Belarus

Hopefully if you're reading this, you've received my emails telling about the wonderful things God did while I was in Belarus. This will be more like a journal of our trip. So, we'll start at the beginning. This is the New Bethany team right before we loaded onto the church bus to head for the airport. We had all said our goodbyes to our families. Off we go!

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send?

And who will go for us?"

And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8 It was past lunch-time by the time we arrived at the airport and had gone through security. After arriving at our gate, Dan (and Souy) watched our luggage while everyone else went to get some food.

Here's Ellen and me eating our lunch from Panda Express...so yummy!

I really enjoyed spending time with Ellen this week and getting to know her better!

Greg and Ronnie playing with Greg's new camera.

This is Joe & Alesia's 4-year-old son, Danik. Can you see what he's doing? That's right! He's stampin'!! Among some other things that Stampin' Up! donated for my trip, they sent me some kids ink pads, markers, and pencils. Add to that a stamp set or two and he's all set. Allie Grace now has some stamps of her own, too.

This is sweet little Allie Grace (almost 2) with Bobby.

Mary Beth, Souy, and myself at New Land church on Sunday morning. What a service! There was, literally, standing room only. I counted more than 40 people standing along the walls and that doesn't include the people who were standing in the back. The Lord is truly at work in Minsk.

This is Toni and Bobby (and me behind them) heading down for lunch after church.Sunday after the church service, we were brought back to the school for lunch and then we interviewed hundreds of students so we could place them in the right classes. The interviews lasted from 2:00 until 7:00 pm.We taught from Primary English (who knew VERY little English, if any) thru Super-Advanced plus several Business English classes. I taught a Beginner class which was a step above Primary. This room was where we ate all our meals...and it seemed like we were eating all the time. We had breakfast and then taught our 10:00 class. Then we had lunch and went to our 2:00 class. We had dinner at 4:15 and then taught our 5:00 and 7:00 classes. Then we met again for snacks before heading home to bed. The weird thing is I was hungry and ready to eat after each class.

This is Oleg...I don't know all that he does, but I know he does ALOT! He takes care of all the registrations and he handled the advertising for the English courses. What I loved about Oleg was that no matter what was going on, no matter what time of day, he ALWAYS had a smile on his face.

So now we jump from Sunday to Friday. There truly was no time for picture taking during the week. It was announced on Wednesday that Friday was camera day. The students (and teachers) were encouraged to bring their cameras to take photos with their teachers. Jody had all the teachers get up on stage so the students could take a picture of all of us. Talk about paparazzi...I was seeing spots for several minutes after that.

This is Nadia, one our wonderful translators.

On Saturday we had a short time to walk around in Minsk and shop for souvenirs.

This is me on the bus as we headed to the city center. This is Jody (on the left). He's the one who made all our travel arrangements and put the trip together for us. He also designed and wrote the curriculum that we used.

Our Associate Pastor, Ronnie, is on the right. He handled everything for the New Bethany team. The weather was not too bad all week. There was a dusting of snow, but overall it wasn't any colder than our weather here. Especially given that we had snow just a few days before we left. But this day, the day we actually spent some time outside, was cold and windy and there was a misting of rain, which made it feel even colder.
This is either the center of Minsk or the center of Belarus.

I can't remember what Nadia told us.On the right you can see the McDonalds where we ate dinner on Friday night after our classes were over. Sort of a celebration of all that had been accomplished. McDonalds tastes the same no matter where you are.
This is our 'photographer' Greg...he was so busy taking pictures that I don't think he was actually IN any.

Joe waving goodbye to us as we boarded the bus to head for the airport.

This is the group at the gate in Minsk. We all made it through security and then we had over an hour to wait for our plane to board. We took this opportunity to share some laughs...the photo of Greg, below, gave Mary Beth and I a very good (and much needed) chuckle. His glasses had broken sometime over the week so he took some of the yellow tape from his suitcase to 'fix' them. Too funny!

This is me (and Souy - who took this picture?!) on the plane from Minsk to Frankfurt. I'm not sure at what point I actually fell asleep. See the Kleenex on my lap? I cried for at least an hour. It was so hard to leave.

We flew from Minsk to Frankfurt to Washington D.C. to Atlanta. Our flight from DC to Atlanta had been cancelled (there's a story in itself) so we spent the night at the Hyatt and were put on a flight leaving at 8:45 the next morning. Here we are eating breakfast before our flight boarded.

This pretty well sums up how we were all feeling on the trip home...