Thinking about ones praying for us on Tuesday night while we were struggling at the same moment on Tuesday morning...

Well, the Lord has given us time zones, eh?

How good that your time of prayer
during the Tuesday night prayer meeting in London 

was at the same time as our need on Tuesday morning in Mexico City.

The Lord is not limited by time and space, as we are, 

but we are His Body, 

so this is a great example of how
we can experience His eternal unlimitedness

in the middle of our frail, time-bound mortality!

A reply from a praying one!

Our prayer meeting last night was in an unheated room, where the cold gradually
crept up from the floor ....
but we touched fire in the prayer,
and when a sister told us about you all not able to open the files,
the prayer was more heated.  How precious that we could stand with you
in your situation there. At the onset we had prayed that we would have the one prayer--
and the Lord was certainly burdened for you in the battle zone.
Hide in Him.
Thank you for finding time to write!

Doings in Mexico

Dear all,

I'm starting up my blog again, so I will have to change out my Moscow scene for something more Mexican when I get some pictures on my phone.

However, I'm going to write now about the story of our struggle -- with victory.

First, Kathy, Pai En, John, and I got to the airport two hours in advance. We found that because some flights had been delayed, the airport personnel wanted everyone to get in one fat, long line just to enter the terminal, with no respect for which airline or which flight. We nudged our bags by inches for over an hour just to get to the ticket counter. When we wheeled up to the desk, the lady told us that even though we had checked in before the cut-off time, we had not gotten our baggage to her an hour before the flight, so we were going to be bumped off. Everyone has their excuse, she tells us with grim, firm finality. And all flights to Mexico for the next two days are already fully booked, so we will have to wait for some undetermined amount of time on standby. Pai En texted the sisters about this, they prayed, and unaccountably the ticket counter lady, who was so adamant, called her supervisor. Dismay bloomed on her face when she was told to put us on standby status for the flight we were supposed to go on and to put our luggage through and to send us to the plane. She determined that our being granted such a reversal was only temporary. While she was tagging our luggage, she took credit for our success but told us that we wouldn't make it because we still had to go through security and get to the gate. Praise the Lord for His overruling. We arrived on time with our luggage.

Last night was unusually cold for Mexico City, so we dressed in enough layers to make this blog sound like it is being written from Moscow. It's not actually that cold (only 40 degrees last night), but buildings in Latin America don't have central heat, and the air warms up as the sun starts shining. It's hard to believe that bouganvillas and sweaters are in the same picture. This morning we set up the computers and checked the connections in our coats and boots. Someone had brought two small heaters from the States for the gringos and felt sorry for us, so one heater was plugged in for us and one for the translators. It's amazing how quickly a little bitty heater toasts up a great big workroom. But suddenly, the breaker box not only flipped the power off in the whole building but caught on fire. This was at about 10:00. Also, a sister turned the power off in the house where Kathy, John, and I are staying (two doors down from the training center) because of the fire, so there was no electricity for anyone. There were no lights, no computers, no copiers, no internet, no electric keypad entry for the front entrance of the training center, no refrigeration in the kitchen, and no hope for probably two days. However, by 11:00 men had come from the electric company (¿¡qué servicio es éste!?), and they switched the electricity from coming in on one box to two boxes (improvement). Praise the Lord for His miracle of normality (as Antonio put it--un milagro normal). Our heater is back in the box, and plenty of lap blankets are available if we want them.

Then there were the glitches of setting up the computers--to be expected, but no panic--and I think that all of those small things have been smoothed out by the end of our first day.

Well, we just received Ezequiel...

Yours,
Arla

MAKДOHAЛД'C

This is the story of lunching with Irina, who stayed in our home two years ago, along with Zhenia, Irina (the one I am living with here), and Nadjia. If you go the the January post entitled, "So, Tell Me, What Led to the Trip to Moscow?" you will see the picture of the four Russian sisters at our table. The first Irina on the left lives here in Moscow. She doesn't speak English very well, but her English is better than my Russian, for sure. She and I had such good fellowship when she stayed with us because we praised the Lord together in a sweet way, and that was enough. I love her big smile and bright blue smiling eyes when we pray together! I am going to call her Russian Irina, and the Irina who speaks very good English and is a translator of the Russian literature and with whom I am staying will just be Irina for the purposes of this story.

