Hey everyone! I just want to start this update saying thank you all so much for your prayers and support. The past few months have been interesting and hard at times but just having so many people back at home that care really makes it so much easier to be here. There are so many times when I get an email or postcard (okay, so I guess the postcard thing was only once, just want to say thanks guys! That was really awesome!) from people back home and it completely makes my day. Thanks for thinking about me!
(this doesn't have to do with anything I was talking about-this is a picture of a bunch of old guys playing chess and backgammon...its really cute, a group of them are always on these benches at this park playing games)

So there have been a lot of new things going on lately. About a month ago I was really starting to get bored and was feeling like my time here was just dragging on (hopefully not the feeling you get when you read these incredibly long updates). I began praying a lot about it and I figured out that my problem was that I had too much free time and not enough things to do. It was about this time that one of my friends from work invited me to come to a ball-room dancing lesson with him. I figured that it would be something cool to go to once and then politely decline to ever go again. Well, it turned out to be really fun so I decided that even though the lessons are in Russian, I’ve taken enough dance lessons in the past to understand what’s going on. The crazy thing is that lessons are three nights a week for an hour and a half each lesson. Man, when Moldovans want to learn something, they really go crazy over lots of lessons. I’ve heard that its like this for all types of things that they want to learn, they’ll have three or four lessons a week. In America, we hardly ever have more than one lesson a week for anything like this. So anyway its been a total blast and I’ve met a lot of cool Moldovans that aren’t Christian so I finally feel like I have the chance to witness a bit. There certainly aren’t many Moldovan Christians in dance lessons because it is considered a sin here by some churches to dance in any way. Yeah, thought I was getting away from the “dancing is a sin” thing when I left NNU but I guess its true that your sins follow you wherever you go!!

In Moldova around this time all of the Protestant churches have harvest celebrations that are somewhat like our Thanksgiving. Its not a holiday here or anything but rather the churches just chose a Sunday to have their celebration. Basically for the harvest celebration, people in the church donate all different types of food to the church and then the church gives this food to those in need. The church also puts on a big service much like something we would see for a Christmas program. This past Sunday was the “Seceris”, as the day is called in Romanian, at the church that I’ve been going to here. The service was outside and consisted of three hours of sermons and different performances by musical groups. Luckily one of the sermons was given by an American in English and then translated so at least I could understand some of what was going on. There were also these amazing displays of different kinds of food like a display for fruits and vegetable and then another display for bread and sugar. There were also these giant bunches of grapes that were made up of normal sized grape bunches (yeah see the picture, way to hard to explain). It was really interesting to see how big of a deal harvest time is to the people here. In America, unless you’re a farmer, the harvest time doesn’t really mean very much any more. Anyway, Seceris is definitely different than our Thanksgiving because it doesn’t involve a meal for the people involved. It is all about giving food to the church for the needy. I didn’t actually know that until I went to church expecting a potluck and afterwards was like “so, where’s the food?” only to find out that the point was to bring food for the poor. Good thing I didn’t bring a dish for the non-existent potluck!

My work here has been going good…I’m still in the middle of this video project that I’ve been working on for a long time. I never realized how much goes into a video like this. Its definitely got me watching movies and videos with more appreciation for all the different things that need to come together for the right effect to be created. Please keep me in your prayers about this project. I’m starting to get a little frustrated that its taking this long and that certain parts haven’t worked themselves out yet. I gave myself a deadline today for two weeks from today for it to be done…I think that lack of pressure has definitely been a factor for why its taking so long. Even though I hated the pressure of homework and deadlines in college I think that I really need motivation in order to get anything done. Like I said, please keep me in your prayers! One thing that you may be able to help me with is music. I’m trying to find Christian instrumental worship music for the background of my video. It sounds like easy music to find but I have been looking everywhere and can’t find what I need. I suppose why it is so hard is because I need upbeat (let me emphasize- not slow) music without any voices and not from the 80’s or orchestra-like. Oh and it also has to be popular enough that I can buy it through iTunes. Basically, I need music from a modern day worship band that isn’t afraid to rock out a bit but at the same time isn’t too crazy for a Christian business video. If you have any ideas, shoot me an email with the artist name and/or song title…your song could be a little bit famous if it works!

Some of the most exciting news for me is that I’m moving soon to an apartment here. I’ve really enjoyed living with a family but I think that it has been hard adjusting to both being in a strange country and not living on my own anymore as I did in college (well, sorta if you consider living in the dorms “on my own”). I had been praying about if for a while and was starting to think that there was no way that I was going to be able to find both a place that was affordable and a roommate who wouldn’t drive me crazy. Then out of the blue one of my American missionary friends here asked me if I knew anyone who was looking for an apartment because she was looking for a roommate. So God definitely worked that one out! I’m moving in two weeks to a fully furnished and affordable apartment completely free of Russian dance music. Yeah, so all the younger people here love this techno/disco dance music and all three boys in the house I’m in now listen to it at full volume all the time (even if it is a sin to dance, I guess listening to dance music is okay). I’m so excited to be moving and its made my outlook of being here for an other five months so much better. It was hard trying to explain why I wanted to move out to my host family. The culture is so much different than in America because most young people here live with their parents until they get married, and a lot even stay with their parents after they’re married too.

Last weekend the American embassy put on a weeklong American western film festival….I only had the chance to go to one movie but it was a great one. It was the movie “Maverick” and if you ever get the chance to see it, you should watch it because it is pretty ridiculous and entertaining at the same time. It was weird to get to go to a theater and see an American western playing in English…made me feel like I was home for a little bit. (This is a giant cowboy hat and a regular sized cactus that was part of the decorations for the film festival)


Thanks again for keeping me updated on what’s going on in your lives…I really love hearing the latest news! Please remember me in your prayers if you think about it. I’ve been having these strange headaches for about a month and a half and I don’t think its anything serious but they’re still annoying when they hit. I haven’t had one for a week so maybe that was the end of them or maybe they’re waiting to hit again. Its so interesting to see how God answers prayers, reading back over my prayer requests from my last few newsletters I realized that God has taken care of all of the requests that I’ve had....yeah one cool thing I wanted to share was that I had said in my last letter that I was struggling to get into a daily habit of reading my Bible. It suddenly hit me a month ago or so that if I was on some sort of reading plan that I would probably be able to stick to it better. I found a website that has reading plans for reading the Bible in a year. Its pretty cool because it has the reading on the website and it keeps track of how many days I’ve read and how many consecutive days I’ve been there. I’m definitely a little bit behind and will have to catch up if I want to be done with the whole Bible in a year but it has really helped me to read consistently. Here’s the website in case you want to try it out : http://www.biblereadthrough.com.
(Sorry, I'm a little short on relevant photos this update, this is a very beautiful Orthodox church/monastery that is right by my house) I’ve had some interesting food experiences in the past few weeks and my water bottle recently had an adventure so I’m going to be writing some more blog entries soon so check back if you’re interested. I’m hoping that by saying I’m going to write about this stuff that I’ll actually have enough pressure to do it.
Hope you’re all doing great!