Yur'yev Polskiy

Many of you know that Chris has been planning for several months to take a trip to Yur'yev Polskiy, Russia. We are counting down the days!! He and a team of 5 of our church friends will be gone for 10 days. They will travel to Moscow and then take a bus about 5 hours northeast of Moscow to Yuryev Polskiy. They will stay in a hotel and spend their days conducting a day came at an orphanage in this small agricultural town.

Our church has sent a team of people to this same orphanage for 8 years and Chris has always been drawn to the trip. He is looking forward to the experience. The Yuryev Polskiy Orphanage is home to children ages 6 to 16. The orphans in Russia face a future with no hope. Many of the children are social orphans and were placed in the institution because their parents could no longer provide for them. Statistics show that 70% of the children leaving the Russian orphanage system at age 16 turn to drugs, prostitution or suicide. Working with Russian translators, Chris and our friends will be teaching the children skills for independant living. In addition, they will share the Word of God which gives them a hope for the future and they will teach them about their Heavenly Father who wants to adopt them into His family.

I want to share with you an amazing story about God's provision. The cost of this trip is about $2500 and in addition to that, we were looking at 10 days without Chris' income. On top of that, in Dec and Jan, we incurred about $2000 worth of medical bills (see post below to catch up on that). We had been praying about the finances because we definitely didn't have that much money to spare! In a very very short amount of time, the church received money in Chris' name to help fund the trip and THE ENTIRE TRIP HAS BEEN PAID FOR! In fact, the church received more than they needed to fund Chris' trip so they are using the excess to buy supplies and necessities for the children in the orphanage. AND we've received a great amount of money from friends and loved ones who wanted to be sure that the girls have what they need during Chris' absence. We are absolutely blown away by the generosity of others and the great provision has confirmed to us that we are walking in the will of the God we love :) We are so excited to see what will come of this trip! Thank you so much for your prayers and financial donations. We still haven't received a list of people who gave toward this trip so we're going to be quite a while on getting thank you notes out but we want you to know that we are so so so very grateful!


Here are some pictures of Yur'yev Polskiy (also spelled yuriev polski) that I found on line. Chris has been watching the weather for the last couple of months. Basically, yur'yev polskiy has seen snow every day for months and the temperatures haven't risen above freezing. This week, the warmest forecasted day is Saturday, with a high temp of 35 degrees!