More than listening

Two words that were a long time coming. A wise man told me that for every time zone it takes one day to recover being that Russia was 8 time zones away I am doing pretty good to be back to business as usual 6 days later. That is 2 days earlier than expected. The exhaustion and adjusting back to Tally time has been much more difficult than expected. The first two days I slept a total of 27 hours out of 48 hours. That translates to sleeping over 1 day out of two days. I still find myself falling asleep at 4 in the afternoon which is midnight in Russia. Even last night I fell asleep on the couch in the middle of the season finale of House. Unbelievable!

After much rest and catching up as I try to return to the new routine that is summer time for me I am finally back to a point of being ready to blog again. It has really been funny to have multiple people ask me if my blog was back up. Its just funny because I assumed (never safe to assume) that nobody really read this. The next couple of organized entries will be copies of journal entries from Russia. I am really speechless from the trip and not sure where even to start. This trip has been hard to tell any one about because so much happen and over such a long period of time that it was all a blur most of the time. I haven’t even really shared too much with Katie yet because I am waiting on everyone’s pictures to help me recall stories and give me a place to start with the stories without going play by play, day by day. This trip to Russia has been the most unique mission trip experience for me ever as it was significantly more spiritually draining than physically draining. As I have shared this fact with multiple people each has been surprised by this claim because it is so unique. This may be the biggest praise for me. I have been on lots of service oriented trips and have gutted many a house in New Orleans and demolished multiple homes in Oklahoma but never have I been so stretched spiritually. In the midst of the trip the spiritual drain and battle was very real but never did I think of it as a blessing. I have always said I wanted a trip that was more than gutting a house. I wanted to not just help people in the physical need but meet them in their spiritual need with the love of Jesus and for one of the rare times this was very true in Russia. This desire of mine was more than met in Russia from the countless times of getting to hear each EX-drug addict’s testimony to preaching and watching the CCFers step up to be used and minister it was powerful and it was God. God is good and God is active all over the world. The first praise is that God allows us a bunch of worthless sinners to become Sons and daughters of God to be involved in something eternal and bigger than ourselves.

Amen