Two Months Too Fast
It's only been two months since we left the States, but July feels like years ago.
We hit the ground running. Fast.
It's only been two months since we left the States, but July 3rd feels like years ago. So much has happened. So much happens every single day. This is the beat of our new life, and little by little we are finding the rhythm.
The Arrival
We started looking at apartments the day after we arrived. Finding an apartment to rent here looks more like searching for a house does in the States. There are no apartment "complexes." Every apartment has its own owner, and that owner will list his rental property with a real estate agent. We spent hours looking at options online and visited six or seven that interested us most. In the end, we chose the first apartment we had seen that first day. It's a very spacious two-bedroom place on the third floor and is only a five-minute walk from the Bible institute.
After we returned from collecting our things in Kharkov, we had less than three weeks to get as settled as possible before the school year began. There was a lot of unpacking. There was a lot of shopping. There were a lot of tears from a little two-year-old boy who was just plain tired of all the chaos in his life. At one point, Katie wisely called a full day off from the busyness to give Justus the attention he was craving. We all needed it, actually.
The Job
Before we knew it, the school year had begun. I was in the office the week before classes for student interviews, and I spent the first week of school making final preparations for my first class which began on August 12th: a three-week course on Philippians and Thessalonians.
Here’s the UBI staff on the first day of school, and below is the 2019 student body.
During those three weeks, my days went like this:
9am–9:30am
Chapel
9:30am–11:30am
Preparations for that afternoon's class
11:30am–12:30pm
Home for lunch with Katie and Justus
12:30pm–1:45pm
Final prep for the day's class (usually involving getting slides and materials translated)
1:45pm–4pm
Teaching
The Other Stuff
At 4pm, everything else begins. At first, we had several appointments regarding our temporary residency permit. That involved getting documents translated, submitting applications, and finally, making two trips with our landlord to the registration office to make everything legal. (Many people won't tolerate this process with foreign tenants. We are very thankful to have found such an accommodating landlord.)
Katie and I are studying Russian once again. Two days a week we each study one-on-one for an hour with a tutor who comes to our home. It feels good to be studying after all this time away, but it's another reminder of how much we've forgotten and how much we still don't know!
We continue to work at getting our house arranged. Our dining room table finally arrived this last week, but we are still waiting for our bed. We've been slowly trying to have people over for dinner, and we've already hosted some friends from out of town a few times. Our house feels like home, and that feels nice.
The Church
Our congregation meets in the Bible institute, and there are around 80 members (including kids). After all these years of taking such a direct role in church leadership, its strange not to carry that responsibility week to week. We are getting to know everyone and getting more involved. Justus has a Bible class on Sundays, but Katie goes with him. He's a little too young for that particular class and he doesn't understand what the teachers are saying. On Tuesdays, there's a ladies' Bible class at 6pm before the church has their mid-week study at 7pm. Last Sunday, I led the Lord's Supper (in Russian!) and this coming week I'll be teaching Bible class (in English). I'm also helping with the translation during services (from Russian into English). Over the next few weeks, I'll be preaching at a couple other local congregations that have invited me to speak.
At the end of July, the church enjoyed worship and a picnic in a forest area just out of town. We feel blessed to be a part of this very active and encouraging church.
Last weekend, I joined some of the men from the congregation for their annual camp out.
The Family
Katie is doing well. We celebrated her birthday at the end of July, and we continued our tradition of buying her a new dress and doing a photo shoot. We also went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Very Well Cafe. (We even managed to have some friends over to play games after Justus went to bed!)
We love the apartment we’re in, and Katie is enjoying having a larger kitchen and lots more storage space than we had before. Even though we don't live near an open market, it didn’t take long for her to find an elderly supplier of underground homegrown chickens and fresh eggs. She's found the best stores to shop in, the favorite nearby playgrounds, and she and Justus are now regularly doing preschool time at home. He’s thrilled.
Justus is actually doing very well. He was thrown off by the initial move (and jet lag was terrible!) but he has very quickly acclimated to his new environment. He brings a smile to everyone at the school and in the church. He is learning so much Russian and surprises us every day with what he's picking up. At first, he had a hard time recognizing that people didn't understand him, but now he knows when to speak which language and switches pretty effortlessly. He's adorable, and ridiculously smart.
Here he is playing with Sasha and Nastia’s girls when they came to visit right after we moved in. That’s Baby Slava on the left, by the way. She turned four at the end of July.
My second class began on Monday—two weeks of Introduction To Exegesis. It's the same class I've been teaching for six years now, and it's a subject I love sharing with the first-year students. It's a paradigm-shifting kind of course. After Exegesis, I'll begin preparing for Second Corinthians.
We are so thankful for our new ministry, our new home, our new coworkers, and our new church. And we are so thankful to each of you who help us do what it is we love to do. Thank you for your love and support, and for each of your notes from time to time letting us know you're thinking about us.
We'll talk to you again soon,
Brandon and Katie
“Does God have bandaids?”