Home Now

Well, we have been home for a couple of days now and I am finally starting to get rested up. We were up 36 straight hours to get home. That is a really long time. Each flight was packed. From Samara we were late. They could not get their computers to work. It is a very small airport. And I do mean small. One gate (I think). We were to have 2 hours in Frankfurt, but that went by in a hurry. That airport is huge, so getting from one place to another took a while. We did have a 6 hour lay over in Washington DC but we had to go through customs there so that seemed to take forever. We finally reached Dayton at around midnight. Everybody's family was there waiting on them. That was just great. It was so exciting seeing everyone. We all were totally exhausted. Bob had a school board meeting the next morning at 8:00 AM so we got a hotel room in Columbus. By the time we got to Columbus it was 1:30 AM. Believe it or not I slept until 3:00 PM. Never in my life have I done that!

So looking back on the trip, I would do it again in a minute. I first told Bob that I would go again tomorrow, then I said well maybe next week. I learned so much about the culture, the people, the country and I have to say about myself. I would like to bundle all of the kids up and move them to Ross County Ohio. I know that is not possible, so I feel like we did what we could do to make life a little better for them. We provided some happiness and support and told them about Christ. We gave them hope and encouragement of a better tomorrow. Through the example our kids set for them, they could see that they did not have to lead a life of drugs and alcohol and tobacco. We celebrated Christmas with them. If you could have only been there for that. (See picture at top)

I can hardly wait until the next time that God gives me an opportunity like this. I am watching and waiting. Until then.................................

This is the church where we worshiped on Sunday. The sanctuary is upstairs. You enter from the side. It is quite simple, yet pretty on the inside.
These are two of the girls from the orphanage just hanging out in my room being silly.
This is on the outside of the orphanage. We are walking back from the grocery. It was very cold and as you can tell, snowing still.
This was at around 4:00 AM when we arrived in Samara. It was a virtual blizzard. The wind was blowing and it was COLD! We had to get all of our bags into this bus and pile in! WOW!

I am sure that you are all wondering how the quilting went. We had mostly boys! I was not prepared for that. We made due. They all knew the sewing machines inside and out. I had no worries. They knew more than me. They threaded them, changed the bobbins, everything. It was great.
I hate to say I had a favorite, but well here she is. If I could have fit her in my suitcase her last name would have been Compher! What a sweetheart. She did not want us to leave. She would not go to bed on our last day. She hid and followed me to the computer. I kept telling her she was going to get into trouble, but she did not care. It was so sad. Just tore my heart out. She spoke very good English!
This little girl was the first to finish her quilt. She was very determined and it turned out beautiful.

This young man loved making the quilt. When he finished, he came back and helped other kids do theirs.

Our Last day in Russia

This has been a long day. We got up very early. We had to eat and be on the bus by 8:00 if I remember right. We were traveling to a Christian drug rehabilitation center. It was a couple of hours from here. IT WAS VERY, VERY COLD. They told us to be prepared to be outside. Can you even imagine? The orphanage packed snacks for us to take with us. We stopped by the church in Samara to pick up our interpreter Katya and the pastor and some others. They took some supplies to the center. It was a long beautiful ride through the country. I kid you not when I say it looked like we were driving through the tundra. They have had rain while we were here so there is ice on top of all of the snow. It is absolutely beautiful. Pastor Olga keeps saying "ice flowers" and I can even understand her! I don't know what time we got there, but whenever it was we had to go through the introduction thing where they could not understand us and we could not understand them but we did it anyone. You understand don't you? The polite thing, right? Anyway, they loved us being there. Each person there told his "story" through the interpreter. It was quite interesting. We toured the facility. It was a farm. They had all the animals you would expect. Some of the kids got to milk the cows. They took us took their cellar where they had all of their vegetables stored from their garden. They had huge bins of potatoes. Cabbages were hanging from the ceiling. Lots of different vegetables were canned. Fascinating. The highlight of my trip.............we got to take a horse drawn sled ride. I LOVED IT! It was the coolest thing in the world. They put us in the sleigh and covered us with these big wool blankets. What a ride. A dream come true. I felt like I was in the movie "Heidi". By the time we got back I was frozen to the core. I did not get warm until I got out of a hot shower.