I saw Russian Irina at the first meeting I went to in Moscow. She has come to the training in Anaheim twice now, and this time she is attending the video training here. Right away she asked if we could spend some time together, and she offered to take me to a shop for some little things to bring back to the family. So today was the day. There were two meetings of the training today because it is Men's Day. All the men are commemmorated, and in April all the women are commemmorated. Right now there are fireworks going off outside the window in honor of men. It is a good day for the training because everyone is off work.

After the second meeting it was 2:00, so we were hungry, and Russian Irina and the Irina I am staying with were deciding what to do in the female fashion (even though it was Men's Day). That involves the women saying, well, what should we do?, well, I don't know, whatever you want to do...,
well, why don't we get a cup of tea,? well, we could stay here for a cup
of tea..., but whatever you want to do..., well, I don't know?, what do you want to do? well, I brought something for us to eat at MacDonald's...,
well we could get a cup of tea there..., well, why don't we eat it here?, well, what does Arla want to do?, well, I don't know, why don't we
do it together?, well...

(STOP)! This is not good. Russian Irina seems to want us to go to MacDonald's, and the Irina I am staying with is not terrific on that idea, and I'm not sure what my role is in this, but I'd rather not go through the female decision-making delay-pattern any longer, and I propose to Irina that we should short-circuit the female discussion cycle. This bumps us out of the wrong groove, and Irina agrees right away, explaining that one dog has one brain, two dogs have half a brain, and three dogs have no brain. So we go with the one-dog approach ~ one brain ~ and it is Russian Irina's brain. Arm in arm we all go out the door, walking on the icy roadway to MacDonald's. We are all happy females ~ or one dog if you will ~ or better yet, sisters in the enjoyment of our Christ at this point.

It turns out that Russian Irina had come prepared. She knew that we would need lunch, and she knew a MacDonald's is near the meeting hall, and she knew that we needed real food, so she brought it. The only thing that she couldn't bring with her was the hot tea. But no problem, we would eat our food at one of their tables and drink their tea. My Irina was a bit troubled about eating at MacDonald's if we hadn't bought food there, but Russian Irina wasn't bothered, and ordinarily I would be bothered too, but this time I was feeling shameless since the third dog doesn't have a brain to care with. I told my Irina that the worse they could do is ask us to leave, and with a voice of quiet reserve she told me that the worse that could happen is embarrassment. I could see her point of view.

We found a table right in the middle of an area with booths and tables that were all full of young people. Russian Irina got down to business and plopped a plastic tray of smoked fish on the table. Even though it was wrapped in plastic, the smoked fishyness was going to be a tip-off that no one at our table had a Big Mac. We stayed with the fish, and she went for the tea and came back with three hot cups, stir sticks, sugar, and fries. The black bread and cucumbers were pulled from some plastic bag in her purse. At this point I was seeing Irina's point of view: we had the kind of Russian food that three Vodka drinkers eat, and Irina says that when that kind of drinking goes on, it is always with three people. So there we were, three babuskas, and our smoked fish, black bread, cucumbers, potatoes, and hot tea ~ the food was really good and nourishing.

Irina's husband died seven years ago. She has two married daughters, and she works with an engineering firm that constructs bridges. After her first time to California, her co-workers asked if she had seen the Golden Gate Bridge, which she did not have time to go see. When she came to stay with us for the training, we went to see the bridge that spans from Long Beach to San Pedro.

We had some time to fellowship after one meeting. There are times that Russian Irina would like to serve the Lord in a more specific way, like my Irina does. But there is the encouraging point in Isaiah that Christ is typified by Cyrus, the Persian king, as the servant of Jehovah. Cyrus was raised up, anointed, and loved by Jehovah. Cyrus signifies Christ because he subdued Babylon, released the capatives of Israel, and charged Israel and supported them to build up the temple and the city of their God. Cyrus did God's pleasure, and all who are in Christ can be one with Christ to release God's people and build up His house and His kingdom.


Russian Irina is a servant of Jehovah, even as she works in the job the Lord has given her, and nourishing, releasing, and cherishing us by her care!

 
Nota bene: even to this day Cyrus's tomb exists in Iran (formerly Persia), and there is a cylindar called the Cyrus Cylindar in the British Museum that records his decree to free the Israelites to go back to Jerusalem.
Here is a picture of the cylindar:

Ha ha, it looks like a corn cob!

