts to give out and 1 bag from Global Aid with more stuff to give out. You can check 2 bags on an international flight, so going from NYC to Moscow was fine. But when we checked in for Moscow to Novokuznetsk, that is a domestic flight and they wanted to charge us for all the extra bags and extra weight ... it was going to be 2 thousand bucks! Charles started talking to them telling it was aid for orphans and prisoners and the rest of us prayed. They wanted proof of what we were doing so we pulled out our trip books and showed them our itinerary and they waved the entire fee! Slava Bogo (Praise God)! He is good and takes care of his own.

Ok, here's one fun story. The Russian alphabet has a lot of latin characters in it but they are pronounced like the Greek letters, so you can almost never sound out any words you see (e.g. a "P" is the Greek letter "roe" and makes a "r" sound). So a "nameless" friend asks how to pronounce "pectopah" in Russian. Me: "resturan", her: no in Russian, Me: "resturan", her: no in RUSSIAN, Me: "resturan", her (turns to Laura a Russian speaker): how do you pronounce that in Russian?, Laura: "resturan", her: Oh, ok. :)

God bless you all, and more stories to come.

Labels: Russia, Siberia