We had to say goodbye to Pastor Olga, Natasha and our interpreter Katya from here. That was so hard. They are such good people. They have been so good to us. I had a really hard time with this. But the worse was yet to come.

When we got back to the orphanage the children were all waiting on us but so was our dinner. We had to eat but the kids had a hard time with this. We ate as quickly as we could and then we played. Everyone went their own separate way. I am not sure what everyone did. Our room sort of turned into a hang out. Caitlin, Diane, Myself and I am not sure who else ended up there with 5 or 6 kids at a time. They just kept coming and going. It was so hard. One little girl just saying she did not want us to go home. I told her I had to go to see my husband and she said to tell him to come here. I would tell her that I had a job at school and she would say but we have schools here. She always had an answer. That is tough! They stayed up about 1 1/2 hour after their bedtime. Then when I came down to the computer she was hiding around the computer and came to the computer room with me. She was in her pajamas. I kept saying "You are going to get into trouble" and she said "No I won't". I finally left so she would go to bed.

Well this had been a great trip. A hard one though. I have seen a lot. I have done lot. I am ready to go home.

A full day at the orphanage

I am so sorry I am late again. I won't surprise any of you that I was out shopping until late! Really I was! More about that later.

Yesterday got started with getting up at 7:30 and showers. That is an experience in itself. We practically have to

swim

to the shower. No shower curtain. I will have to decribe that one is person. The plumbing is something I just can't write about. I have pictures, but I am sure the pictures won't tell the story either. Any way,

then devotions were at 8:45 followed by breakfast at 9:00. Meals seem to go on forever. They just keep bringing food. Breakfast and lunch are the big meals. Dinner is smaller yet often times too big. At 10:00 we started quilting again. We made 14 of the 20 quilts. They only had 7 machines. The teacher of the sewing class even made one. She was so excited. I let the extas with her so she could make the rest with the students. They turned out very nice. Believe it or not most of the ones who wanted to sew were boys. Who would have thought. I remembered that I brought a video camera, so some of the boys filmed the session yesterday. I was going to try to upload it on the blog today, but it just seems to big a project to tackle this morning!

While one group was quilting another group was doing a make over with Mary Kaye. Of course, the girls loved it. We have that on film also. I am sure that you will enjoy seeing the children in action.

By this time it was time to PARTY. Can you even imagine all of those children in one room opening Christmas gifts?? Well, it was quite an ordeal! It was almost more than I could take. They received a sweater, a pair of shoes, a neck scarf, a pair of gloves, a beanie babie, a hat, lotion, some chap stick, some finger nail polish (girl), a ball (boy), ball cap (boy). Now what did you get for Christmas this year? Makes you think doesn't it? I know we can't change the world but at least all of you helped us bring a lot of love to these children on this one day. They were so excited. You can not even imagine. Some of them had everything on all at one time. It was the greatest thing to see. It was a very humbling experience. Wondering if that is what God had in mind for me on this trip???

Af the party it was time to eat again. I have taken a couple of pictures of our table at mealtime, you will enjoy seeing them.

Now it was time to play again. Joe, Luke, Derek, Ryan, Diane, Amy, Alyssa, Cydney all played Soccer and volleyball I think. Caitlin and I made friendship bracelets. More than you can even imagine. The kids came from everywhere. they loved those things. We left all the leftover supplies here so they can continue. You would have thought we had gold beads! Once again, it was not just the girls boys did this also.

We did this until dinner. By this time we are saying "Not another meal. We just ate!" We sat and talked at the tables after dinner. Some of the people from the church were here with us. Finally one said "Let's go to the market". And of course all of us jumped and said "Let's go"! This means the mall!

We walked just a short distance not by sidewalk, but over the river and through the woods, sort of, to the mall. It was cold and slippery. Shopping here is a frustrating experience. Most of the time they reject your credit card. We all called our credit card companies. That does not matter. One time they will work, the next time no! We just sort of share and pay each other cash. We all were able to get a few souvenirs. That was great.

By the time we got back and had devotions it was 11:30 and way past my bedtime! I wish you all could be here with us. These little (and big) kids are the best. They are not wanting us to go home. I told one little girl yesterday that I had to go home to see my husband and she told me to bring him over here. She said you just move here. She is a beautiful young girl and speaks beautiful English. Leaving is going to be hard.

