The Bishop Sings!

The Bishop of the Eurasion Conference of the United Methodist Church sang "Silent Night" in five different languages for us!

Church Music

The First United Methodist Church of Moscow has both a traditional choir and a Praise Band. The guitarist at the mic was a former soldier who had served in Chechnya and sang a song he wrote himself about the sadness of the war there.

After the church members sang for us we sang some songs for them in English. They knew the words to "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and sang along with us!

Pastor Ludmilla is the author of the Russian Methodist Hymnal.

Pastor Ludmilla

Pastor Ludmilla preached in Russian and Elena translated.

Altar

This is the altar with a picture of "Laughing Jesus". Cool!

Sanctuary

This is the sanctuary. It looks like it used to be a school auditorium.

First United Methodist Church of Moscow

On Orthodox Christmas Day we attended church at the First United Methodist Church of Moscow. The congregation rents part of this building for Sunday School classrooms and their sanctuary.
Of course they fed us! Tables were set up in the Sunday School room and we were served lunch before the service.

Traffic in Moscow

Can you read the sign under the traffic light? Yes, it says "STOP"! Russians drive on the right side of the road like we do and the rules of the road seem to be a lot like ours. You could tell what the traffic signs said even if you couldn't read Russian. Street names were something else. The guide books recommend that you hire a driver unless you are REALLY comfortable with the cyrillic lettering. It's a huge city with lots of lanes of traffic. The strangeness of the trip was due as much to the size of the city as it was to cultural differences.

Presents Still Needed

Wonderful people have been giving me presents all year for my upcoming trip but I still want more! Last year I read the instructions that said I needed to bring 25 of each of the items on the list of presents for the Russian orphans and thought that was all I could bring. I found out I was wrong! We spent the first evening in the orphanage at Sergei Posad putting together gift bags and I realized that we can use as many of each item that we can carry over there. I need to inventory all the great stuff I have but I'll still take anything that is on the list. (The list can be found in the last post dated May 2 - I'll repost it soon if you can't get to it.)

Volunteers in Mission also need cash donations to cover the cost of shipping the presents to Moscow. We take them with us when we fly ther in December. I think it costs between $50 and $100 to ship a 50 pound box. I've been asked if there aren't less expensive ways to ship the presents but I'm told that this is the best way. Packages sent by other carriers don't always make it to the children. 'Nuff said! Cash donations are also used to buy such items as washers and dryers for the orphanages while the Team is there. There is a link to VIM in the box to the right of the blog.

Apologies

Dear Friends,
Let me apologize for taking so long to get back to this blog! I got busy with another project (more on that later) and time slipped away. All of a sudden it's October and I'm getting ready to go to Russia for the 2007-8 Orphans Christmas! Several of you have asked when I was going to get back to the blog and I kept saying, "Soon, soon!" Well, "soon" is finally here. I'll be finishing up the pictures from last year's trip and letting you know what's coming up. I will also re-post the list of items I need to take with me as presents for the kids
The project I mentioned above was being on the Ministry Action Planning Team that is working to unite my church, Central United Methodist, with five other churches in the Downtown and West Side areas of Charleston. It is a monumental task, as you can imagine, full of emotions ranging from grief and despair to joy and hope. I've been given the task of being the "scribe" for the MAP Team and all my writing skills (such as they are!) have been poured into keeping up with minutes and published summaries of our activities. The situation has calmed down a little bit for the moment so I hope to be able to spend a little time blogging and catching up on some other areas of my life.
Thanks for your interest and patience!