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Tim and Rachel (July 2010) - Part 1 |
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Huge Greetings to you all!
We hope this finds you all well. We hope you are able to access our new look news-sheets. It’s always a problem with some email addresses with how large a file we can send - so we thought we’d try this way instead!
Sorry for not having communicated much lately. We came back out to St Petersburg in a bit of a rush in the end, the visa coming through on the Thursday before we flew, our flight leaving on the morning of Saturday 5th June. So we have been back a month already and have quickly got right back into things, Tim has already preached twice at Hope Church as well as both of us helping out where needed on Sunday’s. But life as a four, with Anya still so little, has taken some adjustment. We feel we are slowly getting there. Anya continues to do really well and is now 4 months. Here is a picture taken just the other week:
The July weather has been a bit of a shock! - it’s so swelteringly hot we feel like we are melting! Not many places have air-conditioning (apart from July it’s not really needed!) so there seems to be no escape from the heat or humidity. We are starting to understand why most of the Russian’s leave the city when they can in the summer, especially in July. It is the season of the White Nights, when the sun is still shinning past midnight, unlike in England when we got the cooling that nighttime brings, there seems little release. The room temperature when we go to sleep is 29.5 degrees C, or higher, and the same when we wake up! In the full heat of the day, the thermometer on the window has got up to 43 degrees C. And to think that in the winter it got down to -35 degrees, that’s a 78 degree difference in about 6 months! Amazing!! This picture was taken at midnight from our window in the lounge!
Hope Church is coming up to its first birthday already (September 6th), and we continue to see new people visiting us and joining, even through the much quieter summer. It was encouraging that someone got saved on our first Sunday back and there have been several people saved over the last 6 months including a baptism in the bath! But church planting is done so much through relationships and we have kept an open house since coming back, having people around for dinner on different days in the week or spending a day with someone. It’s encouraging seeing the effects of simply sharing our home and lives with people.
On Sunday’s we have been working through the book of Ruth, which has been really exciting and very relevant for us as a church. In midweek’s we are gathering together as one and working through the Foundations Course, looking at key areas of what we are as a local church in St Petersburg. Tim has enjoyed the challenge of speaking in both these settings.
On the wider scene things are continuing to grow and surprise. At the time I am writing this message, Igor, a local Pastor & his wife and another person are at the Brighton Conference, (an international leaders conference) together with Hansie & Lena, from Hope Church. Another Pastor had his visa refused so sadly couldn’t go.
But there is so much going on - we hope to bring you more news in our next update. (PArt 2 continues)
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