Rewind #5: Stephen!

(I'm leaving these to post automatically while we're at our dacha.)

For those of you who don't know, Stephen is one of my "little brothers." No, we're not related in anyway, but our families were neighbors and very close friends for as long as I can remember. He was on a missions trip in Russia, and then he came over here to visit us.

Stephen arrived on the day of Pentecost. His train got into Zaporozhya just after noon, so I skipped out of church a little early to go meet him. We had an uneventful trip back from there, dropped his luggage off and headed right out to dinner at our friend Lena's home. From there we took him to the evening church service, and then out to our dacha to sleep. We welcomed him by making him blow up an air mattress for himself.


The next morning our first butterfly emerged from its chrysalis!  Of course, Stephen got to be in on the excitement, taking pictures and watching with us.

I really didn't take too many pictures of Stephen with our camera.  He was doing more of the photographing while he was here.  (I might get around to posting more of his photos later.  He have me permission, but I'd have to sort through them still.  He did put some up on his blog.) Here's one of the few I do have from when he was at our dacha. . . Jaan and Stephen by the fire one night:

Stephen's visit flew by way too fast.  After the Sullivans left, we had one night in our apartment, and then we left, too.  These next pictures are from that short time in our apartment.  Reading together:

And a pillow fight!

I thought it was funny that the whole time Jaan and Raia were attacking Stephen, Asya was quietly sitting with a book right next to them.  She hardly ever even looked up, and it was a WILD pillow fight.