One Week Down -- 97 to go

Ken figured out today that we will be away from home for 100 weeks.  But the first two weeks were in the MTC in Provo, so we are counting 98 in St. Petersburg.

And what a week it has been!  We'll work a little backwards, first.

It's Saturday morning.  Our plan was to clean the apartment, practice our Russian, and then go on an outing somewhere to see the City. Big change of plans....

Here's the view today out our balcony door:

It's been snowing since we woke up this morning.  Yesterday we could see about 4" of tulip leaves sticking up in various beds around the apartment.  It's going to be beautiful, eventually.  In the meantime it's 36 degrees outside.  That's about the same as Salt Lake City right now--but in SLC it is the wee hours of the morning, and the high will be mid-60's.  I'm afraid we are at our high for the day.

This is a map of St. Petersburg city center.  We live on the Neva River at the red circle.  Unfortunately our apartment does not have the river view -- we are on the back side.  The Hermitage Museum is the brown dot above and to the left of the "St."  On the map it is 5 km (3.1 mi) as the crow flies from our apartment to the Hermitage.  If you want to check us out on Google Earth, our address is Malookhtinskaya Naberezhnaya 16.

MONDAY

We went into the office first thing on Monday morning and started to get oriented to our duties.  We'll talk more about that when we figure out what we're really doing.  Then about noon the Archibalds came by and said, "Let's go sight-seeing."  So we did.  Archibalds usually live in Novgorod, so they like to see this city when they are here.  St. Petersburg is a beautiful place--built by Peter the Great in the early 1700's and the capital of Russia until 1917.  It has the river that makes a big loop, and all kinds of canals in between.  We took the Metro--subway system--to our first stop.  The St. Petersburg subway is the second largest in the world with over 200 km of tracks.  We have Metro cards with pre-paid funds, and it costs 45 Rubles to go anywhere on the system.  That's only 80 cents.  The trains seem to run every 2-3 minutes and are almost always crowded.  The hardest part is the 15-minute walk from our apartment to the nearest stop.

We walked a couple of blocks from the Metro stop to the Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral.  The Our Lady of Kazan icon is the most famous Russian icon.  The cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church built from 1801 to 1811.  Many of you will recognize the long, curved colonnade as similar to St. Peter's in Rome.









The interior of the church has wonderful paintings and icons and a large dome.  After the Russian Revolution in 1917 it was closed and then in 1932 became the "Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism" until it was restored as a Russian Orthodox Church in 1992.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood is an amazing monument!  It was originally built from 1883 to 1907 by Tsar  Alexander III on the spot where his father, Alexander II was assassinated.  So, it isn't exactly a church, but more of a memorial.  Every dome is different, and the detail work around  the outside is intricate and symbolic,

The interior surfaces are all covered in mosaics--no paintings or frescoes here at all.  The walls are all biblical scenes and characters--Abraham sacrificing Isaac,  the Nativity, Jesus walking on the water, various apostles and other saints, etc. There are marble walls along both sides of the altar gate which used to contain several icons.  These were looted after the Russian Revolution and have never been found.  During WWII, the church was used as a morgue for those who died during the Siege of Leningrad.  [St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad from 1924 to 1991.]  After WWII, the church was used to store vegetables and was severely neglected and damaged.  In 1970 it was designated a museum and restoration began.  It reopened in 1997, but has never been consecrated as a church.  It is a museum of mosaics, and a huge tourist attraction.

TUESDAY

After spending Monday afternoon in Russian Orthodox museums, we were able to have a spiritual feast on Tuesday and get back to our LDS roots.  We had a special visitor for the day--Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church.  He is one of the fiftenn men we revere as prophets, seers and revelators.  He came to visit three cities in Russia, and also Kyiv, Ukraine.  This was his first-ever visit to St. Petersburg.  We were honored to have him among us.  Also with him were Elder Donald L. Hallstrom, a President of the Seventy, and President James Martino, who is the President of the Europe East Area of the LDS Church.  We were glad to see Pres Martino and his wife Ginny again.  They were with us on our trip to Israel last December!

Elder Holland spent the morning with the volunteers in the Russia St. Petersburg Mission.  Here is the photo of us all.  We have sixten young Sisters, thirty-seven young Elders, and four Senior Couples.  We are a small but mighty force!

This is the link to the video of us all singing while waiting for the dignitaries to arrive.  The song is our favorite German LDS hymn, "Sehet Ihr Völker" (Hark All Ye Nations).  We now need to learn it in Russian! And Sue knew there would be a lot of waiting, so brought her knitting along.

After the photo, Elder Holland lined up to shake everyone's hand.  The young Sisters went first, then us Senior Couples, followed by all the young Elders. 

