Dear friends and 13^th century monks,

Greetings and salutations both. As many of you either know or don’t know, I have had the pleasure of welcoming my fiancée, Julie Grazier to Petrozavodsk. As this arrival marks a new turn in my life, I will now use the pronouns “we” and “us” to indicate that there are indeed two of us sitting at this computer.

We are truly having a great time in Petrozavodsk. God has really blessed us with few to no problems and even a few surprises, such as the Nutella-esque chocolate swirl spread that cost about $1.50 and is delicious. Thank you for all of your prayers as Julie arrived safely without any difficulty whatsoever and we made it to Petrozavodsk without any trouble. We really feel blessed by this short time together before being thrown back into our busy lives in America (Peter will actually be creating one from scratch, which will be an interesting challenge).

One of the best things we’ve seen so far has been Kizhi Island, an island where the Soviet Union put old wooden churches from all over Karelia to serve as a museum for “dead” religions. Thanks be to God, our faith is not dead AND we have this wonderful place to see these impressive places of worship, one of which is now functioning as an Orthodox church once again.

Please pray for us as we leave for the village this Sunday and Monday, and then as we leave for Moscow the evening of July 30. We leave from Moscow to St. Petersburg on July 2 and then arrive in Minneapolis Sunday, July 6. Please pray for a smooth trip and more blessings as we make our way home. Thank you for prayers and support over these last 10 months – we saw them paying off then and we see even more fruit now. This will be likely be the final post from Russia on this blog, so thank you as well for keeping track of what’s been going on.

Sincerely,

Peter & Julie