We had some friends in Russia for a while who were also missionaries. They had two children, later on three – Sam, Sophie and another little boy, I can’t remember his name, sorry. We played mostly with Sam and Sophie. They also spoke English, which was great because there weren’t many English speakers in Russia.

I don’t think I told you this yet. Mum told me that when I was little and we had guests, I’d need to figure out what language to speak to the guest. It wasn’t always so easy to tell, so I came up with a simple test. I brought them two picture books, one in English and one in Russian. If they picked the Russian one, I’d speak to them in Russian from that point on. If they chose the English one, we’d stick to English. I have a vague memory of one guest, I think it was Varya or Lada, and they were giggling a lot and looking at my parents, as if I were very silly or perhaps a genius. The more I think about it, the smarter it seems, since it could take into account their eagerness to learn a language, and which one they subconsciously preferred.

One time my family went on a picnic with them. We went on a lot of picnics together. Patrick and Sam, or it might have been Sam’s brother - I think it was Sam’s brother, actually. My brother tends to make friends with children younger than him more often. My brother and the boy were trying to find something to talk about, some sort of common ground. He tried talking about the AFL, but Sam and Sophie were American, so they didn’t know about footy. Patrick tried to talk about Star Wars, but he didn’t know about that either. So, they started talking about Jesus. Patrick was so surprised to find that Sam’s brother also believed in God.

“You believe in God? And Jesus?” He said.

They were both so excited, and it was so cute. Sam and Sophie came to the Christmas Eve party we had, and often to our birthdays. They were such great friends, but I knew them such a long time ago. It’s much easier to write this freestyle, I’ll let you know when I came remember more to tell you.

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