Questions and answers

Please don't feel bad if I didn't answer your comment! I love to get any kind of comment, but I only chose out a few here that asked for responses. The questions are in italics, with my answers following:

Do you have mosquitoes there? And, how do you cut that grass? Do you need me to come over and do that part?
The mosquitos aren't terrible, but they are around. I think they're worse at our apartment.

Here's how Will cuts the grass:

Косой
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Want to try?

Is that plant some kind of nettle or false nettle? Is the caterpillar a relative of the red admiral?
Yes, it's a nettle plant. There are so many nettle-eating caterpillars here, that I don't know which are which yet. I'll let you know what this one was when we find out. (The pupa looks more like a moth!)

How was it, staying at the dacha? Did you hate to go back to the apartment? When will you go back?
Phyllis, I have a special picture for you. I hope to put it on my blog today -- I'm sure it will bring you a smile!
Staying at the dacha is wonderful! I'm usually happy to come back to the apartment afterwards, though, because I'm ready for a bath. Will gets to clean up when he runs by our apartment before various events, but I pretty much stay at the dacha while we're there, so I look forward to the weekends just for hot, running water. Oh, after the first week, we got here and found that the hot water was off. I almost cried, thinking it might be off for the summer already. It came back on the next morning, though. And that time, when I bathed the children--who usually love water--they screamed the whole time. It seemed like they had forgotten what it means to be clean! However, since then they've enjoyed their weekend baths.

I've been wanting to get online again, specifically to see your photo! I got this comment by email last week, and I had even copied the text of your blog to read offline, but I don't get the photos that way. (My chances to get online are so short, that I just grab the text, without taking time to read or let the photos load.) By the time this is posted, I should have seen the photo, though. Thanks!

There's nothing better than a friendly visiting cat. The cat and children seem very content. Caterpillars are fun to watch but petting a cat is so soft!
You're right. But the cat hasn't come back, and we get in plenty of caterpillar petting time.

Jaan and "Masha"
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Ты прям на этой фотке не Вилл, а Василий! :D Класс! Какой у вас большой участок! Здорово! Что-нибудь будете сажать?
Все там знают его как Володя, не Вилл. Так легче. Да, много места. У нас 4 сотки! Да, много всего сажали, но правда не ожидаю большой урожай. Мы поздно начали, и под ужасным жаром. И все что я делаю, я делаю с маленьками помощниками, которые любят семена просто бросать и везде топтать. Короче, я больше занимаюсь с детми, и не с огородом. Но это тоже большая радость, конечно.

Pictures of the leaf sewn around him [the caterpillar] would be appreciated!
Our camera doesn't usually do close ups, so I don't have anything that shows that. However, if you look at the garden photos over to the side here, the caterpillar is there, so at least you can see it. (Here’s a direct link.)


Now for my questions:
1. Why should garlic be planted with strawberries? Everyone puts them together, but when I've asked why, I've gotten, "Because that's the way to do it" and "Because it scares something off. . . can't remember what."
2. What would be a good way to get rid of the beetles that are eating our leaf crops? Mom suggested soapy water, and I tried that. We'll see if it worked when we go back next week.
3. What is this wildflower?

Mystery legume
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

(I know it's probably hard to see, but I had to include the cute little girl, too. )

4. Would anyone like to find a photo to show of a bird called a Bluethroat? They're my new favorites.
5. When do gooseberries ripen? (I think I have the right berry; крыжовник is gooseberry, right?)

Happy birthday to Raia!

Usually I like to post birthday pictures, showing how much the children have grown. I can't do that right now, so you'll have to go back and look on your own. I do have a bunch of really cute recent photos of Raia to share, though. Here's my favorite from the past few weeks:

Butterfly watching
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Her current favorite food:

Strawberries!
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

That was her first taste, right when we arrived at the dacha on Monday. Jaan eats his strawberries slowly and contemplatively; Raia stuffs hers in, and then usually starts trying to get his.

