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Hawes Family Update – May, 1 2007
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--- A Matter of Time ---
You know that feeling. That feeling you get when you accomplish a difficult task, or win the big game, or roll Yahtzee. That’s the feeling that Jody had this past Sunday. It started as we were sitting at the bus stop waiting to go to church. Walking down the road came a “babooshka” (elderly woman/grandmother) who decided to plop herself down right between Jody and Elena even though there was plenty of room on another bench. Then the babooshka leaned over and asked Jody the time. Jody sprang to attention. This was her chance. Jody had been working on how to tell time during her language study with Alla the past week. Jody turned her watch toward the woman and began to say the time, but before she could get the words out the babooshka blurted out the time. Jody had missed her chance. Jody still had a small conversation with the woman, but she didn’t get to put what she had learned about time into practice. Soon the bus came and we made our way downtown where he church was. We arrived at the stop near the church and got out. As we walked the two blocks to the church it happened again. Another woman asked Jody the time. Can you believe that? This was Jody’s chance to redeem herself. Jody looked at her watch, and with only a slight bit of hesitation, told her the time. There was a brief pause, then the lady nodded her head and said thank you. I big smile grew on Jody’s face as she gave me a thums up and winked. She was beaming with success. She had done it; she told someone the correct time in Russian and they had understood. She had even chosen one of the harder ways of telling the time in Russian. This wasn’t just an in-the-classroom success, this was the real world and it felt good.
It may seem small to some, but for us this was a big accomplishment. For an English speaker, telling time in Russian isn’t always as straight forward as it may sound. We are thankful for these successes because they tell us we are making progress and because they balance out the regular blunders we make as we try and learn the language. Please keep our language learning in your prayers.
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Here are some more things to be praying about:
- UPDATE on the broken part for Elena’s leg: Well, we finally got the part for Elena’s leg that had been held up in customs for almost a month. It was a relief to finally have the box. I thought our troubles were over--but they weren’t. Soon after I opened the box I was dumbfounded to see that the new part had an almost identical crack in it as the first. I was shocked, but then I began to understand what probably happened. My current working theory is that the parts broke during the overseas flight. The temperature fluctuations in the cargo hold of the plane must have caused the metal parts to expand and contract in such a way as to cause one of the parts to fail. So, we are going to try again, but this time with titanium parts instead of aluminum. We are also trying to ship it another way to avoid the delays in customs. Please pray for a quick solution to this problem as Elena has gone for over two months now in a leg that doesn’t fit her correctly.
- Please continue to pray as we need to make decisions about the children’s schooling for next year soon. Elena has not done well in her classes, although she is capable of doing so. While Jody and I need our days free to continue to study Russian, we are going to have to consider the possibility of home schooling Elena again.
- Please pray that our registration with the government will be completed soon. It has been almost a month now. During the registration process we are without our passports and without the registration we cannot open a bank account here making it more difficult to access our money.
- Please also pray that our high-speed Internet access will be installed soon. While I know this may seem like a luxury item to some, it really is more of a necessity as we use the Internet for accessing bank accounts, calling the U.S., and keeping updated with our mission and our supporters. It has been two months now and we hope the end is near soon.
- We thank God for all the little things He is showing us each day that are making this place feel more like home and that are bringing us closer to the Ukrainian people.
Thank you for your prayers,
Andrew Hawes
Email: GetHooked@Fish4Him.net
Web: http://www.Fish4Him.net
Greater Europe Mission
http://www.gemission.org