I didn’t want July to pass without sharing some sort of reflection on the summer.  What a summer it has been.  No, it wasn’t a summer of traveling to distant lands, but even when I’m in my own backyard, somehow Eastern Europe enters the gate and makes herself at home on the Adirondack chair. This summer I’ve been housekeeping at the Tyler Place, a local family resort in my town.  Basically, well-to-do families come and stay in upscale cabins and apartments, and we clean a combination of 11 accommodations from 8.30 am to 1.30 pm 5 days a week; on Saturday we have to strip every place and get ready for the new guests in the afternoon.  It’s not an easy job and the pay isn’t very good, and the supervisors are poor leaders and mostly stress you out; but the other workers are what have captivated me this summer. Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians—the sounds of Slavonic languages have filled my ears for the past two and a half months, and will continue to for three more weeks.  I have also started to pick up Russian again with my friend Inna.  Inna and I have recently started to meet before work in the morning in order to switch-off teaching and learning Russian and English.  We have also had the opportunity to talk about the differences in worldviews between Americans and Russians, and share personal thoughts on life.  Inna has also been an attendee at Church softball on Friday nights, and seems to be everyone’s favorite player.  She’s kind of the “Happy Gilmore” of softball.  She came out of complete obscurity, but has that exotic edge that comes from having a foreign accent and mad skills at something she went from merely observing one week from a bleacher, to playing the next without being half-bad.  The finer points take time (like remembering the terms “safe” and “out” or that you can run past first, but not second—and yes, you need to tag home base, not just run by it.)  But everyone loves watching her play and talking with her.  She insists she merely goes so that she can get a creemee after the game (that’s “soft-serve” for those of you outside the state of VT), but I know it’s more than that.  She likes interacting with all the local folks, which is something that most Tyler Place resident-staff do not do.  They stay in their bubble, drink Thursday through Sunday, work like dogs, and miss home.  This may be a gross generalization, but it’s really not all their fault.  Come on, how many people reach out to them in order to show them small-town America? How much can you do without local friends?

So Inna and others have been the bright spot on my summer. I could add to it stories about conversations, days I worked with Nicky, Melissa, or Artiom, or the difficulties of such a low-paid and under-appreciated work position.  But all of that would spark further ideas about justice, money, God, blessings and curses, the corruption of those who have and wield power, sin nature, Marxism, work ethic, sacredness, worldview, evangelism, faith, culture, and loving others—that this one blog entry simply does not have time for. Perhaps there will be time for reflections on this in later entries.

In regard to heading to Prague, every prayer, every donation, and every day brings me a little bit closer to being on the European continent. When I will receive my visa is still up in the air, but I have received close to $10,000 in support for the school year, along with an additional $4,550 that has been pledged but not yet received. This is an amazing blessing beyond anything I expected when I set out to support-raise around three months ago, and it brings me much closer to my estimated needs of around $18,000 for the first year. If you would pray for me, these are the areas that I really need prayer for:

-- Discernment and wisdom—especially for the next three to four weeks as I navigate working in less-than-desirable conditions. I feel like I’ve made some poor decisions at work this summer, and it’s hard to climb out of that hole.

--Pray for God’s Truth to shine evident in the midst of spiritual warfare.

-- My visa, that it would be accepted and come in soon!

-- Skill in lesson planning, especially because I’ll be doing it shortly and have basically zero experience . . .

-- Continued financial support

Thanks for staying tuned-in on this adventure ~