Sunday

We had a wonderful visit with Vika this morning. She seemed much happier the entire time than she has before. We have cut our visiting time back a little bit so as not to overwhelm her. We are technically allowed to visit for 2 hours, twice daily, but I think we all do better by just staying for around an hour each time.

Today she sat on Daddy’s lap almost the entire time! This was huge because before she’s always been much more nervous with him.

As you can see, they got along just fine today!

Doesn’t she have the most beautiful eyes?

When it was lunchtime we took her back up to her room (with no vandalism on my part this time, thank goodness). The nannies accepted a package of cookies for the children and let me take some pictures of Vika having her lunch. Here she is being fed by one of her nannies.

As we were walking back to our apartment, we started hearing music playing. As we came closer, we realized it was the song “Ancient of Days.” We found a stairway up the side of a large building and went inside to find a church service had just begun! We had hoped to go to church today but decided to go see Vika instead, so we were very happy to be able to do both. The entire service was in Russian so I can’t say we got much out of the message, but it was still nice to be there among other believers. Afterward someone tried to greet us but he spoke no English, so we went on our way. As we were walking back toward the street, he came running out with two young women in tow, who were calling out “Hello!” to us. They spoke some English and we were so happy to get to visit with them.  They insisted on giving us their phone numbers in case we needed anything while we are here, and also invited us to a “Breakdance Battle”  that will be held on Saturday. I think Ryan was secretly happy to tell them that we’d be gone by then! Judging by some of the dancing we saw in the service, I don’t think we’d do too well!

One of the wonderful things about being a believer is the family we can find almost anywhere in the world. Though we have nearly nothing else in common with many of these people, there is a commonality we find in Christ that makes us welcome among them. I have no doubt that I could call either of the numbers we were given and these people would do absolutely anything they could to help us. It’s a beautiful thing.