THE UNIVERSE WAS. CREATED BY GOD THE CREATORTHE UNIVERSE HAS. O POWER TO GIVE YOU ANYTHING OR TO DO ANYTHING FOR YOU. ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THAT IT CAN HAS SUCCUMBED TO A LIE

Oh! dearly beloved children of the Most High, only WONDERFUL, merciful and living, loving God, please get this straight: The universe was created and is inanimate. It cannot give you anything.

When yiu profess that lie,  is a case of you being in a far country trying to fit in and go along with rejectors and those who have turned their backs on the Light and have decided to be laws unto themselves.

I respect that each person has her or his own right to believe whatever she or he wants to believe, even, very sadly when those beliefs and existing in those beliefs tragically will lead to the loss of that person's eternal soul. But I cannot stop proclaiming that lies are lies.

Again . . . if you don't believe me, please ask the Holy Spirit and He will answer you in exactly the way you need to know . . . or ask your priest/pastor/Sunday School teacher/or a mature Christian man or woman in your family.

Only you know what is between you and God the Father and His Only Begotten Son Jesus.  You cannot truly love and serve the Lord while also trying to keep someone or some group of  people happy by putting inanimate, created things in the place of the Un-created, eternally Begotten Son Redeemer and Saviour Jesus the Messiah.

This ia ONLY between you and no one else except the Living Lord God -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God Almighty, the One True Living God says to you:

"Dearly BelovedI, I have called you by the Name that only I know. I delight in you. I sing songs of joy over you. Take up my armor and firm against the Deceiver. Jesus has defeated Death and Sin always and forever, but it is like it is like on Earth after a great war has ended and there are still marauding bands going around the countryside. We must be aware that we are clothed in Messiah, the every battle belongs to Him and that He always has the victory.”

(ESPECIALLY in the season of the Celebration of the Resurrection, as baptized believers we have been charged to proclaim the Good News the Creation has been renewed and is continually being remade. We can proclaim that sin and death no longer have any power over any human being, past, present and future.)

Again, the Lord says to you:

“No spiritual weapon formed against you shall prosper. The Lord is aware of your struggles and He says to you, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant, beloved child. Only I know the plans I have for you.  Nothing I speak into creation comes back void, but accomplishes my intentions.’

“I have given ransomed nations in exchange for you. When you walk through fire it will not consume you. If flames surround you, you will not catch fire.

“Behold! I am doing a new thing in your life. Just as streams of living water will spring up and revive the desert, you, too will be revived, body/mind/soul and Spirit.

“Don't be afraid.

“I have created you and called you by Name. You are mine and mine alone. Din't be afraid. All is well and all will be exceedingly well.  Abide in me and I will abide in you.

“Put on my armor (Ephesians 6) and stand firm. The battle belongs to theLord and He ALWAYS has the victory."  

Thus saith the Lord.

Alleluia!

Glory to God in the Highest and the fullness of God’s shalom wholeness to human beings and to all of Creation!


🕊🙏🌟❤️🕊🕊🕊🙏🙏🙏🌟🌟🌟❤️❤️❤️💖❤️❤️💕🌟🌟🌟🙏🙏🙏🕊🕊🕊❤️🙏🕊

COMEDY SKITS ALONG THE WAY

I think everything is just getting way too serious, so it’s time to take some time aside to visit some of the comedy routines and shows of the Baby Boomer childhood that we shared . . . and looking back to the vaudeville shows of The Greatest Generation(s) — our parents/grandparents . . . and some shows we let our kids watch . . . And also some radio offerings and some comedy records . . . Laughter and joy were the most desired commodities in our house. 😎💖🌈💖

Garfield Goose (if you are from Chicago and environs)

More Garfield Goose — (this time in color)

Bozo’s Circus (Chicago and environs again)

 Soupy (Yes! SOUPY!!) Sales

Captain Kangaroo (B&W)

Miss Piggy and Roger Moore on Muppet Show

Fickle Finger of Fate (routine with Dan Rowan and Tommy Smothers)

“Airplane” (Full movie)

Smothers Brothers with David Letterman

Electric Company with Rita Moreno Morgan Freeman and Bill Cosby

Ding Dong School with Miss Frances

WHO’S THE LEADER OF THE CLUB THAT’S MADE FOR YOU AND ME?

