A new prayer letter

Click to read or to print.

By the way, I wrote this letter a few days ago. Will and Jaan are at camp now.

Brotherly love

Jaan wanted to try rocking Bogdan to sleep tonight.

Another photo of the cutie

Thinking about Grace, cont'd.

Grace has been on my mind a lot lately...


Grace in general, and in particular, the Grace of God as the essence of, the foundation and means of the Christian life.


More specifically, how can I convey the absolute vitality, the centrality of Grace in our lives as Christians. How can I most clearly communicate Grace as the only grounds for our relating to God, the only basis for building relationships with other Christians and the only foundation for relating to those within our own families?

As Jerry Bridges has observed: “We are brought into God's kingdom by grace; we are sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we are motivated to obedience by grace; we are called to serve by grace and, finally, we are glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God's grace.”



This is what keeps running through my mind, percolating in my heart, keeping me awake at night — As I attempt to serve this church, how can I teach and demonstrate, speak and act so that Grace becomes more of an essential paradigm for living for people who have largely only known the opposite: conditional acceptance, assurance and approval; love, forgiveness and mercy that is limited or earned; relationships that are manipulated to produce 'Godly behavior'; in other words, performance-based Christianity, Legalism, and Churchianity.




I am aware that I may be over-sensitive on this topic. Still, it sometimes seems that this church is simply saturated in all that I just listed, that it is thoroughly entrenched in believers minds and hearts. So much so that whatever I say or do in an effort to re-orient the church toward Grace and Faith seems only the tiniest firefly of grace-light in a murky swamp of Legalism and Performance-based Christianity.

...I say “God's unconditional love”, they reply “God is an All-Consuming Fire!” I teach on Assurance in the Promises of God, they reply by preaching on “God's faithfulness to His Threats — Fear God, or else!!” I seek to encourage relationships based on Grace and Freedom in Christ, and they reply with Conditional forgiveness and fellowship ... it's like we're speaking different languages.

Not that this is anything horribly unusual, unheard of, or even peculiar to this small Ukrainian Independent Baptist Church we're in here. It's not, sadly enough to say.

Almost 50 years ago, C.I. Scofield said that "Most of us have been reared and now live under the influence of Galatianism. Protestant theology is for the most part thoroughly Galatianized, in that neither the Law nor Grace is given its distinct and separate place in the counsels of God, but they are mingled together in one incoherent system . The Law is no longer, as in the divine intent, a ministration of death (2 Cor.3:7), of cursing (Gal.3:10), or of conviction (Rom.3:19), because we are taught that we must try to keep it, and that by divine help we may.
Nor does Grace, on the other hand, bring us blessed deliverance from the dominion of sin, for we are kept under the law as a rule of life, despite the plain declaration of Romans 6:14 - «sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace!"


This is a malady that has afflicted the church and detracted from the glory of God's grace in Jesus Christ from its very first days, so I'm not complaining about this church being a special case.


I'm not even complaining. This is where God has us for now, and these are the questions I struggle with.




How can I most glorify Christ? How can I live out Grace in a way that is simple and comprehensible?



How can I convey this, that “Our righteousness is in Him, and our hope depends, not upon the exercise of grace in us, but upon the fullness of Grace and Love in Him, and upon His obedience unto death. (John Newton)

Picnic

Last night the young couple who recently got married hosted picnic to thank everyone for helping with their wedding. We didn't get many photos, but here are a few.

Bogdan's first shashlik

With Lyuda's kitten

Thinking about Grace

(Phyllis asked that I write a bit and contribute to the overall picture of our life that this blog gives. A couple of days later, I sat down and began to write. I have a hard time being brief, but I wanted to share thoughts, challenges for me in this particular place in life, so I wrote out a few pages over a few days. =) We decided to parcel out what I wrote, so please accept this as intended, in a spirit of 'to be continued...')

Thinking about Grace...

How important — how intrinsic of a part does Grace have in my life?

Grace as a foundational concept, a paradigm for living, a daily reality like fresh-brewed coffee in the morning...

I sometimes wonder how well I convey, visibly, in words and actions just how vital Grace is to this heart and mind. Does my wife see and hear grace in my words to her, in how I choose to spend time with her(or not)? Do my children sense any grace in my attitude toward them, my interaction with them?

I ask myself these questions because of this:

how is it that when Grace is the very ground I stand on, the air that I breathe, when I am so utterly dependent upon, so constantly aware of and grateful for Grace...

that I often somehow forget to actually put this into words, to consciously seek to convey the sense of the one thing I truly could not live without?!

