How Good He is...

God is so faithful. It's been such an extraordinary day (in a fairly ordinary sense), and although I don't have time to write all about it like I want to, I just have to say that God is so good. His mercy really is completely new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.

It's amazing what He will do when we determine in our hearts to embrace the day He gives us with joy. A simple choice to smile at someone can change everything. I don't mean in a drastic way, but it can change things inside us, where it counts.

I just got back from prayer meeting at Masha's with Cheryl. I borrowed a bike again and met her at the center of town and we rode together. On the way back we stopped at Natasha's from church. Eliosha and Natasha are a young married couple with a baby Noah's age. She invited us into the kitchen for a visit and a drink of kefir. So I got to listen to she and Cheryl talk, mostly in Ukrainian/Russian (mostly not in English). I'm so glad for that, because I could understand a lot of words and it really encouraged me. Since Cheryl is from Canada and Natasha was speaking simply and slowly to accomodate her Ukrainian/Russian, it was a lot easier for me to pick up things. After a week of difficult language obstacles, that was a blessing.

Russian is not an easy language to learn. It seems that half of learning it is trying to just pronounce the words. It's not like Spanish, where the words have more of less the same sounds ours do. We might have a hard time rolling r's sometimes, but at least we don't have to figure out the difference between hard and soft l's and t's and d's and every other letter...there's no more helpless feeling than trying to say a sound and not even knowing when you've said it correctly. It's shooting in the dark. I think there was some progress today, though. So thank the Lord.

I love Him so much. He's faithful to be here when I doubt that I'm really useful to Him, and He carries me through all the emotions that no one else can really deal with for me. He's a Close Friend, a Strong Encourager, a Steady Rock.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have time to tell you about going to the bar...