My Near Brush with the KGB

Dear reader, you read in the previous blog about the clumsy woman.

This story is an update.

And I'll keep it short because right now you are wondering if anyone needs to start contacting Barbara Boxer about getting a quick visa to go to Russia and rescue me from the KGB.

I was sitting next to a sister who needed a cup of tea, so I was moving my four-legged chair so that she could get between me and the bookcase, and she could feel that one chair leg was coming down on her foot, so right away she screamed, and I was so fearful of coming down on her foot that I was trying to lift up my chair, and really I just needed to stand up, and that meant there was even less space for the sister to get between me and the bookcase, so she put out her hand to get her balance since suddenly I was blocking her way to get her foot out from under the chair leg that was coming down on her foot, so she braced herself against the tall bookcase, and the bookcase very very slowly started leaning and leaning, and falling and falling, and dumping and dumping stuff, and crashing and crashing things, but I don't remember hearing the crashing, but there must have been, and I grabbed the sister very tightly as we watched the bookcases tilting and tilting, and then it was quiet, and we just stood there looking at two tall bookcases with the books spilling out of them, and they were stacked so oddly and were pushed up against the chair of the sister who works on the other side of the bookcases, but she wasn't there in her chair that day, and Zhenia came running, and I went for ice for the sister's foot, and she went for Oscar to come look, and we all looked at the bookcases, and the chair still pushed behind them, and then my heart was pounding.
And the brothers quietly and the sisters quietly got all the books out of the spilled places, and we found one broken thing, which was a potted plant, and then I said we shouldn't tell anyone, and Oscar said, yes we should because they would think it was funny, and I said that that was why we shouldn't tell them, and we were all so so so glad the sister Tatiana was sick that day, and the sister icing her foot got up to put her shoes under the bookcase to stick out where the sister's feet would have been if she had come that day, and we were glad that it was just shoes posed there when I took a picture of the bookcases before the brothers put them back, and Oscar said that I was lucky that she was sick that day because everyone in her family is connected to the KGB, and they would be coming after me, and I said the KGB wouldn't be able to find me because if the sister had been there that day, I would have been in Sheol, and no one would be able to find me, not even the KGB.






 

Here is some of the destruction, and the evidence
that anyone sitting in the chair would have been seriously hurt.

The shoes were put there when we realized that the sister could have been there.

<> 

 

<> 


This is the picture on the sister's KGB calendar that her family gave to her.

The aftermath: everything was put back the way it was (except the potted plant)
and you can see that the sister isn't there.





Walking on Ice ~ Part 2

First of all, dear reader, would you pray for me, because I am clumsy.
And the sidewalks are about the same temperature as the one posted
for the day on Weather Underground, which is

- 25* C

!!

This is the coldest I have ever walked on!

So the below-freezing, cold sidewalks are happy to have inch-thick
blobs, lumps, and sheets of ice on them.

Some of the sidewalks are not covered with an inch of ice and snow.
Some of them have a thin sheen of something icy, shiny, slippery, smooth.
And those places are subtle.
Sometimes the sidewalks are well walked on, and shoveling has taken place, and there is brown slush.

The brown stuff can obscure the ice stuff.

So the walking is hazardous.

Now below is where the discussion
takes a metaphorical turn, but there is only
one thing
I want the reader to take away from what is above.

The clumsy woman needs prayer
because we don't want to see her sitting down on the sidewalk
because that would mean somebody has to pick her up.
Embarrassing ~ but that is
the best case scenario.

We also know that she might have a broken bone or a torn ligament,
or something that would make the last days here
a real nuisance ~ for those
who are working very hard to take care of
the clumsy woman.


But we need to go on to the metaphor, right?
(And thanks so much for the prayers!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walking on slippery places is what living in the natural man among the members of the Body is like.

Oh, how I enjoyed the morning watch on Friday. We prayed concerning this point:

For the building of the Body of Christ and the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose, we must ~ through much and thorough prayer ~ confess the sin of individuality and individualism.

At this point, it would be good simply to quote a paragraph that we were reading and that impressed us so much:

            In order to be blended together, we need to confess the sin
            of individualism and individuality. Our individualism is a kind of
            principle, a kind of policy, with us. Every one of us has his
            own policy, his own human logic. Our individualism becomes
            our logic. In our church life we may be full of individuality.
            We may not care for others but may care only for ourselves.
            Even though we may still love others, we may not care for
            others. In loving others we may still care for ourselves.