The Honeymooners

Marx Brothers “A Day At The Races’ routine

Driving Instructor from Bob Newhart’s “The Butttoned Down Mind”

Too Gigio

As a Hare in March . . . .

This is about two of my favorite places in the world — our cousins’ B&B/Vineyard in Australia






Romantic Vineyard, near Amherst, Victoria, Australia






And

The Secret Garden in Ouray, Colorado






Secret Garden — Ouray, Colorado on The Western Slope of the Rockies






And it is also about what’s been going on with me since about Valentine’s Day . . .






Okay . . . here goes . . . .






Yesterday I got a big envelop from the Veterans Administration Adjudication Office with the details of their decision about the appeal that was pursuant to their denial of the application I made in 2013 concerning my disability status.






Apparently that particular package and all the information in it is a kind of justification and explanation of the main decision they made and all the details about why they did or didn't agree with what the Veterans Disability Lawyers from Bosley and Bratch presented on my behalf.






Before it came in the mail Dan Smith, my lawyer called and said he had been given a hint that good news was on the way, and we were both very excited.






So it was adjudicated in my favor, agreeing with what all the assessments and evaluations and examinations and records showed. And the next thing will be some written verification of how it will affect what I get every month and what the access to some benefits I haven't had before will be . . . but at the moment we still don't know what all that is, exactly . . . I think they are waiting for a particular phase of the lunar cycle or messages left by leprechauns somewhere or something like that.






God only knows . . .






So . . . . as soon as I know, we will move ahead with our plans.






***cautiously optimistic***






. . . and trusting the Lord.






Meanwhile I was back at the ER at the ATAL VA Med Ctr this morning for the third time this week because more and more pollen is coming out and some of the meds they gave me on Tues are not interacting happily with the meds I already take and there were two sets of med prescribers who I am pretty sure were not even speaking to one another.






And meanwhile again, a long line of social workers and psych eval folks along with residents and teaching assistants and observers were hovering around and asking the usual questions and not at all listening to any of the answers I was giving them.






I really wanted an injection or an intravenous dose of phenagran or Benadryl or prednisone and also something like paregoric . . . the first to stop my body from reacting to the allergens and the second to calm my whole GI tract down because it ends up feeling like I have just woken up in bed, but have had 17 cups of coffee before even opening my eyes.






To give you a complete update and an idea about what the last month was like, here goes:






Feb 14th -- I got a sweet Valentine's box of chocolate caramel pecan "turtles" from my beloved daughter Krista and my son-in-love Daniel and two of my grandsons.






-- I ate two, put the rest in the freezer, because that'e the way I like 'em.






-- 45 minutes later I bit down on one of them and broke the crown I had over one of my two upper front teeth . . . have had crowns on them since I was about to leave for college in the summer of 1970, because I was a tomboy and had chipped my teeth when I was in 4th or 5th grade and it really bothered Mom . . . then -- I found the broken part and kept it safe.






Feb 15 -- 8 AM -- got an appointment at a dentist's office that I had tried to connect with when I was still going back and forth to Dad's all the time . . . in that era I opted to stay with Mom's and Dad's dentist they had been seeing since 1992.






The dentist here made a plastic mold of my upper teeth and put the broken off crown in it and set me up with her husband who is also a dentist -- he is the oral surgeon and she does the crowns and regular dentistry and cosmetic dentistry.






So by 10 AM I was set up with an appointment to get an implant, but the husband-dentist had to squeeze me in all afternoon between patients from 1:30 PM until almost 6 PM . . .






I had much more novocaine than usual for an unusually extended amount of time.






It was not much fun, but I am grateful to them all. Then was given an antibiotic (they pulled out the post of a live tooth and then drilled and put the implant into my bone . . .) and said that a new crown could not be put back on for about 3 months or maybe a bit longer.






