Potato Farming and Awesome Worship

The activities are now completely underway here in Vladimir. Yesterday consisted of a little exploring to a local farmers market in the rain. We walked through rows and rows of meat vendors selling anything from fish that were still flopping around to cow tongues. There was an extensive variety of dried and fresh fruit available also. The members of the church have been cooking fantastic meals, as there is always a new coarse on the way.

After class this morning we headed out to a boarding school for orphans and special needs children in the country. The facility bears some resemblance to a farm, as nearly all of the food is harvested right on site. Today I worked with a good portion of the group digging up potatoes, which proved to be quite the workout after over two hours of shoveling.

We have been sharing the facilities with about eight Russian men who are going through a rehabilitation program with the church. Part of their duty involves cleaning the bathroom, a task that they work on collectively throughout the day. Up until tonight we were somewhat concerned that they were angry with us for making the floor dirty as some of them continually spoke sentences to us that we couldn't even come close to understanding. The floor is almost always wet as they mop several times a day.  This was really the only time we had any interaction with most of the men.

We invited them to our group worship tonight, but they declined due to the fact that they had their own devotional scheduled. Near the latter part of our service their entire group came out and began to sing with us. We sang "Blessed Be You Name" and "God of this City" in Russian and English simultaneously before coming together as a group and praying for each other. Our group first prayed for them in English and they followed by praying for us in Russian. It was quite an amazing experience. We couldn't hold a conversation past "hello" and "thank you" yet we were able to worship together in two different languages.

A few of us talked with some of the men over coffee after the service, but still took a good 5 minutes just for one of the men to explain to us what he did for a living. Google translator proved to be a fairly useful tool. These men were previously alcoholics and thieves but have overcome their problems and now hold devotions together every night.