            This is individuality. We need to confess this sin. As long as such
            germs remain within us, we cannot be one and we cannot be
            blended.

Later in the day I was considering that a sister can be hurt by others who didn't even seem to notice that they were a bit rough with her. She knows that she is the one who needs to change, and she wants to change, but it hurts a bit that someone who probably thinks that she loves this dear sister is unconscious concerning her own actions (or slights, or dismissiveness, or impatient look, or whatever delivered the blow to this sister). The sister realizes that she must change, but the ones sailing along obliviously need to change too.

And the Lord seemed to be pointing out that I am one of the oblivious ones. The issue here is whether my love is a love that cares. Or do I love just enough to love, but not to care? So I can't determine to love or to care, but I must go back to the first sentence in the point, that is, to confess.

We must confess our sins, and He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Thank You, Lord. We love You, and we praise You that You lived the life of a despised and forsaken man, and You know and sympathize. And You are ready to forgive and cleanse.



"Is Not Thine a Captured Heart? ~ Part 2

This Tuesday the meeting included Olga, Latisia, Irina, and Andre, but this time I will tell about Irina. She reminds me of one of the young sisters in Anaheim, so I was a bit more focused on her. And besides she was sitting near me. She seemed to understand what I was saying, so it was fairly easy to get to know her. And I like fun things to happen.

Perhaps I started to like her very much because she was in a playful mood. We were waiting for dinner to actually begin. The plates were set before us, and there was fruit on the table to nibble on. One sister began to put a heap of mashed potatoes on each plate. When Irina received hers first, she decided that it was too plain, so she stuck a grape stem in the middle of her potato pile on the blue plate. You know what a grape stem looks like, right? There used to be about five grapes in that cluster, so there are five awkward knobs on the end of five little sticks that jut out from the stem. The grape stem looked funky~stuck in the mashed potatoes~but Irina explained that there was a tree on her island in the middle of the blue sea. I was convinced after she perched half an orange slice on the edge of the plate because then there was a sunset for the island with the misfit little tree in the middle of it.

I could not resist helping her out with the tree. There was a bowl of little bitty mushrooms, so I got one out of the bowl, and I planted a small brown tree next to the big one, so now her island had two trees. Irina and I grinned. Supper was going to be fun.

Here are Liza and Irina:

Later we read the section in the Life-study of Exodus about Moses being called. Last week we read about how the called one needs to realize that anything he relies on is just a serpent, but if he throws it down and picks it up another way, it can be used for God's purpose.

Then we were reading the verses around the table in Russian, and it was my turn to read Exodus 4:6, so I read my verse in English: "And Jehovah further said to him, Now put your hand into your bosom." I gestured by putting my hand inside my sweater, because I wanted to be sure they were following what I was reading. "And he put his hand into his bosom, and when he took it out, there his hand was, leprous, as white as snow." Well, I took my hand back out, and since it was supposed to be leprous--Yeek!--I let out a small cry of anguish, naturally. No one took much notice, but Irina and I exchanged glances. I like this part of Exodus because I really need to see that nothing good dwells in my flesh.

The heart of the time seemed to focus on the third sign of the called one, when the water turns to blood. This shows that the worldly supply and enjoyment are death in the eyes of God. Satan (the serpent) is against Christ, the flesh (leprosy) is against the Spirit, and the world (the blood) is against the Father. So, for that point, we read 1 John 2:15: "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Here is where the young one asks the good question.

She confessed that she loves God, but she loves other things too. What about this verse? What is she to do? So the other young ones began to consider how this question should be answered. Maybe the best answer comes from a verse right after verse 15~we have an anointing from the Holy One. We have the Holy One anointing us day by day to impart His holy life and nature into us.

Also, she opened up another matter in this wonderful small meeting.

She is not sure that engineering is the right major. She might like to work with children instead. So she needs some prayer so that she can be led by the Lord concerning her future.

I wondered if she might be led to be trained in the Word and in life. O Lord, lead this young one to Yourself.


Before anyone leaves, they have to get coats and hats and gloves and scarves and boots on.
Irina got all her stuff on and gave me a warm hug, and then she quietly motioned to her coat and squeaked, Yeek!! hee hee

Oh, may she be filled with the Holy One until no ground for anything else is left in any part of her heart!

And mine too!!