October Arrival

Our team departed Dallas on Friday afternoon and arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia Saturday evening with no problems. All the luggage came through and there were no issues at the border with customs. After exchanging money and checking into the hotel we went to a nearby café for a light dinner. Sleepy heads prevailed and the normal lively group was pooped! All went to bed about 9pm (local time here) only to awake at 2am feeling like it was time to get up. Don’t worry… they didn’t!

On Sunday we attended the church services of our IMB Missionaries in St. Petersburg. Clint and Janet Stewart and their family have been terrific hosts! The team member got to ride the metro system for the first time which is always an experience! After the three hour service we had lunch in a food court in a mall near the center of the city with the Stewart family.

At 5pm Sunday we all squeezed into one room along with our newly hired translators so we all could meet and get to know each other before the first day of ministry in the orphanage. With all the American trip participants, translators, family members of Clint & Janet Stewart and another family of volunteers, John & Karen Bull and their four kids, we had about 27 people in the room for a meeting!

As I had warned everyone in training, there would be changes and trip participants would have to be “flexible”. During that meeting I announced some recently passed on news from the Orphanage that half the kids would be at a dental appointment on Monday and would not be with us. That meant that the four oldest groups would not be there. We also had one translator show up and she determined that she couldn’t get to the orphanage in time on the days we needed her. Fortunately, her friend Olya who had just tagged along, volunteered to be the replacement translator! God was in control!

We were all excited and ready to go, although we knew that Monday would bring its own surprises!