So I have that prosthetic that comes in and out and looks okay. Otherwise I look like an overgrown first grader with a missing front tooth and the Tooth Fairy hasn't even been by.






The husband dentist said I would be in pain for 2 or 3 days . . . could only eat very soft stuff and had to take Zithromax antibiotic for 5 days and then enough tramadol and my other usual pain meds as needed.






But I was in the midst of a very major reaction to the novocaine . . . already was allergic to codeine, morphine, Percocet . . . whatever else . . . was in extreme pain and taking Benadryl until the 19th of Feb . . . and by the 21st was almost back to normal.






Then the redbuds started blooming . . . then the non-bearing pear trees and the Japanese magnolias . . . the hyacinths and the daffodils and the tulips and now the cherry trees and it is very beautiful . . . but by Monday the 26th of Feb I knew I needed all my asthma meds and everything else I normally get in such situations (Like the 2x to the ER the last week of Nov in FL and the 2x to the ER the first week of Dec here in GA.)






Finally got everything I needed and got it all straightened out at the ER at the VA in Atlanta yesterday and felt MUCH better and taking the sleeping pills for three times now has started putting my world right side up . . . but still tired . . . but, thank God I will be okay.






Nevertheless, I was too spacey to realize yesterday afternoon after waiting for my meds after I was released by the ER folks, that they hadn't taken out the IV port in the inside of my left elbow. So right before I took the sleeping pill last night around 11:30PM, I called the triage nurse for after hours at the VA.






The triage nurse then determined that I could wait until today to go have it out and made notes on my chart for all that. Slept from 11:30 PM until 7:30 AM, had some breakfast, got in the car and drove down to the VA.






By 10:30 AM, I was on the road again without the IV port and with some tide-me-over migraine pills (because a scrip is on its way in the mail) . . . and then meanwhile again . . .






I got a new phone from Verizon and quit AT&T and my new phone number is a CO number -- 970-596-2771






But it's suspended because I put the phone down somewhere in the house last night right before going to bed and I have no idea where that is.






Hopefully. the dogs didn't take it out to hide it in the yard.






😎






Fun, fun, fun . . .





Romantic Vineyard, Amherst, Victoria, Australia


http://babyboomergospel.blogspot.com/2018/03/as-hare-in-march.html

WHERE WE ARE NOW . . .

I think what happens with the Mueller investigations will speed things up . . . and we won’t have to wait until the next election to be rid of this regime . . . we can only hope. His campaign staff, his son and his son-in-law all committed treason on his behalf. Once they start going beyond indictments to trials, the whole house of cards will fall. You can tell that they know their days are numbered by how they are panicking and working hard to make sure there is as much repression of the staff in the East Wing, etc.

Their lies and defensive tactics will only increase, but to no avail. Justice and righteousness will prevail.



Of course it is not finished yet. Mueller and his staff are going about it very carefully and in the right way . . . those who have been indicted already will do what they can to ameliorate the sentence they may be facing when taken to court.






In the months before the mid-term elections, there is plenty of time for everyone to see how much collusion there was in their treasonous enterprise and it won't just be the campaign workers who are tarnished. . . the whole Republican National Committee and the Republican leaders in Congress all may have had access to the conspiracy with our enemy Putin and his minions.






Take heart.






The Lord will be victorious over their evil sooner than later because the people working against the regime are smarter and are doing everything legally, which is something that never even occurred to those who just wanted to defeat Hillary and make sure that only the good ol' white boys stayed in power.






Even though by the time it was certain that the regime would be nominated, and some of them were still objecting to the pseudo-candidate . . . they just continued to use him and also continued the gerry-meandering and other political tricks to win at all costs.






And the costs have been that people in need and the environment are suffering and that we have lost our place in the free world in international relations.






Scary times . . . Yes . . . But evil and those who worship wealth never win. If it seems like they are winning, it just means we are not at the end of the story. God is always able to do much more than we can even think to ask.






