I am sorry it has been so long since I last wrote, but I have not had access until now.  So I will be typing this out of my journal.  The 20th, 21st and 22nd are on the athletes in action website as it was my turn to write the blog for the team that day.

     Today we all slept in until breakfast, as we were all exhausted from our flights.  After breakfast, we all got together for some team time.  Eric, our team chaplin, went over some basic fundamentals of faith with us from Matthew 22:34-40.  The two greatest commandments.  It was a good thing to hear the first full day of the trip.  To remember why we are here, for God, and to show others His love.  After team time, we headed over to the gym for a quick practice.  All of us were very tired, but we did our best, and had a good practice.  At lunch we met our translator, Irena, from Siberia.  Her English is almost as good as ours.  After lunch we came back to the dorms and had about an hour to rest, which was great.  I slept the whole hour.  At 4 we went back over to the gym to play a match against the 15 yr old kids from the volleyball camp we are staying at.  The match was great, but the biggest suprise to me was being mobbed by all the younger children, who all wanted our autographs.  It was a great match, and the kids here really have alot of talent.  After the match was over, we gathered together, and Nick gave his testimony, which was great.  Later that evening, Irena told us how pleased one of the coaches was that we were here, and said that she was amazed that we were christians as well as volleyball players.  People here think that if you become a christian, that you have to become a monk, which means no sports.  It was great to hear, first hand, that someone was pleased we are here.  We finished off the day with some sand volley, and a good card game.  It was a great day, and the kids here are awesome.  They really seem to be receptive to the gospel.  More later...

     So today was our big match against the Moscow University team.  These guys were incredible.  When they jumped, they would hit the ball down over our blocks.  After the second match, Christian shared his testimony, and after the game we got to meet with some of the players.  It was really cool, that even though these guys just destroyed us on the court, they were very interested in talking with us, and receptive to hearing about the gospel.  One player I got to talk with was named Goshen.  He was very interested in what Christian had to say, and I got to share with him some of my story as well.  I encouraged him to think about Christ, to talk with Victor, our Host ( I talked about victor on the blog that will be posted on the AIA website) or other christians he knows, and to pray about it.  He was very receptive.  It was awesome.  After talking with Goshen for about 10 minutes, he invited us to play some beach volleyball with him and his teammates.  We had a blast, took lots of pictures, and developed some relationships.  We got back to our rooms at about 10 pm, and the crazy thing was it was still light out.  The day starts becoming bright at about 4 am, and it usually doesnt get totally dark until almost 11pm.  Very weird for me. Oh, and another thing, the mosquitos here are ravenous.  They will eat you alive.  Anyway, thats all for now, we leave for Kursk tomorrow.

     Today we left for Kursk.  Kursk is a medium sized city in Southwest Russia, not too far from The Ukrane border.  This is the sight of one of the biggest battles of the Second World War.  We will be playing 3 matches there, as well as playing in a beach tournament on Saturday.  Our contact in Kursk is named Illia (forgive me for the spelling).  Anyway, this was a neverending bus ride.  So we left the Moscow campus at around 9:30 am heading southeast for Kursk.  The drive was supposed to take from 6-8 hours, unfortunately our drivers ended up getting a little lost around Moscow, and we did not even leave the Moscow region until 4 hours later.  By this time, everyone is really looking forward to getting off the bus, even though we still have another 4-6 hours left.  We stopped south of Moscow for lunch and ate noodles and beef, or pork (more on this later), then we were back on the road.  We arrived at the camp here in Kursk at about 8 pm, exhausted.  Not the end of the day though, because after dinner it began (for me at least).  Apparently we had some bad beef at lunch, and all but 2 of us that had the beef got the runs.  

June 26th, 2009

     This morning almost the whole team woke up sick.  The beef was very, very bad, even though it tasted good.  All of our precautions with the water, and what we were eating all went out the window in a flash.  I think the person that got it worst had to be our team chaplin, Eric.  Anyway, after breakfast, we were supposed to have beach practice, but our team trainer, M.C. (Mary Cathrine) suggested that the whole team spend the next few days resting for our match this afternoon.  We all slept until lunch, then had team time.  Eric talked to us about Matthew 6:19-24.  He talked about what are our priorities, and making sure we are laying up treasures in Heaven rather than on earth.  It was very hard to take all of this in, as we were all trying to fight through feeling sick.  At 4 we went into the city of Kursk for a match with the local university.  One thing I am noticing, is that Kursk seems to be in much better shape than Moscow was.  Moscow seemed to be rather run down, at least the places we visited.  It looked like buildings were started and finished enough so that someone could live there, then construction stopped.  Kursk, on the other hand, is much better maintained.  There are still some buildings like in Moscow, but there are more buildings finished than not here.  Anyway, back to the match.  As we played in this run down gym, with a beat up net system, and almost no place to even sit, I thought about how we are so spoiled back in the states.  We have so many nice facilities, and I just take that for granted.  After the second game, Jimmy shared his testimony with the other team and spectators, and we invited all of them to the beach tournament we are playing in tomorrow.  After the match was over, we spent some time with the other team, but they didnt seem very interested in talking with us one on one.  I spent some time peppering with them, and hope that maybe they will talk with us some tomorrow.  As the day wound down, we went down to the river that runs by this camp, and went swimming.  The water was great.  Another day in the books... Beach volleyball tomorrow!!