(Many thanks to Misha, orphanage discipler, for his committed service to the kids in Slobodskoy. We couldn’t do it with you, Misha!)

It’s Friday morning in Slobodskoy and the quiet life goes on with snow melting rapidly here and there showing the untidy parts of ground and turning into one giant muddy pool that will take a few more weeks to dry and we would finally welcome the real spring. But I don’t really care, because this week has already been as crazy as the never-ending Russian winter, as joyful as the spring and summer combined, and as bright as the Easter sun.

The Mission 1:27 Team left for Moscow yesterday to continue their long but so familiar travel back home. They are gone but the song is still in my head! I don’t know why but I often felt like singing at this time. Maybe because this trip was really too easy like Robert said and everybody did everything just the way it should be done. It’s hard to disagree with it and I saw practically everybody share this nice feeling both with the kids and with each other. Not only Rush and Ava with their unbeaten voices, who were meant to sing on every suitable occasion — either to dissolve Galina’s eccentricity or just to fill our hearts with joy, or to send shivers down our spines, like one of the girls in the Ministry Center confessed, but all of us were singing a beautiful song of happiness, hope and love and we all did a very good job!

It is never a problem if you don’t know the words of the song or you are too shy or too cool to sing with everybody, or like we say in Russia, “a medved (bear) stepped on your ear” (which is usually my case). As long as the music of our hearts is played into a “friendship-always-winning” song, we know that we can start it all over again when you return.