There is a spiritual warfare battle going on as well as all of the evil that’s being done in the name of this it administration.






God is not mocked. They will reap what they sow.






We can count on the fact that God will not put up with everything they are doing.






But it is also up to us to choose to work against them with God’s help.






One of the reasons that the gift of free will but God gives to people makes things difficult is that people can choose to succumb to evil, people can choose to worship Mammon/wealth instead of the Lord, and people can choose to do nothing.






There is no doubt that we are in a battle, and it is sickening that such a regime is in control.






But our Founders made the Constitution in a way that when the people have made a big mistake in an election, we don’t have to put up with them for long.






Nevertheless, they have also broken laws and righteous men and women are working to prove that and to bring them to justice.






Even though the pseudo-Pres and the members of the regime do not respect laws, their downfall will be that they have been treasonous and justice will prevail.






IT WILL BE OVER SOONER THAN YOU THINK.

A CAUTIONARY TALE . . .

ABOUT AN IDENTITY COMPROMISE AFTER THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE US OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT (OPM) COMPUTERS WHEN I HAD AN APPLICATION TO TEACH RUSSIAN AT THE DEFENSE LANGUAGE INSTITUTE ON FILE AT THE OPM

Beloved, as you may know, my full name is Kathleen Ware Harris. I have had FB pages with my full name and with "Kathy Harris" for my friends from the time I was eight years old through high school.

But I did not set the FB page you can see through this URL -- https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008711207300.  

I believe that FB page, with which I had NOTHING to do appeared because the Russians hacked the OPM computers at a time during which I had that application to work at a DoD installation, and also because I have traveled in Russia,and because the Russian government has a detailed file on all people who have requested to travel there.

Of course, beyond my travel there to be in mission with the United Methodist Church, beginning in 1993 through 2011, I was also a USAF intelligence officer beginning in 1980, and due to the openness of our society, and how much easier it has always been for the Soviet/Russian governments to gather intelligence here in the US than it has ever been for any other country, including us to gather intelligence in Eurasia, they have always had the advantage over us.

And I first met Soviets in the fall of 1977, right before I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. One of the exchange professors that my family and my parents got to know well during the eight months we knew him and often hosted him and his wife when she visited him in January of '88, (and two other Soviet exchange professors -- one from Kiev and one from Moscow).

I got to know them so well, that one of them told me about the preparations and training that he had gone through in Moscow for two weeks before flying to Champaign to begin his time working with a professor from India in a post-doctoral position. He also said he was given $600 by the Soviet Gov't to use to buy textbooks concerning radio physics and other subjects that at that time, the US university faculty members and research staffs understood in an advanced way compared to the capabilities of the Soviet military or advanced research scientists in the fields of isle propulsion systems, advanced radar capabilities and other scientific and strategic developments.

The exchange professor I knew best in the Fall of '77 Semester, through the Spring of '78 semester, and his wife (Anatoly and Tanya) were from Kharkov, Ukraine, and I was blessed to visit them there sixteen years after we first met during the time that I was on my second UMC mission trip to Russia in the summer of '94. The mission trip had been to the village where the Tears had summer palaces, about a day's horse and carriage drive outside of what was again being called "St Petersburg", after having been called "Leningrad during the Soviet era.

The IREX (International Relations Exchange Program) had been agreed to when Detente was set up by the two governments in the early 70s, so that the Soviet Union could begin trading with the US. Nevertheless, the benefits of the program were very lopsided because the Soviets sent professors who were involved in advanced scientific developments, especially those connected to military capabilities, and the US was only allowed to send students and professors involved in the Humanities.

During that time, I didn't know anything about how the Soviet government, military and intelligence agencies worked, but during the six years I was on active duty and the nine years I was in the Reserves, I had occasion to learn a lot and spent time doing analysis, briefings, and being involved in the monitoring of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and other treaties.

I know that the Soviet Government knew who I was, because we made it easy, first of al by publishing the names of airmen and officers who graduated form the USAF Air Intelligence Training Center that at the time I studied there was located at Lowry AFB in Denver.

