A Long Journey to Contentment

Pasha outside his childhood home

Sergei, Pasha and I went for a little adventure last week that took about 16 hours and covered over 250 miles. And it was one of the best days I've had here. We started by taking Pasha to get some documents in the village he grew up in. At the town hall they told use we had to go to another city for other documents. When we got there, they called the regional headquarters and they told us that since Pasha is living in Zolotonosha, where we started, he needs to go there for his documents...

Sergei and me in front of Czar Dub-King Oak.

When we were going back to the village for a second time, Pasha asked if we could go to see a "big tree." OK, I really like trees, but this one was quite a ways into the woods. Off we went and it was really cool. It was a 400 year old oak tree that the Nazis had tried to kill by machine gunning it. There is a ring where they had done that. As we were looking at it, I thought of all the history this tree has lived through and I thought of Pasha's childlike desire to visit the tree. I'm glad that my adultlike skepticism didn't stop us.

Pasha, me and Lydia at her bome.

During the drive we also visited Pasha's childhood home,  Pasha's mother in a sanatorium, and we visited with Lydia Petrovna. And I realized how blessed I am to be able to enter into Pasha, Sergei and Lydia's lives and how the Lord had somehow put us all together. A feeling of contentment and "rightness" came over me and I was blessed to see it. Sometimes I get into a mode where I want to be here when I'm home and home when I'm here, and wonder why the Lord gave me two such distant places for ministry work. Having two places like this has been difficult, but now I'm seeing what a gift it truly is and how it doesn't have to be "one or the other." Sorry it took so long Lord.

That feeling was reinforced last week as I received a letter from Dana who was a regular at the Bible study in Butler for two years. Dana is at another facility and he wrote, "I was reading in Philippians and came up to Paul's thanksgiving and prayer. Then I realized [what he wrote] is what I have been wanting to tell you. Philippians 1:3-11."  That one got my eyes coated with some tears.

So I'm working on the contentment thing and it's a process. But with days like the one with Pasha and letters like the one from Dana, God has been giving me a lot of help.