Do you believe in miracles?

I do! I have seen them in others lives and in my own. Some of you may know that a few years ago I had a blood clot in my left leg. It was extremely painful and I spent a week in the hospital and the another week or so trying to dissolve the clot and get my leg back to normal. Recently I started to have the same pain in my other leg. I knew it was not a pulled muscle because of the way it was progressing in painfulness. As part of our humanitarian work here we have spent some time visiting hospitals and I did not look forward to going to a local hospital or doctor. I decided to plead with the Lord to deliver me from this ailment if it was His will. I also asked many of you to join with me in that petition. The evening of the second day I had two of the Elders here with us give me a priesthood blessing. In that wonderful blessing I was given instruction and promises. I received the blessing late in the evening and went to bed shortly thereafter having the faith that if it was His will that I be healed I would know it in the morning. If the answer was no, then I was prepared to get to a doctor. When I woke up the next morning ALL pain was gone from my leg. I had been healed and I thank you for your prayers and for the mercy of a loving Savior and Heavenly Father.

We have wonderful missionary friends that we met while in training in Provo - the Alicos. They are serving in Nahodka, Russia (yeah, look it up on a map!) and they send us their email newsletter. We really enjoy hearing about their experiences. Sometimes they send us a bonus email of some item they have received from someone that may interest us. Months ago they mentioned that they were watching the 'Turning Point' series on BYU TV via the internet and were really enjoying them. Meanwhile, we have been slowly working with a wonderful lady here who is trying to help handicapped women with education and services that will help them be more confident in their abilities and eventually become more self-reliant. The process of helping her is slow because her organization needs to create structures and processes that will ensure that the project/program will be sustainable. She is making great progress. One evening Viviane and I decided to watch BYU TV, saw the schedule for Turning Point, and decided to see what it was about. WOW - we were amazed at the stories! One of the stories relates how a university professor was inspired to create technology that allows a person to control the computer mouse with eye movements. A mother of a handicapped child heard about it and petitioned him to apply it to her son who she believed had intelligence but not the body to express it. Long story made short - he was, with the help of this technology, able to graduate from high school. As we watched that amazing story I knew we had to find some way to get it here to help these people and so we are beginning to figure out how to do that.

Maybe you believe in coincidences, but I believe that God places us in situations to help Him bless His children. We probably would not have 'discovered' this if the Alicos had not mentioned it. It remains to be seen how far this ripple in the pond will go and who it will affect. BTW I have now also found the camera mouse and tested it on my computer. It allows the control of the mouse via head movement.

This week we were summoned to visit with the head of the Astana Department of Religious Affairs (I think that summoned is more appropriate than invited). We spent 1.5 hours with him and his assistant discussing the Kazakhstan religion law that had been recently passed. He wanted to make sure we knew that the Church needed to obey this law. We assured him that it is one of our basic beliefs that we obey the laws of the country we are in. He had received a written complaint by someone about our mixing free English lessons with teaching about Jesus Christ. The proselyting work here has been slowed somewhat by this new law as I have mentioned before. We still are not able to get missionaries accreditation to do missionary work or to get visas longer that 1 month. In the law, if a person is not accredited then he cannot do any missionary work. He was friendly but firm and we were friendly and meek (I surprised myself). We are praying that this will change soon and we will be able to get back to doing the full load of missionary labors.
Here they use a New Year's tree and Grandfather Frost and his Granddaughter deliver present s to children on New Year's day. This is the tree near the city government offices and ice sculptures of the 2 G's.

We attended the opening of a new facility within a new school that uses a method called 'Soft Mozart' to teach handicapped children about music and gives them another way to express themselves. It turns learning a keyboard into a series of games that allow the child to remember the notes. It looked like a lot of fun and I'm sure it could be used for all children.















On our walk home from visiting a speech therapy partner to whom the Church had donated many educational items and going to the market to get some needed items, we walked down the river walk. The picture on the left is of one of the slides they have made for kids to slide out onto the river. The picture on the right is the place, in the shape of a cross, where many (some say up to 3,000 took part) Russian Orthodox Christians get re-baptized each year. They break the ice and in you go! It is said that those folks have no illness for the rest of the year. Of course, they have medical people on call for those who go into shock or heart failure. There was a warning on the city web site about taking proper precautions to avoid death.