Tag: Russia

From Russia to Montenegro

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Last week we made the drive from Russia to Montenegro. We traveled in two cars with our friends Sergei and Christina and their twin girls. Here is a photo record of the trip. (You can see a slideshow/video of a previous trip here).

We started early in the morning from dacha in Russia. Sergei said his goodbyes to Olga’s grandfather, Orest Grotten.

Olga posed for a portrait with her grandparents, Orest and Ludmilla

Orest said goodbye from the kitchen window

We packed up our cars and headed out!

The sun came up as we headed South, past Pskov to the Latvian border. Continue reading →

Photographer to the Tsar

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It’s hard to believe these pictures are from 100 years ago —

“The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world–the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia’s diverse population.

In the early 1900s Prokudin-Gorskii formulated an ambitious plan for a photographic survey of the Russian Empire that won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, he completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation.”

We start with a self-portrait:

Continue reading →

Bugs

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Our apologies to anyone who visited our site over the past few days. We got spammed.

Thomas Umstattd worked for many, many hours to fix the problems. Thank you, Thomas.

Over the next several days I’ll be working to re-build the site. A few posts have been lost, but overall pretty much everything was preserved.

Onward we go —

Easter Greetings, at a Russian soccer match

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Interfax Reports:

Fans greeted each other on Easter at a Sunday evening soccer match at Moscow Lokomotiv stadium.

At the beginning of the second half of the match thousands of fans of Dynamo team started chanting “Christ is Risen!”, an Interfax correspondent reports.

Thousands of fans of Lokomotiv teeam on the opposite side of the stadium responded by chanting “Truly He is Risen!”

The exchange took place several times.

The correspondent who has attended soccer matches for almost 50 years says it was the first occurrence of this kind in the history of Russian soccer.

From Montenegro to Russia

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We recently drove home to Russia from Montenegro.  It was a beautiful drive along the Croatian coast and up into Hungary.  There we visited missionary friends and saw (rainy) Budapest.  The relationships were great, the city was beautiful and we hope to return.

Then we drove to Minsk, Belarus to visit Spring of Revival, a Stoneworks program.  Olga Goncharenko and her team are doing a great job there.  We enjoy our time with them and fully support them in all they do.  Visit the Stoneworks site to learn more about Spring of Revival.

Then we headed into Russia and are now safely back in our flat in St. Petersburg.

We really enjoy this traditional music from Montenegro.

A Quick Guide to Russian Family and Friends

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At the risk of offending some people by leaving them off, I’ll make a stab at giving a Russian ‘cast of characters’ to help minimize confusion —

Mike Cantrell: uhmmmm, me

Olga Cantrell: my wife, we married in 2001. She is the BEST!

Tanya Yaskevich: Olga’s mother

Alla Pavetic: Olga’s twin sister who now lives in Montenegro (see this post for the Montenegrin guide)

Orest and Ludmilla Groten (Grootten): Olga’s grandparents, Tanya’s parents, in the summers they live at ‘dacha’, an old log home in a village south of St. Petersburg. Continue reading →