I (Diana) have gone from tutoring English one afternoon a week to two days this school year at the orphanage that is near our apartment. This year was about getting to know the kids and staff more and more. Building trust with anybody takes time, but Russians are wary by nature and slow to accept.…

The madness leading up to our being able to turn in the paperwork for our application for temporary residence was stressful and taxing. As I reported here in detail, the whole three month ordeal took 60 hours of my time. I considered our first year of life a learning curve equivalent to a masters degree.…

A former client sent me in the middle of letter a very kind testimony to how she was impacted by our time together several years ago: A marked difference for me since we last met [5 years ago] … it’s totally normal for me to feel in constant prayer. Is this normal? I feel it…

Nothing gets a person’s mission juices flowing like actually doing a mission project. In my correspondence with our supporting churches, I constantly remind them that we are ready to help them organize a short-term project that suits their desires and parameters. Meanwhile, I got to help with a team of high-school kids who came here…

I’ve been stuck in moving my prayer life to another level of intimacy with God. Recently, I started this spontaneous conversation with myself that I think gave me a few small breakthroughs. Someone needs to read this, I feel. Someone else may be bored. Maybe someone needs one part of the conversation I had with…

Back in November I attended a conference where I met a psychologist with whom I was eager to follow-up, as she also seemed. After several attempts on my part, she called me in January and asked if she could meet with me in February with an “unusual request.” So I waited another month and finally…

The big coffee chain here, an obvious imitation of Starbuck’s, is called Coffee House, but I used to mis-read the name. In Russian it’s Кофе Хаус, which is only one letter off from Кофе Хаос (Chaos) so I thought it was the latter (House isn’t even a Russian word, one other reason I mis-read it.)…

Our last trip out of the country was at the end of October to get student visas that would allow us to stay in the country for a full year. (Of course, things are never that simple here. They really were only for three months, but they could be extended to a year. We just…

The following is an article from Arguments and Facts, a well-known national paper here, about some of the ways the homeless live here. It’s worth reprinting in its entirety. I used the Google translation tool, so it’s weak in places, even after some tidying up on my part, but you’ll get the idea. As an…

A reader responded to my post on helping my daughter go to sleep: I found your experience with Tobias and the prayer to relinquish the influence of another spirit fascinating. I think I understand and agree with what you and Tobias did. My question is this – how does one identify such foreign influences in…