{"id":1481,"date":"2012-05-19T15:48:05","date_gmt":"2012-05-19T22:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/?p=1481"},"modified":"2012-05-19T15:48:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-19T22:48:05","slug":"cbu-novgorod-building-friendships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/cbu-novgorod-building-friendships\/","title":{"rendered":"CBU – Novgorod: Building friendships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The past few days have been such an adventure…we haven\u2019t even had the time to update this blog on time \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

On Wednesday at the orphanage, a group of musicians came to play for the children and teach them a bit about different instruments and sounds.\u00a0 The children had a blast!\u00a0 After the children\u2019s dinner, we took them to a park nearby and had a group kicking around a soccer ball and a group picking flowers and making \u201cflower crowns\u201d for the girls.\u00a0 While there, we learned a few Russian games that the children love to play.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, we were able to go back to the \u201cbaby orphanage\u201d and had such an awesome time with the kids.\u00a0 They were significantly more open and comfortable with us, and that made it so much more special to simply love on them as much as we could.\u00a0 The kids were just as sad to say goodbye as we were, but we are excited to go back next Tuesday!\u00a0 At the orphanage, the younger children had a chalk drawing contest while the older kids played some fun games like Uno and Jenga, and played a unique question game that allowed for exponential growth and openness with our team.\u00a0 While playing that game, one of the boys, German, said \u201cWow, you\u2019re just like me\u201d, and that lead to an amazing conversation about his life and struggles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Now Friday was an altogether amazing day for a completely different reason.\u00a0 I was able to spend my 22nd birthday here in Russia with my team, and I could not have had a better day.\u00a0 Not only did my team sing to me at midnight, Marina and Ksusha (one of our translators) decorated the church with balloons, signs, and stickers.\u00a0 Marina also gave me the most beautiful bouquet of my favorite flowers!\u00a0 After dinner, we not only had a traditional Russian birthday dessert, but they also made me a birthday cake with candles!\u00a0 I have never felt so spoiled and so loved than I did by these amazing people who have quickly turned into my family.\u00a0 It made me miss home more than I did the entire trip, but I honestly could not have been given anything greater that what my \u201cRussian family\u201d gave me here \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Today was a fun day of sight-seeing and new experiences for us!\u00a0 We toured the Kremlin fortress in the morning, and in the afternoon we went to a Russian Veteran memorial service to celebrate the victory of World War II.\u00a0 While there, we were able to give flowers to five Veterans, and Robyn was able to give a small speech to honor their service!\u00a0 This evening, we were able to experience a \u201cbanya\u201d – a Russian bath house with steam rooms, ice baths, and \u201csuper team bonding\u201d.\u00a0 Lastly, tonight while some of us ventured to a McDonald\u2019s, the rest of the team went to Novgorod\u2019s best cafe and enjoyed the best ice cream and lattes we\u2019ve undoubtedly ever had!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Thank you all so much for your encouragement that you\u2019ve been leaving on our blogs.\u00a0 We have been able to read them pretty consistently and we LOVE hearing from our friends and family!\u00a0 Please continue to pray for the children and teens we are working with, especially as we head into the last week we will have with them.\u00a0 Please also pray for revitalization within ourselves, good health, and above all to follow after Jesus in every situation.\u00a0 We love and miss you all!<\/p>\n

– written by Megan \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 (Russia B Team)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past few days have been such an adventure…we haven\u2019t even had the time to update this blog on time \ud83d\ude42 On Wednesday at the orphanage, a group of musicians came to play for the children and teach them a bit about different instruments and sounds.\u00a0 The children had a blast!\u00a0 After the children\u2019s dinner, we took them to a park nearby and had a group kicking around a soccer ball and a group picking flowers and making \u201cflower crowns\u201d for the girls.\u00a0 While there, we learned a few Russian games that the children love to play. On Thursday, we \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,78,79],"tags":[9,10,28,32,33,35,38,41,57],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cbu-teams-2","category-sunergos-ministry","category-teams-2","tag-california-baptist-university","tag-cbu","tag-isp","tag-ministry","tag-missions","tag-novgorod","tag-orphans","tag-russia","tag-sunergos"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/CBU-Nov-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2j3in-nT","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunergosint.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}