Jerry and Kim Rundstrom

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Prayer Letter/Ministry Update

HI Friends,
We have entered a new phase in our technological lives: Facebook. Because Kim is so connected to so many people I feel less need to write and experience less guilt. But always in the back of my mind I know that there are many out there who, like me, refuse to cave in to the latest craze but instead are committed to the medium of the Golden Age of Communication- Email. Here now is YOUR update:

We've been in Kiev now for almost 4 months (4 months!) we really like the city, the neighborhood, the people; the weather…not so much- it's cloudy and snowy OR cloudy and rainy OR cloudy and foggy and sleety.
You can probably spot the pattern.
In fairness, there were a lot of sunny days in October so we'll just have to wait out winter. But while were waiting we're trying to make the best of it. This has included getting out to meet new people. One lady that we met recently is Taya. She told all about her unhappy home life with an alcoholic husband. She asked for a dollar bill that she could fold into a pyramid and carry in her purse as a magic charm for getting rich (wait, that's not the weird stuff) then she told me that she's into a Japanese religion that has all kinds of objects associated with it, "For instance, you put a cactus by your computer screen and it will absorb all the bad energy coming out of it," she said.
"Ah…" I replied.
The upshot of this conversation was that I gave her a tract "Who is Jesus Christ?" and she was happy to have something else to mull over. I assume that she understood it has to be read and not simply hung next to some toxic household appliance.
We have her phone number and plan to see her again.

Some other news comes from the University of Technology and Design. It turns out that we live in something of an elite neighborhood. It is the home of the federal government and also has several educational institutes, the above mentioned being one of those, located two blocks from our house. In our first month here I went to see the head of the foreign language department to offer to help his students with their English. He told me then that they were trying to implement a requirement that their students be proficient enough in English to pass a standardized European test. You can imagine that they were pretty excited to have native English speakers like Kim and me offering to help with conversation practice. It took a long time but we expect an email soon with a schedule of times they want us in the classroom. We're hoping that this leads to plenty of connections both with students from all over Ukraine and the professors, some of whom are also our neighbors.

And, speaking of neighbors- Enver and Galina. This couple has taken us under their wings since we moved in. Recently Enver, who is 74, was in the hospital for treatment of his weak heart. While he was in the hospital Galina invited us to go to a big event called "Know the Bible Better". We were very surprised to see more than 800 people come to this event on that night. (On subsequent nights attendance has still been in the 750-ish range). Anyway, after it was over Kim gave Galina a Bible which she told us she's been reading constantly since then and was 'in ecstasy' about what she was reading, "I've heard these stories before but now READING THEM is so exciting!!" We are happy for these developments in our relationship with this couple and hope to see God do something really exciting in their lives. Enver was scheduled for release from the hospital yesterday and we were busy with other things but we had time to go up and hang out with them today. They've pretty much adopted us and we like that.

Last on our list, today I have to pick up photos for our new visas that will allow us to stay in Ukraine for another year. The process is orders of magnitude easier than for a Russian visa so we anticipate a simple trip to accomplish this. As with all visas, you have to receive them outside the country for which they are intended so we will be travelling to the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow to get visas. The convenient thing is that we can combine it with other meetings I need to be at while we're there.

And, though I didn't mention Ukrainian language study we continue to hammer, pick and chisel away at lists of new verbs, new conjugations and new declinations. Though our previous experience with Russian has made the task much easier the hard-rock-mining metaphor still comes naturally. We'll keep you posted on the progress as we, uh, dig deeper.

That's it for now.
Jerry and Kim
p.s. Kim here…it is so hard to write all that is going on in our lives, sometimes we forget the small things that happen so we write about them and/or interesting everyday things on our blog rundstromlife.blogspot.com

Prayer Requests/Answers to Prayer

http://rundstromlife.blogspot.com/
~Please pray for us as we hang out and meet neighbors
~Praise God that we have a great apartment in Kiev and that some of our things have arrived!
~Please pray that God will give us divine appointments with our neighbors as we meet them.
~Please pray that we will be able to invite our new friends to our place.
~Please pray for our son Parker as he is at Black Forest Academy, studying in his junior year.
~Please pray for our daughter Beki as she is working this year.
~Please pray for our daughter Laurel and her husband, Trent as they begin their life together.

Russia

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