After each class graduated, the USAF Public Relations Office foolishly sent a list of the names of graduates from every class to the Denver Post, which openly published the lists.

After the US Government folks realized that the Russian Government folks had access to applications for jobs teaching Russian at a DoD institution, which should never have been compromised by them finding out about it, I was contacted by OPM and given access to a very comprehensive program guarding against identity theft.

Nevertheless, three times since October of 2016, I have had indications on FB that there were phishy things going on and I put my FB page in an offline mode and almost decided to delete it.

I was worried that I would lose too many friends if I did that, so I just did my best to keep checking to see if other indications of phishing or other compromises. Last May I all of a sudden began to get strange e-mails that notified me that I had opened a bank account in banks I had never heard of and that I had been refused for loans and credit cards that I had never applied for . . . and it happened again when I was in Colorado visiting my son in November.

So three times I have had to go to the trouble of changing bank accounts and there is no reason to believe the identity theft challenges will stop.

Of course, all of this happened beginning on FB in 2014, so even before the Russians interfered with the latest presidential election because the Republican candidate's campaign staff and son-in-law were engineering Russia's help to sway the election because of the candidate's close business association with Russia that all had to be approved by Putin and the Russian government.

Therefore, Beloved, I think you can understand why, among other things, I have had a jaundiced attitude toward this very unqualified, bigoted, hate mongering power hungry pseudo-president we have in the WH.

I know I wrote that I was sick of the politics and especially the disgusting and ridiculous "news cycle"concerning his tweets, ridiculous tweets and evil campaign rally-type meetings with the US citizens who were duped into voting for him amidst the treasonous activity that was being carried out on his behalf.

But I just noticed this "pseudo FB page" attributed to me today. I had nothing to do with it, and you can see that the hacking that led to the creation of it included knowing my birthday and even pretended that I myself from my true FB page had accepted a "Friend" request for the fake page. I never did. I would have remembered and told you about all this before now if I HAD seen it before or truly accepted a friend request.

Soooo . . . I hope that if you are on the fence about whether or not the candidate authorized his campaign manager and his son-in-law, among others to deal with the Russians and to authorize them to do the dirty tricks on the candidate's behalf, that you will get off the fence and start working HARD to impeach him.

Write your Congressmen and Senators . . . forward this post ti them if you would like to do that. It's okay with me because he and the Republicans in Congress have GOT to be stopped. We need to work harder and find whatever ways are necessary to make this happen.

For the sake of our sovereign nation under threat from our enemy, Russia, and for the sake of every American citizen and immigrant who needs the help, health care, Social Security payments and SSI payments, and fruit of other programs that help our people in need and are full of the mercy, justice, peace and kindness that are at the core of our Founders' values, even though they did not live up to the highest of their ideals, continuing to allow slavery for greedy, economic purposes, cruelty and bigotry that has now re-surfaced in a very sickening way with the administration we are suffering under unless we are millionaires or billionaires.

And we also must save the environment and the beauty of our national monuments, wilderness territories and national Forrests and other lands that will never be the same once the purveyors of greed who this administration has allowed and encouraged start destroying them.

May the Lord continue to help us do right by our people, our lands and our government of the people, by the people an for the people and get rid of the people on power who over 3 million Americans DID NOT VOTE FOR before they do any more damage to our people, our nation and our stamina in international relations among the progressive nations of the Free World.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA . . . again!

(We were without power last weekend from midnight on Friday through 10 AM Monday morning.)

This morning I went to First UMC in Marietta, Ga where I used to sing in the choir before spending more than half my time with Dad during the last five years since Mom passed made it too difficult to keep up with what the choir was preparing to sing. I wish I had still been a part of the choir this morning, though, because the beautiful Service of Lessons and Carols was celebrated and the choirs for each age group -- the children; the teens; and the adults all performed, as well as the Bell Choir and an orchestra. It was very wonderful and I thank God I felt led to worship there this morning.