Hmmm...

I guess Grace is always worth thinking about.

Another dacha day

We had a great day at our dacha on Friday! Our neighbors had said that we have tons of apricots almost ready. Well, yes, they're almost ready. Not quite yet. The cherry tree was covered in ripe fruit, though, so we picked cherries instead of apricots.

Later in the day it rained hard, so Will opened "the garage" as a play place. There's a small building at the top of the hill that the previous owners used as a motorcycle garage and turkey house. Our children didn't know that it had a secret entrance for turkeys. () They discovered that, and carefully cleared out all the bottles that were stacked in it. Then they spent the rest of their time working on it and crawling back and forth through it.

My helper

Another helper

They're so weird! (and so dirty!)

He's weird, too

"Белые belly boys"

Crawling out

Crawling in

We sometimes say that the man who built all this was a real miner. There's a basement under the house that could be used as a bomb shelter, along with a tiny tunnel that he made to get his chickens from their home to the greenhouse, this secret turkey entrance, and a place where he was working on digging deep down into the hill for a root cellar.

Tired boy

It would probably do permanent damage to a Russian baby's spine to sleep like this, but Bogdan seems to like it.

After the rainstorm, we almost had to wade home. I should have taken pictures of everyone's feet when we got here!

Weddings and thanks

With Vera and Andrei

There was another wedding this weekend. Here, this time, so we didn't have to travel. We don't know the couple too well, since they are from a village nearby, but they used the church for their wedding, so we were involved.

A game and object lesson

(Squirting mayonaise out onto a plate, and then trying to get it back into the bag. It's much easier to say something than to take it back!)

I've also posted the rest of our photos from Lena's wedding. I still haven't gotten anyone else's photos to fill in the gaps, but we have quite a few ourselves.

And thanks.... It's been way too long since I've listed special gifts from God to me. I probably could (and should!) come up with 100 right now, but I don't have time to sit and write them. I'll leave this open though and come back to add to it all day:

• the smell of rain coming through the windows right now
• sleeping baby
• purply-black fingers, faces, and even toes from eating mulberries
• audio books
• Oh! a cool breeze coming through the window now, following the rain
• when Bogdan smiles in his sleep
• Bogdan himself! I don't think I've thanked publicly since he was born, and I sure am thankful for him!
• Ёжик в Тумане (Aw, shucks! as certain friends of ours would say. The cuteness makes me smile.)
• days at home
• the cool of evening

Bogdan wants...

...to show you something:

He has a birth certificate!

Will got it yesterday. I realized that Bogdan is just about the same age Raia was when we finally got hers, too. Although, Will said this whole thing was nothing compared to that. (It looks like she was trying to eat her hands in the picture, too. Bogdan's main goal today is to stuff both fists into his mouth.) There is just one more step to go through: we have to see a city official on Wednesday who will decide if we need to pay a fine or not. Thank you so much for all your prayers!

Recently I was listening to John Piper, and he said something like, "If someone wants to know that you're alive, you don't go digging for your birth certificate. You just breathe." I laughed. Too bad it's not really that simple. Now Bogdan can officially prove that he's alive.

Bogdan also went in for his 3-month check up yesterday. I think it's pretty ridiculous that we have to take a healthy baby to the doctor every month, but it is kind of fun to know how much he weighs. I never knew with our other children. Only, this time, I don't remember what they said. Either 5.1 or 6.1 kgs. He's 63 cm tall. I looked up he American charts, trying to figure out which weight was more likely, but I still don't know. That's either 31st or 4th percentile for weight and 62nd percentile for height. The doctor fussed because Bogdan wouldn't stop smiling and babbling at her so that she could listen to his heart: he's too happy!

(Edited to add: Bogdan weighed 6.1 kgs at 3 months.)

She's SIX!

Three months old!

The wedding trip

It's been a week since the wedding. Let's see if I can get at least some of the pictures up today....

Last Thursday we left on a marshrutka (van-bus) for Zaporozhya, with our family and three other people headed to Lena's wedding. In Zaporozhya every else got on their train, and then we boarded another. For some reason, tickets are scarce this summer, so we couldn't all go on the same train or by the same route, even though Will worked hard to try and buy all the tickets together.

Bogdan's first time on a train

He was so happy!