More later.

Busy day

I have a few minutes before breakfast so I will start now and hopefully be able to finish later....................

It is 8:40 on I think Wednesday. Yesterday we did not get back until 11:00 and so I was dead tired and did not blog. Sorry. I am going to try to make up for it now.

We started the day going to a different town and I couldn't spell it if I wanted to. It must be 20 letters long. Just know that it is about 45 -60 minutes from here. We visited a place that is working with the gypsies. The gypsies in Russia are the people that do all of the drug trafficking and stealing. They are just the all around bad guys. Well, this is a program for the children of the gypsies. Actually, I think some adults come there, too. The children put on a concert for us. They danced and sang. It was beautiful. They are quite good. Afterward they had tea with us. Luke had his guitar so we shared songs with them. It was the coolest thing when one of the girls (through translation) said that she was able to forget all of her troubles just listening to our music. The holy spirit was definitely in that place. This was their Christmas Eve, so the children had to leave after a while. The director of this place took us to a place like a city park maybe where people were sledding and playing. It was a fun spot, but very cold. It was decorated very pretty. We could only stay for a little while. Russians dress better for the cold than us and they are much tougher than we are! They then took us For pizza. Can you even imagine that this was my first Diet Coke since I don't know how long? The pizza was good, too.

From here we went to the church in Samara to celebrate Christmas with the youth. We had a service first of all. More singing and praising the Lord in 2 languages. WOW. Luke and Joe were able to sing this time. It was just way to cool. The Russians just loved it. They actually know some of our songs and artists. The spirit was in that church last night. We then went the basement for refreshments and fellowship. Caitlin and our translator Katya shared their testimonies and then it was more food.

We did not get back to the orphanage until about 11:00 and do you know they were holding our dinner! I could not believe it. They would have been offended had we not eaten. I tried, but did not eat much. It is hard to turn down their bread. I think it was some kind of stroganoff but I did not try it. I have taken some pictures of the food, you will find them interesting.

This pretty much sums up our day yesterday. Today we are quilting and doing makeup again. Today is Christmas so we will be partying sometime. Other than that we are playing with kids all day.

Glad you all had a snow day. Hope you all rested! More later.

Thanks

We really want to thank all of you for posting comments. It just makes our day to read them. Keep them coming. It is great to hear from you.

Quilting

It is Monday, I think, at 8:22 P.M. We have had dinner and part of the kids are out sledding and part are playing volleyball and I am not sure where the rest are. I am choosing to hide in this room for a while.

It has been a very busy day. We had a tour of the building. They really do a lot for these kids. The kids go to school for the first half of the day and the second half of the day they take their "specials" at the orphanage. They have a room for cooking, sewing, music, art and probably more that I can't remember right now. Oh, I forgot gym. They have a doctor and a dentist. Everything is so old. It is just amazing to me. If we went to a doctors office and it looked like this we would turn around and leave! And the dentist office, oh my. You just can't imagine. Now remember I have told you that they have 120 children. The doctor told us today they only have 1 package of sanitary napkins in stock for the girls right now. How long do you think that will last? Their budget for health care for the children is equal to $1. Of course it is a Socialist country so they have public healthcare, but for anything extra that is all they have.

After the tour we attended a play put on by a group of visiting children. It was Romeo and Juliet. Very entertaining! The Russian Orthodox Priest came to this play and spoke to us. Of course, I have no idea what he said. He sure looked the part.

Shortly after lunch we prepared all the presents for the Christmas party. That was a lot of fun. Each child is getting several gifts. That party will be on the sixth.


In the afternoon we attended their Christmas concert. They emphasize the arts here as well as the rest of Russia. They have a music room where I saw at least 3 pianos and maybe accordions and several guitars. The children played their instruments and sang and danced. This was pretty impressive. They have a lot of talent.

Finally, it was time to quilt. I took one group and another group had a make up demonstration. You will not believe this, but I had 6 boys and 1 girl. Most of the fabric that I brought was pretty girly but we made the best of it. It went so well. The interpreter started out in our room. The sewing machines are the same brand as mine, which helped, but much older. The sewing teacher was there also, which really helped. Caitlin, Caralee and Cydney also helped me. They got them sewn together but still need to do a little cutting and touch up things. It was fun. I took some pictures. Actually, I think the teacher was more excited than the kids. She made one also. Our fabric is so much nicer. If you think about sheets and thread count. The thread count on this fabric must be about 100 or less. It is very stiff. Very poor quality.

