Easter in Russia, 2009

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!
Easter has been celebrated again this year in Russia and we wanted to give you a peek at the some of what we enjoy here at this time of year. Below is a picture taken at the central outdoor market. At this time of year there are many vendors selling plastic flowers and wreaths. These are sold primarily to place on the gravesites of family members on Easter day. This quite a big event and many people take buses to the cemeteries to observe this custom.

One custom that is observed here, as it is in the states, is the decorating of eggs. In the market many vendors set up booths to sell a wide variety of decorating products. One of our favorites is the shrink wraps that are very colorful and often very beautiful. They range over a wide area of subjects with some being very Orthodox in flavor to those which have flowers, animals or fairy tales as themes. Another custom here is the special decorated sweet bread (kulich). Below is a picture of our kulich with some decorated eggs.

Here is one of the eggs a bit closer …..

Of course we have special church services at Easter here. We attended a Thursday evening “Last Supper” service where we took communion. A special 3 hour service was held on Saturday night before Easter morning. In this service there are several speakers each covering events beginning with Jesus’ arrest in the garden, through his trial, his crucifixion, and, with proper timing, the pastor of the church at midnight proclaims “Christ is risen” with the congregation responding “He is risen indeed!” On Sunday our service began at noon and afterward we had an Easter gathering of our fellow missionaries here in Tambov. There are only 5 of us here at present so we enjoyed a meal and wonderful afternoon of fellowship.

We’ve included a video of some of the special music at church during the Saturday night and Sunday services. I hope that it gives you a bit of a taste of Russian worship music and how much of a blessing the music is to Barbara and me. Listen for the recurring phrase – Христос воскрес! Войстину воскрес! – Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

April 5, 2009

We just returned from a two day visit to Elets where we stayed with the pastor, Daniel Veremchuk, of a church we have known since 2003. We had a wonderful reunion since we had not seen them since last summer. We want to share some of the trip with you and show you some of the sights around Elets….but mostly Daniel’s children.

Daniel and his wife, Yulya, just had their 5th child last December. They had another girl and her name is Dareena. The other children are Maya (7), Sophia (5), Lev (4), Zoreanna (18 months).



Here is a picture of Barb, Zoreanna and Dareena that I thought was cute.



Each morning Daniel has a devotional time with his children before they head off for school.



Daniel is fond of playing the recorder and is busy teaching Maya a few tunes.



We went for a walk on Wednesday to the park. To get there we had to cross a river on a walk bridge. Here is Barb with Maya on the bridge. It was pretty chilly so everyone is bundled up pretty well.



There is an interesting tradition related to weddings here that we had seen in Voronezh and on this trip we saw that it had begun in Elets as well. This is a picture of Maya on the bridge and if you look close you can see that there are padlocks on the bottom of the bridge rail.



The tradition has married couples cross the bridge and place a padlock, usually with their names inscribed, to signify a lasting relationship together. Here are a few of the locks up close.







One cannot visit any city in Russia without seeing two types of objects common to every city it seems. First are displays of various types of war machinery and the second is Orthodox cathedrals. Here are a few pictures of both for you to see what is seen in Elets.







When we got to the park the kids had fun playing on the park grounds and found other children to play with. I volunteered to keep the baby Dareena company by pushing her stroller around the park.



We had a wonderful but short stay with Daniel and his family and look forward to going again to work with the children’s Sunday School at his church in May. Here is a very nice picture of Yulya with Dareena.



Until our next post !