I went to the second service and was hurrying from the farthest part of the parking lot in order to get to the sanctuary in time for the service when I notices that there was a power company truck with a worker int he cherry basket at one of the electrical poles near the church building. As I saw it, a woman coming from the church came toward me and I asked, "How was it?" I meant the early service.

I was surprised when she answered, "Right in the middle of the service, a transformer blew and made loud noises, and the lights went out!"

And then when I got to the sanctuary, Rev Dr Sam Matthews, the Senior Pastor, had just started to explain that the electricity had gone off int he middle of the earlier service and the choir had to use the flashlights on their cell phones to see the music . . . he said it was the only time that he was glad that people had their cell phones, but otherwise he still wouldn't encourage people to have them during the service.

So no human-made power was available on the very dark and cloudy morning in Marietta today. But the good power company workers came to the rescue quickly and by the beginning of the 11:15 Am service just about the time I got there, the lights were back on!

It reminded me of my ordination to ministry in the middle of Hurricane Irene in early October of 1999. Right in the middle of the time of laying hands on me to pray for me and dedicate me to the Lord's service. I felt like when that happened, the Lord was saying to me, "You don't need any man-made power -- only mine."

And the memory has helped me many times as I have served Him in the church and overseas in mission.

And what happened today encouraged me, too, because it is still a dark day, overcast and now raining this afternoon. But in as Advent we observe the time of waiting for the Light and the Life of the World to be born on Earth, we remember that there is still the darkness of evil and immorality, greed, avarice, the thirst for power over other human beings, wars, poverty, homelessness, destitution and neglect, even on the part of people who claim to believe in God in Christ Jesus.

As long as we are still here on Earth people will still have the choice to choose to serve God and do good, or choose to reject God and succumb to evil.

Every Advent and Christmastime, those of us who believe have a chance to share the love of God we know in Christ Jesus in special ways.

We can donate money or food or time to those in need. We can invite people to our churches to share the Good News with them and bring them into the loving fellowship that we share together with the Lord. We can decorate our houses to witness to the world that we celebrate the Light and Life of the world as John wrote in the beginning of his Gospel about Jesus: "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it."

No darkness, even that of evil being manifest, as in the case of the way this administration is taking away benefits for people in need and serving only the wealthiest people, can be overcome by the Light and Life of God in Jesus Christ when there are people who will work against evil in His Name.

As Christmas Approaches, my prayer for you, Beloved, is that you will ever more know in deeper ways how much God loves you, and that you will be able to rest in Him and trust Him.

If you do not already know the Lord, Beloved, my prayer for you, as ever, is that you will open your heart to the possibility of His love and ability to show you Who He is . . . and that the Holy Spirit will reveal Him to you in ways that you cannot mistake as He answers every question you may ever have for Him.

PROPOSED CULTURAL EXCHANGE TO SIBERIA IN FEBRUARY

I would like to propose a cultural exchange trip to the Far East, Oceanside (Primorskoye) area of Russia, to the city of Vladivostok and its suburbs; and to the city of Khabarovsk in Siberia, about 800 Miles N/NW of Vladivostok .. an overnight train ride. The purpose of the trip will be to fellowship with Eurasian folks with a cultural exchange presenting workshops on American musicals like "Oklahoma!", "The Music Man", "Carousel" and "Camelot" to kids and adults in drama clubs and ESL schools.

For one month in the spring of 2010, and for two months in the winter of 2011, I was blessed to stay with a friend I have known since childhood. At the time she was the Cultural Affairs Attaché at the US Consulate in Vladivostok. During that time, as you may remember, I was working on my Doctorate of Ministry in Missional Evangelism. My doctoral project was to develop a Seminar in Basic Christian Spiritual Practices in Russian for the people of the former Soviet Union. One goal was to see the connections between Russian Orthodoxy and the Social Holiness Movement of Methodism.

Along the way, in both 2010 and 2011, I attended a special meeting called an English Olympiad at a private foreign languages school near the Vladivostok Airport, with my friend, the Cultural Affairs Attache. It was delightful to meet and interact with the students who were between the ages of seven and seventeen. They were very interested in American plays and musicals, so I was enchanted to see their enthusiasm.