By the time we finished up with the quilts it was dinner time. More bread. More cheese. More soup. (good this time) Lots of water. And now get ready for another day.

I think that I said that we were going shopping today. Well we could not go because the weather was to bad. You could never guess what made the weather bad????? It rained!

I hate it that my spell check does not work. When I get home and look over this I am going to be so embarrassed! Just bare with me! More tomorrow!

We plan to attend a drug rehab and have a party for the youth of the church. Until then.

Sunday

It is now 10:43 on Sunday evening. We have had a very busy day. We boarded the bus for church at 10:00. It seemed like it took us a while to get there. The roads are horrible. I just hold my breath and pray. It is like driving through an open field with other cars. There does not seem to be many traffic laws or if there are no one seems to obey them. They just step on the gas and go.

Don't anyone tell Davey, but church lasted until 1:30! We kept saying, "Are we near the end yet?" We had a bulletin but we could not read it. We just kept listening for Amen! We took communion and figured surely that would be the end! Seriously it was really neat to be able worship with these people. We sang along on the songs we new in our language, like Amazing Grace and Here I am to Worship. They had lunch for us after service. It was a good thing after such a long service.

After we visited for some time we walked through Samara in the cold and rain and snow (and I do mean cold) to an ice show. It was sort of like our Ice Capades. That was fun. The children met us there. It was a Christmas show. Santa was even there. They use the old world Santa.

By the time we got back it was 8:00 and we were late for dinner. They were holding ours for us. We had rice, roast beef or pork (not sure) with sliced tomato and cheese. We always have bread and cheese. It was my turn for devotions. Some of the kids came to our room and had devotions with us. Some of the girls are quite taken with the handsome young men we have with us.

Nancy and Sally, I have had the opportunity to share about 6 of your bracelets with kids. They are very effective. I handed them out to the rest of the team tonight.

So tomorrow is another busy day. We have breakfast at 9:00. We will be touring the orphanage. It is a large building and they will tell us of some of the programs. Terry, Tamara tells me it is a music academy. Some of the kids are quite talented. I have heard many on the piano. One even plays the accordion.

We are going sight seeing sometime tomorrow and then we must get Christmas ready for 120 kids. WOW how in the world do you do that? Tomorrow afternoon/evening we will get started on the quilts. I am very excited about that. The pastor at the church we went to today (lady) is coming to learn how to quilt, also!

If I don't stop talking and get to bed I am not going to be able to do any of this stuff! So I will say good night from Russia until tomorrow. I hope I can write in the AM, but if not until I do....keep posting. I love hearing from everyone. I share with the whole team. God bless.

Sunday morning

Ok breakfast is done and I have about 30 minutes until the bus leaves for church. It is snowing hard again. There is a lot of snow here and it is very cold. The roads are all covered. It seems like there is no snow removal for the roads. Driving is interesting to say the least.

Yesterday was very busy. We had a "Sunday School" like class for the kids. A local Methodist church came in a held it for them. They brought a group to sing. They sang some songs that we recognized the tunes. That was kind of neat. We all introduced ourselves.

After lunch we went to a grocery store and bought groceries that we will give to the local church families today after church. That was a treat. The store was huge. Very interesting. Fish laid out on ice! Fish swimming in tanks. Oh My!

We filled the van with groceries so we had to make a hike back to the orphanage. It was cold and snow but I so enjoyed the walk back. Good thing that I did not have to find my way back alone. I would have been totally lost.

We had a chance to play with the kids a lot yesterday. It was so much fun. Some of them got their musical instruments out. They had a ball. 6-7 kids came to my room while I was hanging out before bed. I was able to give them a "Smile Jesus loves you " sticker and a "witness" bracelet that Sally and Nancy made for me. Wow what experience. One of the older girls was really touched. She put the sticker on her cell phone. (Can you believe they have cell phones!)

We have caused quite a stir here in Samara! Sometimes we are noisier than the kids. I am having so much fun. You can not even imagine. God is so good. I can't wait to get out today and look around at the city.

