Birthday Bashes!

I am blessed beyond words by all of my friends and family.  How precious they were to celebrate my birthday all week!  

Saturday night we all headed up to Aldaco's patio for a dinner celebration.  Friends, I will never forget your kindness this evening.  Thank you. 

Hold on, gang! Year 36 is here!  (Laughing, just realized I have on the same sweater in my birthday photos from last year!)

Steph and Jen

Thanks Michele for getting everyone together!  Not sure why I'm holding my boob.  Guess now that I'm 36, I'm checking to make sure they are still in place. 

Cathi, Courtney, and Steph.

Brooke, looking hot only weeks after having a baby!!!  (You are setting the bar way to high, girlfriend!)

One evening Ryan and I headed to the park to play.  Here we are giving you our best, "CHEESE!"


Casey, Marissa, Ashley, Jessica, and I headed out for sushi one night.  Love these girls. 

Another year of celebrating life together.  I love you Jess.  I'm so proud of you and who you are.  Can't wait to meet Samuel!!!


Later I followed the gang to Martini's for a little karaoke! These girls are all rock stars. I was so impressed to be sitting with them!

Thanks for a GREAT BIRTHDAY WEEK!

A girl and Her Dog

Lola and I took off for Fredricksburg today.  The day was to beautiful to do anything but!  I also felt the Lord summoning me away to be alone with Him.  How sweet He is.   So is Lola! You would think she was so uncomfortable.  She is actually asleep!

First stop of the day, Enchanted Rock, of course.

No one around to take a family picture. Thought this would be somewhat innovative.

Just getting started and Lola is already panting.  (okay, fine...so is mom.)


We made it, Lola!  Let's eat lunch.

Lola, so not photogenic.  Always with the eyes closed!

Told you.

After Enchanted Rock, we ran into Dogologie to get Lola a treat for being so good. Then we headed to the park, laid out a blanket in the sun, and broke out the crossword.  Lola, "yeah right!"

Lola, could you move over a bit, you're in mama's sun.

After the park we headed to my favorite place in Fredricksburg, Lincoln St. Wine Market.  Having a great glass of wine, soaking up the sun, and checking our fantasy football scores.

Last Day in Vologda

Our last day in Vologda we all meet at the bell tower in the am and toured around the city. It was a beautiful day!

This is Dasha reading very old Russian on the panals that used to line the icon stages in old orthodox churches.

A Russian tradition for brides is to tour around the city with their wedding party being photographed at all the historical sites. Dasha said this was about an day deal! Phew. We saw several brides this day all over the city. Interesting.

While we were shopping around Vologda we came upon Dasha's church. What a blessing to go in and see her pray for Beth's husband. Beautiful moment.

These clocks were on the wall of the restaurant we stopped at. Some of my favorite places I've been. Thought Angie would enjoy this too!

Bri and Jenny...made it to the top of the bell tower!

About to climb the stairs up into the bell tower. Yes, those little metal rods are holding up the staircase.

Top of the bell tower heading out this adorable door!

Peek-a-boo!

Christine, Lauren, Oleg, Jenny, and Mark in an old theater in Vologda.

My bedroom while in Vologda. The weather was so wonderful, the windows were open the whole time. Pictured is the computer that I was "attempting" to blog from while there. (Yes, I know my suitcase is HUGE. I thought I pack sooo light until I saw that I could fit 3 of Beth's suitcases in my one. )

My last and favorite meal at Dasha's home before catching the train back to Moscow. Notice how beautiful the tomatoes are. All the produce was awesome!

At the train station saying my last good-byes to Dasha. :(

This is all of our host families waving to us. I took this picture looking outside our train window. Very sweet moment. Then some of the girls started doing sign language and singing "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes yes Lord" with big ole grins on their faces. Priceless. Then the train didn't move for another 5 minutes and it was awkward turtle! Ha. You can only wave, smile, and say good-bye for so long. :) Funny.

Everyones teary-eyed faces after saying good-bye to our Russian friends.

Happy to be heading home!

The poor train attendent! Nine americans trying to get our dinner order in speaking terrible Russian. Thank goodness she was laughing with us! Finally, we just snorted for pork and made fish lips for the fish. Beth cracks me up in the picture!

Dasha, are these the train cups you mentioned? Yes, very cool. Even thought about buying them until I remembered that my luggage is probably way over the 150lb. mark by this point! (Turns out I was right.)

Ate plenty of the potatoes! Now had to have a sip of the smooth russian vodka.

Finally made it back to Moscow at 5am! Beautiful morning at the train station.

Sorry for the long delay. I have one last day to get up to complete our Russia trip. Hopefully, this will be in the next day or two!

Quick Insert!

Here are a few random pictures that I was trying to upload in Russia.

The Good News methodist church is a very small building in the middle of hundreds of Othodox churches.  You can see one of the churches behind ours in the photo below.  Our church is looked at as a sect or a cult to many there.  It has a very tall fence around it without a sign out front.  I'm guessing all for safety reasons.  This was so hard for me to grasp.  Hurt my heart.  It made it all that more obvious to me the work that had been done with the previous visits.  Lots of patient tender love and care for all the seeds planted.  I was honored to see some of the fruit on my trip. 

This night we meet up at Good News Church to meet with the russian team that came to Texas a few months prior.  It was fun and very encouraging to hear everything they had to say about their time here in Texas and the christian church here in the states.  Dasha was even able to sit in for a few minutes!  Pictured:  Christine, Dasha, Jenny, Lauren, Nicole.

Some of our sweet Russian friends at the meeting. 