In addition, the first time I went to Russia on a UMC VIM trip, I arrived in Moscow in December 27, 1993. I was escort-interpreting for a group led by the chaplain from a college in Indiana that had been founded by the Methodist Church. We had exchanges with children, teens and adults who were involved in youth groups and special interest clubs including music clubs, English language clubs, archeology clubs and geology clubs.

There was much joy and enthusiasm as we spent most of their winter holidays with them in a town called Obninsk that was the center of the Soviet nuclear power research and development. It is about 180 Miles S/SW of Moscow in the Kaluga Oblast (like a county in the US). It is home to the first Soviet Nuclear reactor, six of which were built partly from plans of the first US nuclear reactors, plans that were stolen by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were incarcerated and then became martyrs to their cause.

Another of the first six Soviet nuclear reactors was the one near Chernobyl in Ukraine that destroyed itself in the spring of ‘86. Again, as you may remember, my special interests when I was an US Air Force Intelligence Officer were Soviet political and military affairs, space, missile nuclear and advanced weapons developments. That sheds a bit of light on my particular interest in Obninsk from my pre-Ministry background.

One of the highlights of the VIM trip was singing Christmas carols to and fellowshipping with patients in the city hospital in Obninsk. At the time there were dire deprivation conditions because of the break-up of the former Soviet Union. The system had failed in such a way that there was very little food and there were almost no pharmaceuticals. The hospital staffed focused on treating patients with cancer and doing research. Nevertheless, at the time that we were there, they had less than thirty patients in a hospital that had more than 600 beds.

Of course, for the 35 Americans on this VIM trip, we had pretty much emptied out drug cabinets to come omg the trip, so we were able to share everything we had left. And we made reports to the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and its emergency mission and aid arm, UMCOR about the problems. From that time the UMC was very involved in helping the people of Russia and the former Soviet republics.

Besides singing the Christmas carols on Epiphany, which is also the celebration of the Nativity for Orthodox churches, I read the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel in Russian. The Bible that I used was one that some Americans had tried to smuggle to Russia in the packaging of some pipeline coating materials that the company my father worked for was selling to the Soviets from the late 60s. (This was in the pre-Detente Era, and was accomplished with permission of the US Government, and with the aid of the Italian government and Italian businesses.)

A Christian organization was operating in and around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to smuggle the Bible’s to Russia. When the Soviets first detected the Bibles making lumps in heavy polyurethane wrapping around the stacks of boxes holding the pipeline coating materials together on the main deck of an ocean-going barge, they threatened to cancel the mult-million dollar deal.

At that time I was working on my BA in Russian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so it was very special that my father was able to give me one of those Bibles and that I was able to read from it the first time I was in Russia, twenty-five years after I first began to study the language and culture while I was a junior in high school.

I hope people will want to join me on this cultural exchange trip. Being from the warmth of the US Southeast, they may be wary of going to Siberia in winter. However, it is really beautiful and it would mean a great deal to the Russians to see that we would make such an effort in the winter.

Houses and buildings are very warm, and when it is sunny in the city of Vladivostok, tucked into The Golden Horn inlets and islands off the Sea of Japan, even the air at 20 below zero Fahrenheit is very fresh. There are sports and celebrations like Ice Sculpture shows, and the Russians are wonderful hosts.

The city of Khabarovsk is about 800 miles North/Northwest of Vladivostok, on the longest of the great Siberian rivers, the Amur. It lies on the border with one of China's NE provinces. The weather might be 30-60 below zero Fahrenheit, which just means you need to bundle up and especially have good thick water-proof boots. On a sunny day ice crystals sparkle and float in the air.

The Russian cuisine is delicious, but the cities have a lot of international and cosmopolitan restauranrs as well. I am sure we would enjoy fellowship with the people we meet. There will no doubt be opportunities for concerts and cultural/historical tours as part of what we would do.

What do you say?