Picking and eating
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Peonies make me think of Raia, since friends from church brought them to me when she was born. Now we have three beautiful bushes of them. This is our big two-year-old standing in front of one of those clumps:

Two-years-old
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

On Thursday we celebrated her birthday with a supper of grilled chicken and ice cream covered with strawberries and rhubarb. Believe it or not, Raia picked the strawberries out of her dessert and left the rest. If you knew what a big treat ice cream is for our children, you would be as shocked as we were! Of course, she had already eaten more chicken than Jaan or me, so I guess she just didn't have any room left.

How old?
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

(Actually, she really can show two fingers. It just takes a while to get that third one down, and the camera went too fast that time.) She's fascinated with TWO now. I don't remember Jaan understanding so much at his second birthday. She always has at least one knee skinned, and falls are usually no big deal to her. On Wednesday she was just inconsolable, though, when both her knees were injured. I told her that it was two because she was going to be two years old, and then she was fine.

To change the subject from Raia: we're all doing well and enjoying having life settle into more of a routine. Fridays we come back from the dacha in time for Will to go to choir practice. Then, Saturday morning I go to the mothers' prayer meeting; Saturday night we have a youth meeting. Sunday is taken up almost completely with church, although last week Will had a neat opportunity in between services to help a new acquaintance with English. Monday is sometimes taken up with Gospelink business or other meetings for Will. And then we go back out to our dacha.

We're really enjoying the time at the dacha. Different people spend different amounts of time at their gardens, but we have ended up with neighbors on almost all sides who are there most of the time. Of course, so far getting to know them is mostly just garden talk, but I would love to see some deeper friendships grow, too. I overheard this funny conversation between Jaan and our next door neighbor. (They have a sprayer on their hose, and Jaan has been fascinated by it.)
Jaan: "Dedushka, Papa bought us a machine gun!"
Neightbor: [His eyes widen.] "Really?"
Jaan: "It's just like yours."
Neighbor: "What?"
Jaan: "Now we're going to shoot our flowers, just like you do."
[Neighbor looks puzzled, and Will walks up to explain that Jaan calls a sprayer nozzle a machine gun.]

Also, another family from church bought a garden near ours recently. Plus the family we bought from has another in the same area, and Yulia's parents also have their dacha right near ours. (Yulia is a friend from church.) Between those old friends and the new ones we're making, we can keep quite busy visiting right there in our garden community! There are 500 plots there, and I almost feel like we've moved into a new village. Beyond that, there's just the joy of watching our children, the flowers, the butterflies, the birds. . . life is good! Thank you, Lord!

We're really still Americans, after all!

If anyone has had any doubts about whether our children have American blood, and whether or not Phyllis and I are reaaaally still 'Real Americans' - here's proof! If it's not all that obvious, the the children are greatly enjoying hot dogs and hamburgers, and I was the one who cooked them. On a hamburger grill, even! I think those were the best hamburgers Phyllis and I have had in a loooong time. Maybe it was just working outside all day before eating...

Mama's BIG helper

Jaan was absolutely hypnotized by the pistol-grip hose nozzle I got for watering. After his first look, it was "I want to use the gun! I want to use the gun! Please?! Please?! PLEASE!!??" When he was finally able to do so, he was a real help in watering the strawberry plots, and watered for at least half an hour all by himself! Jaan was also impressed that this was a gun that "won't kill anybody, it just helps the plants grow" - a really, really good gun, in other words. =)

Mama's little helper

Raia loves being able to actually HELP Phyllis whenever possible, and she's getting to the point of really being able to do so! Here she was bringing Phyllis the watering can to water some cucumber seeds they'd planted together.

Raia gets a closer look...

Raia was a little intimidated by the cat at first, for some reason, but she warmed up soon enough! The cat was very patient with the children, and even more so after they fed her slices of hot-dog! =)

The shy caterpillar

Phyllis as always is costantly teaching the children about God's nature. For her, the greatest enjoyment comes from sharing in the children's wonder and excitement. Here they are trying to be very close to caterpillar, yet very still... it was sewing a leaf up around itself!

A special visitor...

