After the Wednesday holiday, we slowly came back to life. Thursday nights we try to practice hospitality by opening our home up to those in the church who may have needs or we would just like to spend some time with. We try to make a special meal and give as much time to the conversation as possible. No TV or movies. Just conversation and prayer. This week, Oksana (pictured in the last post with Oleg) came over for sage-lemon chicken, rice and vegetables, and salad and cooked apples (anyone know the name for that dish where apples are cooked in cinnamon, brown sugar, water maybe? I want to call them stewed apples but I don't think that's right). Anyway, we had that too. We enjoyed hearing about Oksana's life and she finally said, can we pray I'm tired. It was 11.50. So those evenings are pretty much a full day's work since shopping starts about 4 and the dishes are finally washed usually by 12.30.

Saturday was the resurrection of our student night and that definitely was a full day of work. Trudging through the melting snow and ice and the ice that was raining down all day, 5 of us went shopping, cooked and got ready. We had about 12 new people plus many more church members. I even met one student who had studied for a year in Chattanooga. She went to Soddy Daisy High School. Very odd. It was a great night as we built relationships with non-Christians and served them in the name of Jesus. Vitya brought the video projector so we had the film on the big screen. If anyone ever wants to donate a projector to the ministry, that would be fabulous :).

Friday afternoon we were in the home of Grady and Lena Bryan. Vitaly also joined us for lunch and an afternoon of conversation. It was rewarding to be there.

I'm preaching on Sunday. Still can't get "the LORD is enthroned over the flood" out of my head.

The upstairs neighbors have been playing unbelievably loud rock music for about 5 hours. I grow weary of that. I can't sleep with earplugs so I guess I will be awake till they turn it off. It's 2.41 AM.