September 2, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a long, long time since we have written. Please accept our apologies.

While we were in the States, Bob was able to visit the first family that the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy had referred to the U.S. embassy for resettlement, and they are doing great in Alexandria, Virginia. By the time Bob got back in mid-July the second candidate had been accepted and had moved to the States. We are so excited for the tremendous relationship that we have been able to foster with the U.S. embassy, which has provided a brand new life for two families in the United States. 

On the subject of the U.S. embassy here in Moscow, we were especially pleased when they agreed to partner with us in our new Parish Center. We received a very generous grant, and we hope to have the remodeling finished within the next two weeks. We also just heard this past week that the ELCA (Ecumenical Lutheran Church in America) has partnered with us, again providing a very generous grant. This grant will allow us to have things in the center that we weren't sure whether we were going to be able to afford. We will now have a landline telephone and we hope the heating for the building will be piped in with natural gas. That should keep us much warmer in those winter months. We are so pleased to be able to offer a new center to men and women who face great struggles every day. What a great privilege it is for us to be able to offer a first class place to those who call the Parish Center their “safe haven.”

We are planning on beginning a new initiative in the near future.  We call it the heart of the city where we will have a soup kitchen where anyone can come and be served.  This would include the homeless, the alcoholics, those who literally have no place to rest their head or find their next meal.  We would have a daily medical clinic, showers, a clothes and food pantry.  We would have Christian counseling and a small chapel.  We need your prayer for God to open the doors which would allow this project to take place.

The soup kitchen has seen its share of excitement. Because it has become impossible to work with the Russian manager of the building that houses one of the soup kitchens, we have decided to consolidate our two soup kitchens. The same 300 people will be served everyday but in one building. You can definitely pray for a smooth transition from one soup kitchen to the next.

The church has begun to rebound after the loss many families for a variety of reasons. Many of our families were caught up in the BP mess and had to leave Russia. Many of the church members from the embassy finished their term and were stationed elsewhere. We were somewhat worried at the end of last year as we realized how many families were not coming back. Well, God is good all the time, all the time God is good. God has already provided a great number of families who could never take the place of people that we have come to love, but have certainly filled a gap which we were afraid would not be filled.

The political situation in Georgia has been difficult to figure out and interpret. We feel absolutely no effect from the war, much in the same way that the war in Iraq has not changed the daily lives of the vast majority of Americans. But then again, if you have loved ones in the service, it affects you dramatically. We did have an opportunity to reach out and help lactating women in the South Ossetia region by taking up a special offering. We raised enough to give a year's supply of vitamins and medicines to 36 women. It is a very complicated situation, and unfortunately it is the people on the ground, the powerless, who in the end will suffer the most. We feel called to reach out to those who are suffering; even if it is only a band-aid, we hope to slow the bleeding somewhat.

We had a tremendous, if not busy summer. For the whole month of June we were itinerating, and we ended up speaking to 16 different churches. We spoke from New Haven, Connecticut, all the way down to our beloved Palatka, Florida. We spent a week with Bob's brothers, John in Pleasantville, New York, and David in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The kids loved spending time with their seven cousins.

After our busy month on the east coast we were able to spend two weeks together as a family in Washington state with Stacy's two sisters, Jena and Julie and the five cousins out there. It really proved to be a wonderful summer. Bob left a month before the rest of the family to hold the fort at MPC. Now we believe that our visa situation is under control, with a work permit coming for the family in the middle of October. That would be prayer request number three in this newsletter—that the process to obtain a work permit would go as smoothly as we are promised that it will go.

Rachel has started seventh grade and absolutely loves being in Moscow with the great friends that she has made at school and at church. She took part in a week-long tennis camp this summer and is becoming quite the little player. She is the one in the family we all go to anytime we have a computer problem. I never thought that someone else in my family would be a better problem-solver than I am. But sure enough, she has passed me up.

Naomi absolutely loved Washington and the freedom that five acres of woods and a beach across the street gave to her. She and her cousin, Luke, managed to swim from the beach to the anchored boat and back. This accomplishment seemed to spark an interest in swimming. She now brings her stopwatch to the embassy pool and is working hard to try to break her 15 second record. She really missed our dog Rosie and couldn't wait to get back and see her. She has a great teacher this year, and is excited about fifth grade.

Bethany, like the other girls, was able to see her best friend when we were back in Florida. She wasn't able to take the tennis camp like the other two girls, but once we got back to Moscow she joined a soccer team right away. She absolutely loved her first game and is looking forward to the season. She continues to do well in school and has a classroom full of girls that are all her best friends.

As I look over this letter, I can't help but think how blessed we are as a family to be surrounded by friends and family that we can write to and that actually care what is happening in our lives, as we care about what is happening in yours. It was great to connect with many of you this summer, and we were sorry not to be able to see a bunch of you like we had hoped.

I want to end this with a bit of very good news: A single church has been extremely generous in supporting our work for the next three years, the duration of our stay here in Moscow. If you remember, a year ago we sent out an appeal to raise funds for our position. We would encourage you to send your support now to the same address as before: PC(USA), Individual Remittance Processing, P.O. Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA, 15264-3700. But on the memo line put Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy E047943. These funds will go directly to our work here in Moscow. It is 100 percent tax deductible.

Thank you again for you great support and your awesome friendship. 

We are your servants in Christ,

The Bronkema family

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 158

P.S. A story about us in the Presbyterian News Service was published last February.