Joe Ragan

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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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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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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Wow, today truly felt terrific!  It really felt like an early spring day.  While the temp probably reach 40 degrees, the sun was shining brightly and it “felt” warmer.
I traveled to Temirtau to check on some things there and the drive over (about 20 miles) was spectacularly clear.  Most of the snow on the east [...]

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With the time change in the US, I am now 1o hours ahead of Eastern, 11 ahead of Central and 13 hours ahead of Pacific time zone.  If you call me, please keep this in mind…

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On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to visit one English class and a linguistic institute.  I know two students from the school and they invited me to speak to their class.
I asked them what I should prepare and they told me speak on Texas… well, I think I can do that!!!
I had a [...]

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The weather here is in that in between period.  It’s not spring and it’s not winter.  One day it is above freezing, the next day snow.  It was warm (above freezing) this am.  When I went to the kitchen to fix coffee, I heard the rain hitting my ledge.
They say it may turn to freezing [...]

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This past Wednesday Max and Alex came over for practice their English.  After our time together, Max stated that he was going to his parent’s house for a Russian celebration called “Maslenitsa.”  I had never heard of this celebration so I found some information on the internet.
Here’s what I found:
Maslenitsa is a purely Russian holiday, [...]

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