There was a palpable spiritual feeling throughout the morning.  We moved into the chapel, and Elder Holland did a Q&A.  He answered some of the questions, and also had Elder Hallstrom and Sister Martino answer some.  After two hours we broke for lunch, but no one really wanted to leave.  We all knew we had spent an incredible morning.  In the evening Elder Holland spoke at a meeting open to all the LDS members and friends.  We had almost 400 people there, and again felt the Spirit.  Sue took notes--too much to post here.   For anyone interested in reading the details, click here.

WEDNESDAY

After such a spiritual high on Tuesday, we thought it would be back to "normal" on Wednesday. We went to the office and started in on the usual paperwork.  But again in the afternoon the Archibald's said they wanted to visit St. Isaac's Cathedral.  This is a beautiful big church/museum in the downtown area.  We have been wanting to visit it ever since our son Reed and family gave us a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of this for Christmas.  The puzzle doesn't do the actual building justice. The only problem was that every tourist site in St. Petersburg is closed one day of the week--and they are all different.  For St. Isaacs, that day is Wednesday.  You can usually walk around the upper colonnade on Wednesday--but not on the third Wednesday of the month, which this was!  So we admired the outside and will come back another day (not a Wednesday) to see the inside.  At least on this trip we got to ride the subway to the Admiralty station.  It is the deepest one in Russia--86 meters underground.  It took about three full minutes to ride the escalator down--and the Russian escalators are faster than the ones in the US.

We have to write a little more about the subway system.  It opened in 1955, so was commissioned and mostly built during Stalin's time.  Like Moscow, the stations are beautiful and ornate--marble and metal and mosaics everywhere.  And they are so clean!  You see workers sweeping the steps and running rags on the escalator hand rails.  No trash, no grafitti. We want to say "Thank You" to the ladies working on mopping the floors!

Wednesday evening Sister Childs had offered to take Sue grocery shopping.  Childs have a car!  It's the only car in the mission, except for the van that is used to take people to/from the airport and to/from Estonia for visa trips. [More on visa trips in about three months when we go.] We went to the "OK" market, which is wonderful.  It's like a super Target--very new and clean--and it has just about everything.  Sue stocked up on fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese, yogurt, cereal, juices, etc.  She also found a paper-towel roll holder, hair gel and bar soap.  St. Petersburg is a big, modern city.  She wanted to take pictures, but we cannot post any photos of Russian citizens without their written permission.  Russia is extremely fussy about privacy laws.

THURSDAY

We can't just have a normal "stay-in-the-office" day.  Thursday Elder Archibald took us to the US Consulate downtown to submit the applications for our second passports.  Every LDS volunteer in Russia gets a second passport that is kept on file in the office.  We must carry our passports, with our visa and local residential registration, with us at all times, and it must be in an inner pouch--not a regular pocket.  Sister Hinze, our predecessor in the office gave Sue the advice to sew a pocket in her slip and put it there.  So far that has worked well.  Ken has a pouch that hooks onto his belt and he wears inside his pants.  Especially on the Metro, pickpockets can be a concern.  And they can easily spot our "American-ness."  

We heard an interesting comment in Sunday School last week.  The question was asked to the class, "What are five things that are really important to you."  There were the expected answers--family, health, education, documents.  Documents???  Yes.  All Russians carry their passport at all times.  We don't realize how important that is, coming from a country that has free travel anywhere.  

Anyway, preparing the passport applications for incoming volunteers will be one of Sue's jobs.  We were waiting for the applications to be processed.  (It takes about 30 minutes, so Sue will take her knitting next time.) The head of the Consulate and his assistant came out to talk to us.  They also had with them the administrative head of all the US Consulates in Russia, who happened to be visiting from Moscow.  They just wanted to meet us.  They said they would be glad to help us as much as they could with any difficulties we might have.  They are very friendly and helpful.  We have a good relationship with them.  They know all about our second passport stash and they facilitate getting them because they know what a mess it is when one gets lost/stolen.  Without a passport, one does not leave a building.

FRIDAY

Friday was our first real day.  Sue stayed in the office all day.  Ken was there most of the day, with an excursion to get cash from the bank.  Rents and utilities in St. Petersburg are paid in cash.  They are hand-delivered to the landlords by a wonderful Russian Sister Efimova.  Without her all our volunteers would be homeless, we are sure.

In the afternoon we had our weekly staff meeting and spent part of the time discussing the court ruling in Russia against the Jehovah's Witnesses.  It is disturbing to see this flagrant disregard for the free exercise of religion in any country.  At this point we have a good relationship with local authorities in St. Petersburg.  The police have been helpful when we've needed them.  The volunteers are told if they are ever hassled by ruffians on the street to yell "Babushka!"  That means Grandmother!  The grandmothers here are all-powerful and will tell off any street thug in no uncertain terms.