Phyllis took pity on this cat who was very loudly complainig of hunger pangs outside our door. It was on a rainy day last week, and was a delightful distraction for the children!

Hi again

I'm posting what I had written on Saturday (below). It's more complicated to drag this computer around than I had thought! It's taken several tries to get set up. I don't know if weekly is realistic, but you will hear from us periodically. We won't just disappear.

Tomorrow we're headed out to our dacha. We had planned on going today, but Will had a meeting, and we needed to rest after the weekend.

It's been a week

Last week Will was slowly moving our belongings downstairs. He was carefully finding or making places for everything, putting things away as he brought them down. We actually started living here last Thursday. Then, on Saturday, our friends came to help, and all the rest of our stuff descended like an avalanche. We've been working on digging out since then.

The new apartment is sparsely furnished. Therefore the avalanche effect and piles of things sitting around on the floor everywhere. It's really nice, though! Our old apartment was fully furnished (over-furnished!) and full of clutter. Less is definitely more here.

Oh, a funny story: Jaan and Raia keep asking questions about which apartment belongs to whom and such, probably just trying to get set in their minds that we've actually moved. Recently, they were talking about who is upstairs now. . . "[Landlord's daughter], and a man, and a woman, right Mama?" I answered, "Да, и малыш." ("Yes, and a baby.") Since they still call Raia Ляля (another word for baby), they've been very insistent that our Baby #3 is Малышка. They instantly panicked at my answer. "What!?!?! You left our Малышка up there? We thought Малышка was in your tummy! Go back and get him right now!" We've also convinced them that their imaginary and very scary crocodile, Yezh, stayed in the old apartment. Knocks on the door are a little frightening, though, because they seem to expect him to join us any day.

It has been terribly hot all week, record highs. I'm so glad we're not up on the fifth floor! Even down here it was bad. Just yesterday the heat wave finally broke with a wonderful rainstorm. Let's pray that the summer will be cooler now. When I was pregnant with Jaan, I did pray for that, and God gave it to me. Maybe this year can be like that, too?

We'll probably be spending next week at our dacha! We've been making short trips out there, but it will be very fun to stay for a while. It's officially too late to plant a garden (Trinity/Pentecost is past*), but we've gotten some seeds and plants into the ground already, and we're going to keep adding to them.

Several people have asked about our address. The one in the sidebar here is the right one now. It won't matter if you sent mail to the old one, though; we'll still get it. The American Social Security mail continues to come to "Wilburn H Hunsucker III, G. Kovrov, 601911 Russia." That's name, city, zip code, and country, nothing else and all in English. One time someone at the post office added a handwritten note that had our building's street number, then "3rd entrance, 5th floor, can't remember the apartment number."

(*Interesting note: I just read Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, my own subtitle: How the Generals Bungled Everything. There was a footnote explaining "In pre-revolutionary rural Russia, the peasant's life was regulated by the Orthodox Church calendar; generally the peasants did not know the times of the year by month and date, but simply by saints' days, many of which marked the start or finish of phases of work in the farming cycle." He also points out that they didn't know anything about the holidays; they just marked the seasons by them. A good bit of that is left in gardening lore today. Not many people know what we celebrated last week, but everyone was rushing to get their gardens in before it.)

Пока!

First meal in our new apartment
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

We're almost moved into our new apartment and dacha. We slept downstairs last night and woke up to a wonderful problem: we were cold! It was so much better than the fifth-floor heat!

I'm sitting on the floor typing. When I'm done, Will is going to move the computer downstairs, too. That means no more easy internet for a while now. I still plan on updating here once a week or so. Email will be possible again when we get our laptop back. Until then, feel free to email us (please write!), but don't hold your breath waiting for a quick answer. Also, please be careful not to send big files, forwards, or photos.

"See" you later!

