SUMMER..well at least for a british girl!

I am delighted to announce that Summer has come to Kyrgzstan..."No, no Katie!" you say, "you're mistaken , surely you mean spring!" Well for the Kyrgyz, maybe this +17 weather and constant sunshine is known as spring. But to a homegrown British girl who spent most of her adult life in Ukraine, where the snow doesn't melt until late March, who also walked to school in pouring rain almost everyday in her childhood, to whom summer meant a rainstorm almost everyday with erratic bursts of sunshine and phenominal rainbows...THIS IS SUMMER. Infact, today I was hot. My feet were hot when we were walking outside. Oh the joys of living in Kyrgyzstan.

Today we went with our youth group to help clean a place where believers feed homeless people. It was a great time and we are so encouraged to see the believers in our church grow in serving. We have a big soviet holiday today also. "Women's day" Is far bigger than Christmas (not suprising in a muslim country) but even as I speak people are all over the city, in restaurants and in parks celebrating women. The flower sellers use this day to monopolise on the love sricken boys, whilst women all over the post soviet union are enjoying this day of recognition.

Our Car

Well, a couple of weeks ago we were blessed with the finances to buy a car. Because of the pot holes everywhere here and the mountainour terrain, we thought it best to get a suv. Here is our car, we are so blessed to have it. We pray that the Lord would use ot for his glory!







Also, for 7 days now both Jonathan and I have had this devil flu...Paul, titus, timothy, Natasha and Michelle have both had it too....It's rediculous, so we've passed our time with lisenening to bible studies and playing rummy!

Cold Nights = Great fellowship

IT's been pretty cold here and so most of our evenings are spent inside. We have had a lot of opportunites to share the word with young believers and have a lot of people over for dinner. Some of our more permanant guests are two brothers, Lonya and yarik. Lonya came over tonight and asked Jonathan a lot questions about Abraham. I personally was really encouraged. I love those spontaneous moments when believers just gather and fellowship. I was so blessed I even took a picture...ha ha..not quite sure why...

SNOWBOARDING IN KYRYGZSTAN

Paul and his siter Wendy, who is visiting for a while, invited Jonathan and I to go snowboarding with them at a local resort here near Bishkek. We've both skied before, but this was our first time trying this sport. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun, but the next day neither of us could walk all that well and it took a long time getting the feeling back into our fingers and toes. Brrrr..
Obviously being in a central asian country there are a lot of different dynamics that go into snowboarding that would maybe seem, let say absurd in any other country. Take for instance, the army training unit who hapened to also be training thier new troops out on the the very same slopes we were using, or perhaps the local villagers who bring thier horses up and charge people who are too tired to use the drag lifts to take them and thier skis or snowboard up to the top of the mountain. This is a thriving business as the lifts are very dificult for snowboarders to use and once of twice going up the mountain almost leaves you with no energy to come back down.

All in all we had a great day!! I look forward to going again soon!

WOOHOO!!!

One of my closest friends friends from Ukraine came for a suprise visit this last week. we had a lot of fun catching up, laughing eating al kinds of good food and drinking hot chocolate..Oh and seeking the Lord for what he might have for her in the future...we'll keep you posted!!!

I was overjoyed to see her!!

Christmas concert

So, Today we went to a local orphanage and we were able to do a Christmas concert for them. It was a lot of fun and although it was all a little last minute and we actually practiced the skit about a hour before leaving everyone seemed to have fun. including Jonathan who got to be dress up as Santa to hand out manderines.:) The worship team have been working on Christmas songs in Russian and Kyrgyz and last night we had a carol service. It was a lot of fun. We met at Paul and Mel's and everyone brought some food. Although the electricity cut out no-one seemed to mind and it just meant we could have a candle light service. Ill try and put some pictures up soon.

It's around -20 right now. Brrrrr...but at least our first Christmas together was a white one:)

We hope you all had a great Christmas!!

In Kyrgystan!

Hi Everyone!

We just wanted to write and let you all know that we have arrived in Bishkek safely. It’s taken us a few days to get set up with the internet, but now we’re up and running.

The Trip
We had a lot of extra baggage on our trip. We were allowed only one piece each with the airline we flew and we had 2 guitars and 3 bags. Calvary Chapel York wrote us a letter to give to the airline explaining that we were coming out here to live and will be needing these things. We also had to pay an extra $180 for changing katie’s name on the ticket and for our date change. Well, praise the Lord the airline didn’t charge us for anything. We were so encouraged by the Lord and got to bring all our baggage for free too!

Our Visa’s
After having our visa denied in the UK we decided to go to the border and apply there for a 1 yr multi-entry visa. We had no inviting letter and so technically we should have been granted a 3 month long tourist visa. However, after a bit of questioning by the consul we were granted a 1 yr multi-entry visa!! PRAISE THE LORD!

Thank You for your prayers

Jonathan and Katie