Chili and Turkey

Hey guys! I hope you're all having a great Friday. I was fairly unproductive. I did take Cam to football practice, but that was about it. Yesterday I went to the Wallers house to hang out with Alec before he left (this morning) and that was a lot of fun. The Wallers are hilarious people. And Mrs. Eileen has the best chili recipe ever. She just had a bunch of cans of random beans lying around so she threw them in a pot and it was awesome.
I wanted to share a story with you guys. My friend Sasha Bychkov is a former youth pastor who I met last year at Radooga. He'd been taking his youth group to Radooga camps for a really long time, and I got to know him and two of his counselors, Pasha, and Ruslan last year. Well, this year, even though Sasha didn't come to a week of camp, he would stop by randomly to visit the Vasilevskys and stuff, and so I still got to see him and Ruslan and Pasha. One night we ate in the cafeteria together and he told me about how he was taking the youth group from his church to Turkey to do Russian language camps! It's kinda the same thing as Radooga, but instead of English language stuff, it's Russian language stuff. I thought that was awesome and he told me the dates and everything and put me on his update list so I could pray for them.
Anyway, their group left about a week ago and they'll be in Turkey until the 14th. Obviously, being in Turkey is a whole lot more dangerous than being in Ukraine and they haven't been without problems. But God is awesome, and here's a story I received from Sasha a couple nights ago. (They have English classes and they're trying to add to their numbers. They call the students "readers". )

"Hello prayer support,

Slowly we have people adding. Normaly during the day we solve
organizational problems and then have classes from 6 till...late night 11-12 PM.
Readers are different people- engineers, teachers, news reporters, shop sellers,
shop owners.
We are doing ok.
Although we had one trouble with Bogdan which I think you should know so that you can give thanks to our Father.
Yesterday, while walking on the street alone (despite my rules not go anywhere
alone) Bogdan had a guy approch him and ask what time it was in Russian. Bogdan
with a sincire heart told that man the time. The guy asked what was he doing here
and where was he from. Bogdan said that he was from Kiev and he was here for
Russian practice. The guy said that he knows Kiev very well and that his brother married a Ukrainian and lives in Kiev and proposed that he go to this cafe to give Bogdan the telefone number of his brother in Kiev. Bogdan went with him... downtown to Aksaray (a gang region) to an underground cafe. When arrived to the cafe, they had thier table surrounded with prostitutes. Bogdan been offered a coke, drugs and
other stuff...he understood that he was defnitely in the wrong place and this guy didn't have a brother in Kyiv or a Ukrainian wife. The men asked why he was here [in Turkey] and Bogdan told them that he was here because of Jesus and to preach His word. They said it was not nessesory to come here and absolutelly useless to preach in here.
Bogdan told tham that he must go. The men said that before leaving he would have to talk to the manager, and took him to small room. Manager gave him a bill where the food that Bogdan and the men were eating was listed. The sum of
bill was equal to 500 USD....
Bogdan said he have no money. They did not belive him and turned his pockets inside out. All they were able to find there was 50 turkish lira (45 USD). At the same time
it came to Bogdan's mind that he had a New testament in his bag. The situation went
like this... He says, "guys I have something worth much more than money. This
is the WORD OF LIVING GOD. ...pause."
Few minutes later he is on the street again with all his money in his pocket and
alive and well.
I have no clue how this could happened, but let us give thanks to our Father.
Prayer request:
Please pray for our safety.
Please pray for our readers.
Pray for new readers.
We still need more.

-Sasha and the team"

Wow, God is so awesome. He's doing all sorts of amazing things- in Tennessee, Ukraine, Turkey, in space...it's great.
Okay, well, I'm gonna get ready to go hang out with Tamara and some other peoples. Ya'll have a great Friday! Do something exciting! Arrivederci!