Spring prayer letter

May 20, 2007

Dear friends,
So far, spring has been very busy and often stressful for us. We have enjoyed the beautiful warmer weather, flowers, and extra time outside! Jaan’s getting old enough that I can send him out by himself; I do keep a very careful watch through the window. He loves to sit with our elderly neighbors and talk. Raia’s definitely not a baby any more. She’s talking constantly and really showing her own personality. Baby #3 is also growing well and making his/her presence very obvious. I’ve dealt with more nausea this time around than ever before, but otherwise all is well. Again this year we’ve planted flowers around the entrance to our apartment building and interacted with our neighbors through that.

Easter was beautiful, falling just when everything outside was beginning to come back to life. The days leading up to it were busy with showing the Jesus film. There was a very good turnout for that. Thank you to those of you who were praying!

Jaan now understands and can tell the story of Christ’s Resurrection. For the 40 days after Easter in our family we also reminded each other daily that “He is Risen” and sang Easter hymns. Both children can now reply “He is Risen indeed!” and sing something almost recognizable. We just learned about the Ascension, and now they’re waiting to see what will happen at Pentecost.

Now for the stresses. . . .
In March we had a visit from the Migration Service. Up until now, we have just had our visas registered in Moscow and lived here without local registration, because there was no way to register here. That changed when Migration Service began to insist that we register locally. So, we started the process of getting new visas that we should be able to register in Kovrov. At this point, my invitation for a new visa has been refused and Will’s has been granted. We’re just getting ready to try to ask for reconsideration on mine. Please pray! It has been hard to have this hanging over our heads, and it still not resolved.

At the end of April our landlord gave us a month to find a new place to live. We bought a dacha, and we’re very excited about spending time there this summer. Sadly, that has been somewhat clouded by an uproar in the church about us living there. (This is really condensed. You can read more details in the archives here, or write to us with questions: mayakovsky@willphyl.com.) We are still planning to move out to the dacha quite soon. Also, we’ll be renting an apartment on the first floor, here in the same building where we’ve been living.

That doesn’t sound so bad, now that I have it written out! :-)


Prayer requests:
1. VISAS! Please pray that our visa problems would be solved as soon as possible.
2. Housing: pray as we move and settle in and make decisions. Pray that we’ll be able to get a phone put in the new apartment quickly.
3. Health: pray that the sniffles and such would stay away, and that I would feel good.
4. Youth meetings: we had asked for prayer that youth/young family fellowship times would be more regular, and we’ve seen that happen. Please pray that, if possible, we’d be able to continue meeting through the summer. People might be too busy, but we’d like to try.

Please let us know how we can pray for you.

As always, please write to us! Starting soon, our opportunities to email will be sporadic, but if you write, we’ll eventually get it. Also, our mailing address is changing just slightly: the apartment number is different now.

Have a wonderful summer!
Love and prayers,
Phyllis Hunsucker (for Will, Jaan, Raia and ?)

Summer wardrobe

Raia models one of her new outfits
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

It's really hot here! I mentioned to one of our neighbors that Raia didn't have any summer clothes, and that I was having trouble finding anything small enough in the stores. Our sweet neighbor went running off to dig through her closets and came back with a bag of clothes left from her daughter. . . who happens to be the same age as me. Raia has a whole wardrobe of vintage Soviet clothes now.

Moving day!

. . . but not to the dacha. Today we're moving to the apartment on the first floor. I don't know how long that will take, or what our exact plans are. We can still be here this week, so maybe we'll be sleeping and using the computer here for now? (They haven't moved the bed in for us there yet, and there's no phone.) All plans are very sketchy and change daily.

Raia and her truck

Raia and her truck
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

She makes me laugh. This truck is as special to her as Jaan's crane is to him, but it's usually decorated with flowers, and it gets put to bed and babied like a doll. One day recently her hands were just as dirty as Jaan's, but as they marched around the neighborhood like this with their vehicles, she had one fat, black finger held up in the air to keep a sparkly ring on it.

Jaan and his crane

Jaan and his crane
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

This is what I see when we go for walks now. They race ahead of me and pull their vehicles. (You'll see Raia's tomorrow, or sometime soon.)

A few random bits

Our eggs hatched! We have three incredibly tiny caterpillars now.

Jaan wanted to know, if he poked my belly button, would the baby be able to see his finger?

