'Snow Good

This is the week of the last of the home-grown tomatoes and the first sprinklings of snow. Summer was unusually cool, and snow came late--by St. Petersburg standards. We had a brief flurry on Monday night. By the end of this week there was snow on the ground in the countryside, and a few flurries were seen in the city. We had a very cool, mild summer. We are hoping for a warm, mild winter. By April we'll see how that has gone.

Ken brought his potted tomato plants in from the balcony a few weeks ago--partly due to the weather getting colder, but mostly due to the people re-plastering the outside of our building and dropping bits of plaster into our balcony and the tomatoes. This week it was time to pick the last of them. Delicious, of course. But we are consoled by the fact that store-bought tomatoes in Russia are actually good! The US needs to take a lesson from Russia on getting good tomatoes in the stores year-round.

First Snow of Autumn

Last of the home-grown tomatoes

Winter tube hat

Sue is preparing for winter by knitting hats. This is a "tube hat" that she learned how to make when we served in Germany 12 years ago. She likes it because it doesn't squish her hair too flat, and when you go indoors you just slide it back and it is a scarf around your neck. She's also knitting regular knitted beanies. More photos to come.

Elder Parker under the blade

Sue has been cutting Ken's hair since we were poor graduate students 47 years ago. After a haircut last week, one of the young volunteers noticed it and Ken said Sue had done it. So then Elders Parker and Hawkins came requesting haircuts. Sue promised them she was not professional, but they wanted to try anyway. Elder Hawkins came out OK. On Elder Parker, she shaved the neck nape with no guard on the blade to control length. Then forgot and started to trim the right side. Oops--one small spot about 1- 2" shaved short. It will grow out, and he was very nice about it.

Sister Allen, Sister & Pres. Rawson, 
Dr. & Sister Hansen,
Jan Call, and Chad Call, her son

Monday night we went to a fun dinner at Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant. He's a famous TV Chef in the US and Britain, but we didn't know that because we don't watch TV Chefs. :o) The food was great. The company was better. Elder & Sister Hansen are serving in Moscow--he is the Area doctor for the 14 countries in the Europe East Area of the LDS Church. His wife's Sister and nephew came to visit them, so they all came to St. Petersburg as tourists. The Calls were kind enough to haul along a new CPAP night-breathing machine for Ken, and so this was our Thank You dinner for them. That bag at the bottom of the picture is the CPAP.

Elder & Sister Allen, Elders 
Simmons & Franckowiak,
Viktoria & Daniel

Tuesday night we had company to our apartment for dinner--Victoria and Daniel, a brother and sister from here in St. Petersburg. Elders Simmons and Franckowiak also joined us. Victoria and her boyfriend Alex,stayed with Ken's brother Scott at his house in Hurricane, Utah, about five years ago when they were on a month-long tour of the US. Scott rented out a basement room on AirBnB, so he met lots of interesting people. He had driven Victoria and Alex around Southern Utah and to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, and then they stayed Facebook friends. When we got our assignment to St. Petersburg, Scott told us we needed to meet his friends. We are glad it finally happened!

The Winter Palace at the Hermitage

It is fall at the Winter Palace, for sure. Why fall? Look at all those leaves!

This week when we walked into the Hermitage we noticed a big change in the long main entry hall. Every big pillar was hung with either red banners with white lettering or photographs from 100 years ago taken during the Russian Revolution. And the ceiling was lit with red-tinged lights. There is also a special exhibition that opened that afternoon, but we didn't have time to stay and see it. We'll do that next week.

We thought Russia was going to ignore the 1917 Revolution, but evidently not. Nov 7 is the traditional holiday, so we'll report more in future weeks.

Consul Chief Rafe Gonzalez, 
Deputy Chief Mary Ermel,
Sister & President Rawson

On Thursday morning we had a courtesy visit from two members of the U.S. Consular staff in St. Petersburg. We had met Mary Ermel before. She helps us with second passport applications at the Consulate. Her new boss is Rafe Gonzalez. He just arrived in St. Petersburg two weeks ago after two years in Yekaterinburg.

180-degree view: two hours later this, and more, was cleared

Saturday was a big service project in Udel'nyy Park in the Shuvalovo Ward area to rake leaves.  There were a lot of members of Shuvalovo Ward and a lot of us volunteers. We raked and piled for two hours. The temperature was in the mid-30's (barely above freezing), but it didn't rain or snow. And the hard work kept us warm.

Resting on their laurels

Little helpers

We really like their method of moving the leaves to piles. They had a bunch of these flat canvas pieces with a rope tied to one end. You rake a small pile of leaves onto the canvas and then someone--even little kids because leaves are light--hauls it to the spot on the road where the big piles are made. Later the park workers come along with a truck having a large 'vacuum' that sucks up the piles. It's all very efficient!

Shuvalovo Ward and St. Petersburg Volunteers

Sisters Monson and Pemberton eat the ice cream first before
it melts, and then get into the burgers. They are sitting with
President & Sister Monson. That's the back of Elder Jensen's
head behind them.

And afterward some of us found the Burger King and stopped for lunch before the ride home on an old Soviet-era trolley and a new modern Metro (subway.) 

Ken liked the ordering system--all touch screen--especially because you can choose to see it in English instead of Russian.

After we finished our lunch, we came home long enough to change our clothes and make frosting.  Then we headed to the LDS Institute Building on the Fontanka Canal in downtown St. Petersburg. This used to be the church building before it was moved into the Stake Center in 2004 or so. They kept the old building as the Institute for Young Adults, and it's a wonderful facility. It reminds us of the ones where we served in Kiel and Hamburg in Germany in 2005-06.

This Saturday night was Halloween Party! We had almost twice as many people as what we'd expected. Halloween is usually not celebrated in Russia. Victoria came, brought her younger sister andtwo other friends.  We had a couple of young men and one older man whom Elders had met on the subway that morning on the way to Shuvalovo. There were members, young and old, from both Shuvalovo Ward and Center Ward.

Halloween party game at the Institute

We played a bunch of silly games. Here are folks trying to pop balloons tied to other people's ankles without letting their own  balloon get stomped on.

Sophia, Victoria's sister, 
created a beautiful princess 
face with a crown on top.

Decorating Halloween cookies

Shrek the Cookie

After the games the volunteers showed "The Restoration," a movie about the restoration of Jesus' Church in our modern times.

We also had cookies to decorate. (Sue had made almost seven dozen sugar cookies, as well as frosting in green, white, orange and black.) We had sprinkles to go on top. Some people just put a blob of frosting on the top and ate quickly, but others made creative masterpieces.



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Here is our spiritual message of the week. This is from Elder Allen:

I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of the sacrament and sacrifice as I both read the Book of Mormon and prepare a sermon to be delivered in a couple of weeks. I have had so many thoughts that I will have to have someone translate for me as I speak. I shared a rough translation with one of my Russian tutors, who said she wanted to share it with her family. But there is no way I could deliver the message in understandable Russian, given my present level of language competence. So I will work on a better translation and give the sermon in English. You will see why. In the meantime, here are my collected thoughts on the meaning of sacrifice and the sacrament ordinance. Let us know what you think.