Joe Ragan

I stayed up really late yesterday/today.  I got home at 7 pm from Almaty, washed some clothes, etc since I am doing a quick turn around.
But the real reason I stayed up was to see UT (as in University of Texas!!!) play/ lose to Memphis.  It seemed that Texas was never in the game from [...]

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Yesterday during a meeting I shared a little of my testimony of my very first trip to Kstan in 2005.  My supervisor joked that he was dropping me off in the desert.  I heard it so much that I began to believe it!
Well, after I knew that I would be moving to Karaganda in 2007, [...]

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I am in Almaty this week.  Today I had the privilege of seeing a children’s day camp that one of our partner’s is hosting this week. They had around 70 kids from the neighborhood attending.  The area where my friend is starting his church is in an area where numerous nationalities live. Please remember [...]

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I woke up this am and watched a little of the basketball tourney.  The sun comes up after 8 am here right now and so I was awake and saw the sun rising.  It is the first day in a week that we have seen the sun in the morning.
It has really warmed up here, [...]

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I saw this video on Fox News online.  I was deeply touched by the story of Jason and his struggles since being deployed to Iraq five years ago.  It was a reminder that I need to pray more for them and their families.

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It’s amazing to think how blessed I am. It is almost midnight on Thursday and I am sitting in my apartment watching live NCAA tourney games. Right now, Georgia and Xavier are playing. I had to take a picture of the game in order for you to see…

Of course, the games [...]

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I’m not sure when this scene from ER was filmed, but it is powerful…
ER link

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Kazakh New Year is celebrated on March 22. I have been trying to learn more about this celebration and so have been reading about it via the internet.
As I understand it, it is a “new year” holiday that is celebrated at the same time as the beginning of spring. Out with the [...]

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It seems that I spend much of my time writing about the weather here.  I guess when winter lasts 5-6 months, you spend  a lot of time thinking about it…
This evening, around 6:30 and during my English class, I happened to look out the window and saw some really huge snowflakes falling.  I walked over [...]

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This morning I woke up to a tremendous snow storm. There were already a couple of inches on the ground and several more were dumped on us before I left at 9 am.
I traveled to a nearby city to visit some brothers and sisters there. I almost didn’t go due to all the [...]

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