Outer Rim Territories

Siberia news

Not that long ago I posted about a possible trip with the Seminary to Novosibirsk, Siberia is May. You might recall reading it here: Winter Newsletter 2006 At that point I was fairly well committed but unsure of the finality. Well, the commitment has been made. I enrolled in the course with the registrar. I sent the credit card info off to the seminary's travel agent for the tickets. That's commitment! The biggest change is that I won't be going alone. Anne will be coming with. I'm glad for this. We're going to be gone three weeks, which is a long time to be without your spouse. Unfortunately the kids will be staying behind with Anne's sister Christine. Christine has four of her own so she will be looking forward to help from both sets of Grandparents. The obvious consequence is that our costs will double. The whole trip will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000. We're stepping out a bit of a financial limb. I'm selling off most of my recording equipment to pay a big chunk of it. Hopefully we can scrounge the rest of it up with some frugality. The brief itinerary is we fly out of Chicago May 17th. We fly to Frankfurt then to St. Petersburg. We have a day in St. Petersburg then fly to Novosibirsk. The following week I am in class all morning. Afternoons and evenings will be spent sightseeing, visiting misson congregations, fellowship with the seminarians, building relationships for future mission work, taking a "mental picture" of this young church, and of course... studying! They're going to arrange things for Anne to do or she can sit in on the class. There is another wife going but it remains to be seen what exactly they will have going on. After two weeks of class, we fly back this time to Moscow for a day to visit the Kremlin and then to Frankfurt. We're taking a three day excursis to Berlin and to cousin Angela and Grégory in Magdeburg. We want to visit some of the Luther sites like Erfurt, Eisleben, and the Wartburg. Then we fly back to Chicago through Berlin and Frankfurt. The best part is that arriving back around the 7th of June we may have vicarage starting as early as June 15th. So we will be doing a significant amount of packing of Spring Break in the event of such a catastrophe! On a side note, its on days like this when I have a sinus infection and am definitely behind in academic work that I am thankful that God is more gracious than both I and my professors. God does expect perfection from us but graciously gave his Son to be perfection for us. I need a redemptor for this semester! Novosibirsk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Novosibirsk City Guide LTS » Lutheran theological seminary » selc » novosibirsk » russia »