the quotebook will be at a separate place, but i'm not sure where yet. possibly eventually on my normal xanga: www.xanga.com/whistlinginthedark ...anywho, this is the last entry, which is here in order only to say thank you to all of you for your prayers. that's all i have to say.

peace,
jeremy

hm...no comments on that last one. interesting enough. i will say that i finally have beaten timothy in standard chess.....twice. finally. in other news, there was a flash flood last sunday and the engine of our bus got flooded because the driver was going too fast through the knee-deep water. anywho, it was a lot of fun going and pushing cars out of the water and getting soaked with the rain and actually pushing an entire bus out of the water (it took a total of twelve of us to actually get it moving...). well, as far as camp.....

this week was also tremendous. my class had 7 girls: Nastia, Olga, Katia, Katia, Vika, Veronica, and Ira and one guy: Ivan. we had an awesome time. also, i was in charge of team competitions. my class was all about the discussion group times. they were the basis of the discussion group all three days we had it.

but on wednesday the topic turned to God and faith during the discussion and a majority of those in my class only wanted to change the subject, which we did....but that night at the bonfire, Jane and Yulia (my translators) along with Luchik, shared the gospel with my class and in the end, five of the girls received Christ. thursday, half the discussion in the discussion group was about God and the things of God and differences between some denominations and other such things. Ivan seemed extremely interested in all of this, and also had some of the best English of anyone at the camp.

i ask that you would pray for Ivan...he has been raised in the orthodox church and is not yet sure how to react to the concept of being saved by grace rather than by works. i think he's beginning to understand though. that's my specific prayer request of the week.

thank you all so much...i'll be home soon, i'm going to worlds of fun on monday, just so everyone knows in advance for some reason, and i will be tired when i get back on sunday....it seems i have an all new family with the all summer team, and i am definitely looking forward to introducing them to you and vice versa.

grace and peace,
jeremy

hm....let's see....this week was follow up. so very relaxing. got to hang out with some awesome kids from in and around minsk again. and i'm told by some of them that if my parents ever tell me i'm not good enough then they're wrong to say it...that was humorous....um...let's see...

the jill and i are in the developing stages of a type of candy we're going to invent. ah, the benefits of long meetings where they won't speak any english. the candy will be amazing...or that's the plan, anyhow....

well, i've seen probably 12 episodes of family guy this week....juliet brought the first season or so....some of it's dumb, but overall i think it's extremely funny...at least watching it with what's left of the all summer team is funny. last night, we went to the laughlin's for a dinner, mexican style...it was superb. oh, and also, i have finally come to the point of beating timothy in every type of chess i've played him in, except standard. we've played: standard, speed chess, fischer random, and blackout (annihilation) chess.

um...what else? oh, yes...i've been told that the generation team, in terms of people coming here for longer, prefers a commitment of two years, so that's something more to be praying about. i've a lot to do when i get back home. pray that everything will work out with my schooling and class scheduling/final registration for this fall...

um....only a week left, and i'm back off to camp again this week. so, more than likely no more updates until i'm home. i'll try for one, but it'll be difficult to manage. anyhow, i want to thank you all again for your prayers, but also don't forget to be praying for the students and the weather and everything at camp this week and for follow up this week and next week also.

um....that's enough for you all to read for now....

looking forward to eventually posting the AST quotebook in its entirety,
Äæåðåìè Ôîðä

ok, here we go again. this last week was either splendid or spectacular. take your pick and pick your nose and nose in on a conversation and wear converse and have shoelaces for bracelets. anywho, we had four girls in my class this week: Vesta, Aliona, Liza, and Masha....also, we had three guys from Soligorsk (a city outside of Minsk aways): Vlad, Sasha, and Oleg. it was definitely an interesting week.

unfortunately (somewhat), this was a more basic class, but that was fine with me. i ended up being the main teacher in it due to lack of other american presence, but it was pretty cool overall (for once actually filling all of the classtime). i'm not sure exactly what happened with my students as far as being shared with and such, apart from one of the guys from Soligorsk. Oleg accepted Christ this week and is pretty excited. he's a little far away to make it to our follow-ups, but awesome as God is, He provided that their English teacher is a Christian and the wife of a pastor, so she's going to start up some affiliation with generation. i'm excited about it.

as for this week, i'll be running with follow up and next week i think i might be back at camp, but i don't know that yet. i'm ready for whatever. ready for some american food here in a couple weeks. it seems like i'm not supposed to be leaving yet. we'll see what happens. but overall, i do think i will come to live here for a year or so (maybe two) after i'm finished with college. i can see God getting ready to do a lot with the ministry over here.

pray for unity among our team, from both the american and belarussian sides, but especially unity among the individuals.

etta vso,
Äæåðåìè

ok. this last week was rather interesting. i'm not bothering with capitalization so much now because there isn't a whole lot of time. anywho, a lot is going on with the camp. the camp itself was apparently getting into a little trouble with the government for allowing a Christian group to run part of the camp. so, in other words, we couldn't be so blatant about it during the more public moments of camp. it was still an awesome week and a lot more time was used individually to talk with students about spiritual matters. i think it honestly worked better that way.

This week my class consisted of eleven people: Yulia, Roma, Dima, Mitsia, Ksusha, Marina, three girls named Olia, Masha, and we had Kostia who was actually initially in another class. A lot happened and i saw a lot of change taking place in these students. honestly, for half of one of the classes, there was a discussion going on about faith and Christianity in Russian. i didn't understand a whole lot, but i did catch that Kostia was being adamant in his belief that God isn't real. nonetheless, amazing relationships were built and i'm looking forward to going and meeting up with these students again in a few minutes here.

also, in the camp, some of the overall rules have not been completely followed (i.e. the time for lights out) and we're not sure how much longer we'll be able to stay. God has blessed us and allowed us to continue thus far, so i'll ask that you keep praying. thank you.

dosvedania,
jeremy