Red Cross Celebrations & Spring!!

So fun to talk to Sue's Mom and our children and grandchildren on Mother's Day! We do love them all. But we get to do that whenever we want. All the young volunteers were really glad to talk to their Moms. They only call/Skype home twice a year--Christmas and Mother's Day. Other than that, it's only weekly e-mails. That's hard to imagine for most people in our current world of instant communication anywhere.


It is the 150th anniversary of the Red Cross in Russia. It was started here in St. Petersburg in 1867 by Russian Tsar Alexander II. (It didn't start in the U.S. until 1881.) Because of the LDS Church's long and close association with the Red Cross in Russia and around the world for support in times of disaster, the St. Petersburg Red Cross invited members of the LDS community to the official anniversary ceremony, and Stake President Boris Leostrim was one of the featured speakers--along with various government officials. We love this photo of him speaking with the Russian flag right behind him and the spires of Church of Christ on Spilt Blood in the background.

It was a cold and blustery day. The ceremony was held outdoors up on the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress. It did stop raining for the duration of the ceremony, which was nice. We were all given helium balloons that were let go together at the end. Behind us you can see the St. Petersburg Radio and TV Children's Choir.  They were wonderful. If you want to hear them sing a Russian hymn, click here for the Video link to Children's Choir.








After the ceremony, we walked along the top of the ramparts, with beautiful views of the city. Behind this photo of us and the Archibalds, the view opposite from the pictures above, you can see the spires of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Most of the Tsars of Russia are entombed here in sarcophagi all around the inside of the church. There is a special room off to one side for the remains of Nicholas II and his family--the last Tsars who were killed during the 1917 revolution.



Tuesday afternoon is the Mission Office staff meeting, and we found out about another of our duties, doing apartment inspections--once each "Transfer." There is a different measurement of time in missions--the Transfer. Usually it is six weeks. Transfer Week is a lot of chaos. More on that next week when we go through it for the first time.

We've inspected five of the six apartments assigned to us. One is ours--that's easy. We know that we dust/vacuum and clean the bathroom each week.  One is the "transfer apartment" upstairs. It's a spare apartment for those who come in to St. Petersburg from outlying areas and need to spend the night. Usually another senior couple stays there, and they take good care of things. Three other apartments are in our same building complex, and one is across the river in downtown area. The young volunteers seem to be good about keeping things clean. One pair needed to be reminded to clean their fridge--although it wasn't too bad. They also need several lightbulbs.  Another pair did a quick wipe down of the inside of the microwave when Sue opened to peek. He said, "My Mom would tell me to always put a napkin on top of things that I warm up." Sounds like our house.

We had the opportunity on Tuesday night to help one set of young elders give a missionary lesson. It was mostly in Russian, with some translation going on so we weren't too lost. We are catching more and more words each week.

Larissa Veselov, Robert & Carrie Archibald, Sister and
President Childs, with three dignitaries:
the Red Cross director, the Syrian refugee liaison
and the Afghan refugee liaison.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ken went with others from the mission to the grand opening of a special exhibition about the history of the Red Cross in the Military Medical Museum.











Also on that outing they went to visit the Vitebsky railway station nearby, the first railway station in St. Petersburg. It is a work of art. This is the grand staircase.  The whole building is ornate and beautiful, and full of works of Soviet-era art.






The big news that happened on Thursday is that Spring arrived!!  It was only May 18, but we had our first day with the temperature warmer than 45 degrees. By Friday it was up to 73!! The dandelions are all blooming, and we saw a few tulips open on Saturday afternoon. There are lots of tulip bulbs everywhere with buds showing, and the trees are sprouting small green leaves. Today walking to the subway we saw a young girl playing in the park who had on a "crown" made of dandelion blossoms. It was beautiful!






Saturday morning we took off early, did one apartment inspection downtown and then walked the few blocks to St. Isaac's Cathedral, the official state cathedral of Russia. St. Petersburg is also a city of canals, and there are lots of tourist boats to give visitors the views of the city from the water. St. Petersburg is made up of 30 to 40 islands, depending on how you count. There are 20 drawbridges on the Neva River that are only opened between 1 am and 5 am.

St. Isaac of Dalmatia was a 4th Century priest who is the patron saint of St. Petersburg. The city is named for Tsar Peter I (aka Peter The Great) who founded the city as his capital on May 27, 1703. He first built a small church on this site. The current cathedral is the fourth, built in 1818-1858. It is HUGE!! It's the fourth tallest cathedral in Europe after London, Rome and Florence. It was spared much of the destruction of the War but was much neglected until recent years. It has now been nearly restored to its Nineteenth Century splendor.




Each of the four bell towers has a spiral staircase up the middle, and we climbed up one of them and down another.  In the big picture above, you can see a small ramp going up and left from the right-side bell tower. That is more stairs. It's 262 stairs all together, and we climbed them for some magnificent city views. The steps are numbered -- Step 130 is just below Sue. We walked all around the Colonnade--just at the base of the tall pillars below the gold dome. If you make your screen really big, you can see people up there.






The Admiralty building in the foreground with the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in the background across the Neva River.

It may be difficult to see, but we are looking through the window from up on the Colonnade at one of the paintings of the Apostles that is in the dome of the Cathedral.  We are up about fifteen stories from the base of the cathedral. The photo below shows the same painting, but this time from the floor looking up to the dome.  It is one of those paintings just below the windows.

From down on the floor you get some idea of the immensity of St. Isaac's. The interior is full of amazing paintings, fine mosaic portraits and icons. Here are just a couple of photos, since we don't want to post lots. You can search online and see the details.

This photo may look a little weird because it's an almost 360-degree panorama Ken took of the inside walls. The ceilings are all covered in paintings, too. The bright red figure is a lighted stained-glass window of Christ inside the main sanctuary. Along the bottom you can see the heads of some real people--very tiny.  

This is the detail above the main sanctuary. To give a sense of the scale, above the lower arch is a painting of the Last Supper. The gold figures on each side are over 12 feet tall.

We had an English-language audio guide to listen and learn about much of the artwork.

Here is a video clip of the ceiling of St. Isaac's.  The tip-top of the dome is a dove -- symbol of the Holy Ghost.

We came home after walking 8.5 km and up 20 stories and felt like we'd had a good, long day.

Here are the links to the 360 photos Sue took.

St. Isaacs inside May 20, 2017 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

St. Isaacs ceiling, May 20 2017 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Stairwell of St. Isaacs, May 20 2017 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Now we go from the divine to the ridiculous:
At home in California we would usually have missionaries serving in our ward over for dinner about once a month.  (That's how we first met Ryan Sydenham.  He is now living in our home with his wife and three children while we are in Russia!) Anyway, here we are much more tied to the young volunteers, and also here there are not a lot of church members who can feed them. So we have decided that every Saturday night we will invite one set to dinner, and they can invite one or two others to come, too--friends or church members. Tonight we had Elder Adams and Elder Gerratt. They brought a young man named Igor who is a member of Central Ward. The Elders said they would bring dessert, called Slam. This is a Russian Volunteer tradition, evidently. We each had a cup of Summertime tea and a package of cookies called Super Kontik. They are rather like chocolate covered Oreos, but a little larger with chocolate frosting in the middle. The Elders would take a small bite from one edge, then a small bite from the opposite edge. They then put the bit-side cookie in their mouth and suck the tea through the cookie. When the cookie gets soggy, then they throw their head back and swallow the cookie whole. It's all pretty silly.