From John (Day 2--Sorry it's out of order)

Dobre O tra, (my phonetic spelling for Good Morning in Russian) I have no idea in Kazakh,

We are on Day 2 in Almaty,Kazakhstan. We are doing well. Cindie still has a bit of a cold. She is resting today. We are 10 hours a head of North Carolina (EDT)

Tell Karis we said hello and we love her and miss her!

It was a good trip over, we made all plane connections with no problems, well...... As some of you may know, Cindie is not a fan of flying, she does it because it is a better way to travel, but it is not something she enjoys. We traveled in the air for about 20 hours, and on the 3rd and last leg of the trip, we started in on descent on Luftstansa air(aGerman air line), it is dark, almost midnight in Almaty Kazakhstan. Then we noticed, as frequent flyer's may know, the engines roared and the airplane nose went up drastically, but we felt as if we were now ascending up. Again it is night, we could not tell how close to the ground we were. By this time my hand is turning white. Not by my nerves, but by the grasp of Cindies hand clutching mine with nearly all her strength, as the Pilot comes over the intercom, IN GERMAN. At this point we knew we were not landing, and the plane, still ascending, starts to turn, all while we are still listening in German to this announcement. However, we did understand one word in German he said, 'PROBLEM'. Apparently that is an international word. Then the pilot begins to translate in English, at this point my hand is just about numb, again from Cindies death grip. The problem seems to be with the front landing gear and they should have that corrected in 20 minutes, he says. OK, it's just that, no problem.
Well we finally landed after circling the airport, and everything worked correctly. A bit nerving though.

We have not met Aydar(the child) yet, that will probably not happen until Wednesday. We meet with the minister of education tomorrow at 3pm for our first interview. We would appreciate the prayers.

Well, I need to get back to the apartment before it gets dark. It took us a few days to get connected to the internet but I think I have got it now. I found a Cafe with Wi Fi, and at night we can dial up from the apartment.

I forgot the phone number at the apartment but we gave it to Cindie's mom last night. We will try to make some phone calls tonight, your morning. You can forward this message on to others I missed, Cindie has most of the email list in her email.