It says in Psalm 68 that the Lord sets the lonely in families and this Christmas has proved to be no exception. It was just a blessed time with good friends, incredible food, amazing wine, and very heart-filling times of Christian fellowship. Some notable parts of the weekend would be the lutafisck, a type of Scandinavian fish preserved in lard.
They also gave us two Christmas gifts that were very special to me. One, original Swedish house shoes made by Ulla’s mother and two, a copy of a special edition Gospel of Mark in Russian. It was a leather cover with plastic pages and small enough to fit into one’s mouth. It was actually ideal for circulating around Soviet prisons, if a guard suddenly came by, one could pop it in their mouth, their cup of coffee, really anything, and it wouldn’t be damaged because it was plastic and leather. Robert had smuggled several of them into Moscow himself.
I am proud. I’d been learning this for the weeks prior, but it finally came to a head. Nothing theatrical, but I did begin to learn more of leaning on the Lord for wisdom, not speaking but listening, and humility in the Lord. 
Mountains in viennaThe first few days of this incredible journey have been rigorous to say the least. An unbelievable $270 airfare to Bratislava, Slovakia turned into a very long 37 hours of travel as I had booked tickets from Chicago to Toronto, Toronto to London, and London to Bratislava. It was genius, to be sure, the only administrative overlook was that our supposed flight across the pond was booked instead from Toronto, Canada to the small town of London, Canada. No joke, really.