This is a picture of the children's hospital I couldn't post earlier.

Here is the tea the children's hospital nurses had set up for us.  They were so much fun to talk too.  They had tons of questions like, "how much do nurses make in america? how much is rent for a one bedroom? etc..."  

Kagneykof #2 Orphange

Once again, a beautiful tea set-up was waiting for us when we arrived.   (Pictured is Bri, Lauren, Oleg our translator, and Janet.)

Another fun filled craft day!  This time I helped Bri and Janet at the animal balloon table.  My job was to blow up the balloons and hand them off to the professionals to do their magic!  I sat under the table to make more room and these boys kept coming down to laugh at me for sitting on the floor!

The boys loved the crafts just as much as the girls.  As you can tell they are very proud of their accomplishments!

Texas Bingo was a big hit as well.  The children knew us as their "texas friends" and I think enjoyed seeing/learning a little bit about it...or they just loved the prizes at the end of the game.

This was one of the little girls rooms.  We were a little puzzled at the lack of personal items being that this is where they lived.  Maybe they just cleaned up for us.

The younger children were sleeping during our play time so we didn't get to meet them.  However, we got a sneak peek of their common room.  

Some of the beautiful faces responsible for this precious garden in the playground area.

After lunch we all headed outside for a game of tag...big hit!  Then they all showed off their playground toys.  I have some hilarious video of this I will try and upload later.



Farewell friends.  I hope you enjoy your Texas hats!

This sweet face was my tag partner for most of the game.  After that he just kept holding my hand and then wanted to take a picture together.   At one point during our tag game he noticed my shoes came off while I was chasing one of the kids.  He was very concerned about this and went looking for them, found them, brushed them off, and brought them back to me, motioning that I can put them back on now and smiled so big.  Very sweet moment, especially when you can't talk to each other. 

Here are all the remaining supplies that Holly wanted to leave there for the children to have for another day.

That evening when we returned to the church there was a service followed by a farewell dinner for the host families.  (Dasha and my chocolate chip cookies, from an earlier post, were a huge hit!)  The service brought me to tears as they all sang, "Here I am, Lord" in Russian and we sang right along in English.  It was awesome.

I don't have favorites...but if I did, Koyla would be it.  He completely won my heart over.  I was teary-eyed in this picture because we had already said our good-byes with our best hand motions.  Then a few minutes later he came running back in waving to come follow him outside. He wanted his mother to take a picture of the two of us with her camera phone.

Slowly making our way back to the states!

In an hour Dasha is taking me to the train station to meet up with the rest of the team and head back to Moscow. We should arrive around 6am. Check into hotel, visit monestary, shower at hotel, dinner, and then the ballet! Saturday we will be heading home. Again, bittersweet. :)

I still have 2 days to post and I'm sure more from our time in Moscow coming up. However, I will not be able to blog again until I'm home in Texas. Please check the blog in a few days and we should be all caught up. Thank you so much for your support, comments, and prayers.

Pray for safe travels. We love you all!
Jenny

Childrens Hospital & Meetings

Welcome to the Children's Hospital! This trip is the first year The Russia Initiative was invited into the hospital after coming on 5 previous trips.
We were instructed to not say anything about God, Jesus, Methodist... So, the team got creative and decided to do a puppet show talking about the Good Shepard. The kids loved it.

The people with the name tags are our team members. From left to right is Christine, our translator ( I feel terrible but I can't remember her name.) and Holly. Holly is presenting "LiveStrong" bracelets to the nurse for the children. She explained all about Lance Armstrong and how he has pushed through, survived, and fulfilled his dream. This was very cool to all the children and I know the were deeply encouraged.

Just a little close up of their sweet faces. If only you could hear their voices!

After the Good Shepard play, one of the 5 crafts Holly and Nicole set up were sheep from a cut out of their hands. Everywhere we have gone the children LOVE THE CRAFTS!!! It is also sweet for us because we can sit close to them, use hand motions and broken Russian to communicate "how to", take pictures together and then look at them, pray over them while the concentrate so hard. Honestly, my favorite, is just laughing and smiling back and forth together. (This sheep was made to go back to some of the children that could not come out of their rooms. On the back reads..."I came all the way from Texas to tell you, I love you!")

Just another precious face we were able to love on all day!

The Pink Ladies. This sweet girl was so much fun to talk to in my very broken Russian, while we were making God's eyes. Later some of the kids had a little presentation prepared for us. She sang a beautiful song in Russian and had an outstanding voice!



The children waiting patiently for Bri and Janet to make animal balloons! BIG HIT!

I just went back through and read the post...I feel I haven't even come close to capturing all that is taking place here. I don't quiet know what to say to convey how beautifully the Lord is moving here. The comments that we receive from everywhere we have been are things like, "your smiles change the room, I've caught myself smiling watching you, you all are a ray of light to us, why would you come all the way from Texas to Vologda just to see us?, Do you have to go?, Do you remember me from last time? I remember you, when will you be back?, thank you for what you are doing for our children...and me." I could go on and on. IT'S ALL HIM. Seeds are being planted everywhere. I know that Christine, Holly, Beth, and Mark are also seeing fruit from previous years.


After meeting with the children we were invited back by the nurses for tea and converstion. I was so encourage by these beautiful ladies. The LOVE the children and love what they are doing. (For some reason I can not download the pictures of our tea. When I return home I will go back through the entire trip and drop in more pitures!)

Mom, Jessica, and Stacy, this one is for you. Bananagrams and chocolate chip cookies in Russia! Dasha, I have loved my time with you!