PS I am using a Russian keybd. It keeps reverting back to Russian and the spellck isn't working so please be patient with me!

Until next time. Linda

First and foremost DIANE IS BETTER! Thanks to all of you for praying. She is up and at it this morning. It is about 8:00 on Sunday morning. I am showered and dressed and ready for church. I slept so well last night. I was totally worn out! I am so looking forward to church today. The order of the day is as follows:
Breakfast at 9:00
Board the bus for church at 10:00
Lunch at the church
Then we are going to tour the city
Later we will have an ice show somewhere
Back to the orphanage for dinner

Yesterday was action packed. We had a "Sunday School" class for the kids at 11:00. It was very much fun. A singing group came from the local church. They sang some songs that we recognized the tune to.
We went to a local grocery to buy food for people at the church. Wow.
I am going to have to run right now. I will try to finish after breakfast. That Caitlin is a slave driver! More later.

Arriving at the orphanage

We have finally arrived in Samara, Russia. I had begun to wonder if we would ever get here. The first thing I want to say is Praise God! We traveled all of those miles, half way around the world without incident. Things went so smoothly. The planes were not crowded. We were able to spread out and lay down and actually sleep. It was very, very nice.

The second thing I want you all to do is first of all pray for Diane because she has picked up a nasty stomach virus. She is feeling very rough. And next I want you to pray for the rest of us that we don't get the virus from her. She is a trooper I will say that for her.

We got day room in Frankfort, Germany and were able to get some rest before we did some sight seeing. It was News Years Day there so there was nothing opened so we even had trouble finding something to eat. We finally gave up and went to the airport to eat. We had plenty of time to kill at the airport. Some slept, some read, some just hung out. I tried to get my computer to work there, but no luck.

The flight to Samara was about 4 hours. I slept the whole way. When we arrived it was -5 degrees and a blizzard. The airport is very small. They back the plane up and park it like in a parking lot and picked us up in a bus to take us to the terminal. Funny. It was freezing cold and blowing snow. When we got inside we had to go through customs. That took a long time because no one could speak English. I went first and got through pretty quickly. I talked with a couple who were Christians and were anxious to hear what we were doing. They were so nice to me. She was from Malaysia and he from here in Samara but they live in London. While everyone else was going through customs they helped me get the bags together. (We had a bunch of them!)

After going through customs Tamara and Olga (not sure of those names yet) were waiting for us. They brought along Santa and his helper! Really cute! They had a bus waiting to take us to the orphanage. The snow was really bad! There was ice under it. It was so slippery! The wind was blowing. Wow. We had to load our suitcases in the bus. Thank goodness for Joe! He just threw those things right up in there.

The drive to the orphanage must have taken us 45 minutes I would guess. They do not clear their roads off. It was pretty scary. If our roads looked like this we would have a level 10 snow emergency!!!!! No one would go anyplace for days.

When we got to the orphanage the dogs greeted us first! We got our bags in and got settled in our rooms before breakfast. My roomy is Diane. Right now it is 9 AM. We have some free time until 11 AM. We are going to go shopping for groceries for the people at the church nearby and then when we come back we will have lunch. Sometime this afternoon the church is coming to do a Bible school like thing with the kids. We are helping with that. Later on we are preparing for the Christmas party. Sounds like a busy day to me.

I hope to have some pictures downloaded next time. Until then keep praying. We are having a great time. It is nice and warm inside so don't worry about a thing we are fine and in God's hands!

Day One

Well, here we are. This is really strange. I am blogging from a computer in the lobby of a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. The keyboard is very different from ours at home. If something is misspelled please forgive me! I am trying to be careful!
The flight over was uneventful but very long. We started off in Dayton with Scott having prayer with all of our families. Some nice lady took a picture for us. ( I will get that on here later.) We got to our gate and got settled and Caitlin had devotions. We really did not have to long before it was time to board. It was just a short flight to Chicago.

Chicago airport is huge! It took forever for us to get to our gate. We decided to split up and get something to eat before we boarded. We finished just as they were making an announcement for the Campbell family to board!

So the LONG flight was uneventful. Some watched movies, some read, some slept. I prepared my devotions for a while then read. They kept feeding us. The food was just food. Nothing good, just filling!

So far God has been good as we knew he would. We are having a great time and are looking forward to getting to Samara.