Apartment Hunting

We are finding the apartment hunting scene quite interesting here in Moscow. Last Friday we were able to see our first apartment. We had to make a decision by the next morning, and after much prayer and discussion, we decided to take it. If you know how Doyle is with shopping for things and how he analyzes everything, it was a long night of discussion. Doyle and I left right after seeing the apartment to go to a church-planting conference (in Russian) outside the city. When we returned home Sunday night, we found out that we lost the apartment to another family that had looked at it before us. Our agent, however, had another apartment for us to see. By the next evening, that apartment fell through, but we had another one to see. On Tuesday, we went to see this apartment. Though it was quite a long walk from the Metro, when we reached the building, we were encouraged that it was a new building. However, the apartment turned out to be really weird! It actually had no kitchen (just a little corridor kitchen with two burners - no oven- and a dorm-style fridge). Even more interesting was that one of the bedrooms had a shower stall in the corner. Needless to say, it was easy to say no to this one. However, we are being told that there just aren't any apartments available for us in the area we need right now. Please keep praying for our apartment searching.

Also, please pray for our language teacher, Valentina. Her mother-in-law passed away last Wednesday. Her husband died 11 years ago, and she has solely cared for her mother-in-law for the past 3 years. Pray that we can be a spiritual encouragement for her and that God will use us to speak to Valentina right now.

Also, please pray for the Stamey family (our team leaders). Brad lost his grandmother (last grandparent) on Friday. They are returning to the States in 4 weeks and hoped to make it back before she passed away. She was a believer, but please pray for Brad and his father for their loss.

A few praises... the church-planting conference went well. We understood most of what was presented and are excited about growing in our ministry here. We found out on Thursday that a man and his wife repented on Thursday at the Bible study at the social center that one of our Russian partners leads. The man was 78 years old! Also, Dan and Peyton (our new team members) have their paperwork and will arrive here on May 21st.

If you are keeping up with us with the 90 days of prayer, Tuesday is prayer for the people of Chelyabinsk and Wednesday is prayer for Chita.