We went to see some lovely apple trees in bloom, and the children thought they were covered in snow. (But it's hot here now!)

Butterfly eggs and more

Monday we found butterfly eggs! There was a white cabbage butterfly fluttering all around us while we played outside. Jaan and Raia and their little friend started following it. Pretty soon I realized that it was laying eggs, so I had them watch very carefully, and we were able to find them. The children were so excited! I would have loved to have had a camera with me to catch the intent looks and joy on their faces. Now we're just waiting for our three little eggs to hatch. . . .

Tuesday I had a good talk with the main "perpetrator" of the babushka hysteria about us moving to our dacha. She seems to be calmed down, so hopefully the uproar will die out now. Thanks for praying. Even though we usually fit in here perfectly well, there are still moments of cultural revelations and little clashes once in a while. The last one that stands out is newborn care; now we know housing is a big one, too, particularly when there are small children concerned.

Today Will's in Moscow again on Gospelink business that came up unexpectedly. I did better with getting up this morning. Hurrah! We had a wonderful time outside, and we'll go back out after naps, too. Have I mentioned recently that I love Spring? It rained last night, and now the colors just glow: bright green grass, white trees starting to bloom, yellow dandelions, blue sky. . . and our RED tulips. They're the talk of the neighborhood. I knew they were a special kind when we bought them, but I couldn't quite imagine what they would look like. Most tulips have one bloom on one stalk; these branch out and have 3-5 blooms!

Another day at the dacha

We had a cold, wet day at the dacha yesterday. The former owner redid the wiring, so it's ready for when the electricity is turned on, and we spent the day "helping" him. I enjoyed getting to know him and the rest of his family. They have another garden just a few rows over from the one they sold to us, so we'll probably get to see them a lot this summer. Other than that, it was too rainy to do much. Will got the sand box dug out and fixed up for the children, and we enjoyed the quiet out there.


Bath time
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

This is how Raia started out the day, before the rain. She stayed wet for the rest of the day, just like her babies.

Snack time
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

And warming up a little!

Bicycle?
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

View out the back
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

I said this was the only photo missing from our dacha tour. It's from the little window upstairs. See Spring creeping in?

Right now the babushki at church are all riled up about us planning to move to the dacha. True, it's not the standard thing to do, especially with little children, but we're really looking forward to it. Please pray that they'll be able to reconcile themselves to the idea. We don't want something this minor to cause division, and we don't need the pressure from them right now!

Little bit

Did you notice this, all the way down at the bottom?


I can testify to the fact that at least the first part is true. For about a week now, this baby has had a regular hiccup fit at 9:30 every night.

I'm appreciating Will more and more these days! He's NOT a morning person, but he's been jumping out of bed at the first sound from the children every morning. Then he makes sure I have a snack, before I even get up, and he starts them eating their breakfasts. I can come out to breakfast ready for me most days, too. (One morning I got up in time to hear, "Papa, I want two eggs, with broccoli and no cheese, please." Does Jaan think he has his own personal short-order chef now?) All this to say, I appreciated it, but didn't know quite how much until Will was gone yesterday. It was not a pretty picture with Mama trying to pull breakfast together, while running back and forth to. . . well, you know what morning sickness means.


By the way, if you don't know what a dacha is, or if you just want to know more about them, this is a good link. Oh, and this one might be even better.

Dacha tour

I just keep praising the Lord and smiling as I think of all He gave us yesterday!

First I'll show you the inside of the dacha:

Coat closet and "stairwell"
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

This is just inside the door, to the right, as you come in. The window is to let light in from the back room.

Front room
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Looking back at the door. We still don't know how much of the furniture and other things they will leave for us. Definitely the wardrobe, but they other than that they didn't say.

Back room
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

Upstairs
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

There's a cute little room in the middle, and the rest is unfinished.

Now we'll head outside:

Щавель!
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

This is what Jaan and Raia were most excited to find. Their favorite greens! The two of them plopped down there and started eating. Щавель was one of the first things I was wanting to plant. I'll still add more.