And they were CRAZY

Just before we had to wake everyone

for an early-morning arrival in Kiev. All mornings were early, and all nights were late on this trip. By the way, that's Raia's foot by Asya, and the edge of Bogdan's bed on the table. Six people in one coupe gets crowded, even when they're little. Oh, and the car we were in was actually air conditioned and cool, which was a direct answer to prayer! AC on trains is almost unbelievable; I guess it's a special Ukrainian summer phenomenon? However, so far we've only seen that AC means that it's even stuffier, because the windows won't open at all. This time it worked!

We had several hours to wait in Kiev, so we ate at "The Restaurant" (i.e. McDonald's), ran laps around the children's waiting room in the train station, and then finally got on our next train. We had to trade around to get places together, since our tickets were all over, and it was pretty funny when the conductor brought on older man to us and told us that he would probably trade with us... if we could make him understand. She was a little frustrated, and said that he didn't speak Russian at all. Will said that it was no problem, and then spent hours speaking English with him.

That evening we got off the moving oven, er--that is, off the train--and made our way to the church, to join in on...

Decorating

Late meal

They were almost done decorating by the time we got there, but then we all ate together. Afterwards, we went to our host's home and collapsed into beds.

More later....

"The Queen of all Green"

The little boys she was playing with told me, "We greened her!"

(Wedding pictures are still coming. We've had a hard week recovering from the trip, and I still want to get some photos from Alina and Yana.)

What a trip!

We're home. Lena's wedding was wonderful! The trip was very long and tiring. Really, it was almost four days of travel, for one day of celebrating. Everything went pretty smoothly, though. Bogdan especially did well on his first big trip. He only broke down once and screamed for a little while. That was Saturday evening, after going non-stop for ten hours: the government wedding, the (long) church wedding, the (even longer) wedding feast, and an excursion to the local castle for wedding photos and a tour.

I'll tell you more later. It's nap time for all of us right now.

Travel and ZAGS

Tomorrow we're leaving to travel all the way to Dubno for Lena's wedding. (The picture below is from her farewell tea at church.) Please pray for safe and easy travels. Maybe pray specifically that somehow--miraculously!--it won't be too hot on the trains and that we'll be able to sleep?

ZAGS is the place that does birth certificates, among other things. The last news I posted about Bogdan's birth certificate was that they were sending everything from Vasilevka to Zaporozhya. In Zaporozhya they decided that it could be handled locally, without court. (Hurrah!) So, Will has been going back and forth to the local ZAGS since then. They're very nice and helpful here, although, first they wanted originals of everything, not copies. Then, today, they noticed that the form signed by all the doctors has mistakes. (We're not the only ones around here who don't know Ukrainian!) So, Will will have to get another one of those forms from Vasilevka and have it redone at the hospital here. We're making progress, though....

"Searching for Jesus"

I keep meaning to post this, and just not having time. It's almost been 40 days! 40 days of Easter, that is. Throughout the Easter season, I have hidden a little foam figure that signifies Jesus, and everyone has looked for him. When they find him, we read about one of Jesus' appearances after his resurrection from the list I had posted. This year Jaan and Raia have really gotten into the the searching. A few times I've had to stop them, calm them down, and specifically tell them to think about how Jesus' friends felt in those days right after the resurrection. It's worked! We've had some good talks about how exciting and surprising and even frustrating it all is, and they really have been thinking. We've had a lot of fun with it, too.

Bogdan's first dacha day

We had a good visit with Will's sister, Anna, even though she got really sick while she was here and each of our older children threw up a few times in sympathy with her. Once she recovered, we had a dacha day together.

Birth certificate update

Will got an official, notarized translation of my new passport last week in Zaporozhya, and he took that to Vasilevka today. He came back from there with a form to fill out, and ran all around the hospital getting signatures and stamps for it. As he said, "We almost made great progress today!" That form just needs one more signature now. The head doctor was doing an operation when Will was looking for him. So, hopefully Will will be able to see him tomorrow, and then take the form back to Vasilevka. From there it goes on to Zaporozhya on Friday....

A random photo of the cutie:

He loves to kick and flap!

Springtime school

Jaan and I did school outside under the lilacs, while the girls played and Bogdan did...

Nature study

Jaan's desk

School room for the day

(with a neighbor child, too)

Asya's favorite place

I say that she has her own personal love language: "swing me!" She would swing all day, every day, if she could. We have the best talks while I'm pushing her on the swing, too.

С Днём Победы!

Can you see Jaan?

Bath time!

Home video

I'm sorry about the quality, and Jaan wasn't happy about his mistakes, but this is about the best that you'll get from us for now. And I do think it's cute. These are the pieces Jaan played at the recital.

It's still Easter!