Flower garden
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

You can't really see it, but there are quite a few flowers--tulips, daisies, daffodils, and others--out front. Of course, I was excited to see that. A few are already blooming!

Back view
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

You can see the garden space here. Will was standing just behind the property line when he took this photo. The water pipe runs along that line, with a faucet at each plot. The plot directly behind us is abandoned, so the children can run and play there all they want! I need to get a photo in that direction, too.

I said that Will bought this yesterday morning. In the afternoon we all went out to see it and had a wonderful time! (That's when we took these photos.) We met several of our neighbors; they were all very friendly. According to them, we have the best raspberries of anyone. There are strawberry plants all over, too! I was also happy to see quite a few children running around. People spend varying amounts of time at their dachas, but apparently the ones we met--from next door and across the road--almost live there in the summer. Already it's like walking through a gardening magazine in some of the plots out there!

Our new (summer) home!

Our dacha!
Originally uploaded by fylliska.

This morning Will bought us a dacha (a little summer house)! Can you believe it? Tanya had kind of jokingly suggested that as a short-term solution. Will saw an ad in the paper yesterday, then met with the owners today and bought it on the spot. It turned out that they were from the unregistered church and had been praying for the right people to sell to, while we were praying for a good place to move. We happened to know that a special gift had come in for our housing needs, because Will's Dad was opening the mail while on the phone with us on Saturday. It was enough to buy this dacha and the garden plot that goes with it! (A huge thank you to the givers! I know you're reading this. You'll be getting a letter from me very soon.)

We'll get to spend the whole summer outside, gardening, playing, swimming and enjoying God's creation! Our new dacha is just outside the edge of the city, in a "collective garden area," surrounded by forest and close to the river. Still, we'll be close enough that we can walk to the trolleybus. We'll have electricity in the house and water close by, once they get those turned on.

In the fall, we'll probably move back into an apartment, but we'll still have this dacha for next summer and beyond that! I think I'll pray that the apartment on the first floor of this building is still open in the fall. I would love to come back to our friends and neighbors here.

I need to start sorting and packing to get ready to move, but all I want to do is plant seeds to put out in the garden.

(If you're wondering about the basement I wrote about last, we had decided that it probably wouldn't work, because we need to move too soon. It wouldn't have been possible to even get it into shape where we could camp out there soon enough. And there just wasn't any room for expansion later on.)

"A real fixer-upper"

Today we went to look at half a house for sale. That's all we knew before we went. . . that and that they were only asking about $3000 for it. A price like that is almost unheard of!

Now I feel like my head is spinning. There's just too much to consider! Lots of pluses and minuses.

The part for sale is the half-basement level. (For those of you who have visited the Petrashes in Viazniki, it's very similar to what they have.) It has nice windows and lots of light, so it doesn't feel like a basement, though. I think I'll just have to list:
-It's very small. For me, small and with a yard, is much better than big and in an apartment building, though. Plus, it would be ours, not rented!
-It's in the old part of the city, right by the river, the historic churches, and a trolleybus stop.
-Um, no running water (yet). The upstairs neighbor has brought in water already, so it's possible.
-It has good gas heating and electricity.
-There's a good bit of water damage, because the heat has been turned off, and in the past they've run a pump under the floor in the springtime. There was no one there to do that this year. The floor boards and wall covering would have to be completely replaced.
-Will says that all the work could be done by us and our friends. There's nothing complicated, although there is a good bit to do.
-The current owners are very willing to work with us, flexible about payment, and ready to help.

Please be praying for us to have wisdom in deciding about this! They're not going to show it to anyone else until after Wednesday, so we have a few days to think and pray.

Another big prayer request is that the owners would be able to figure something out with the man who owns the upstairs. It might be hard to get him to sign the papers to sell their part. We want to meet him and talk to him; from what they said of him, he would be a good neighbor, if he will agree with them selling to us.

Please pray about the financial part, too. The price is just right for us. We could even afford to buy it with what we have now. However, there would still be the cost of fixing it up. . . .