All is Wet! All Is Wet!

Всё хорошо. (Vshow Horoshow = Everything is fine.)

But it was wet!

Rain, not snow, filled the week. We haven't seen snow stick yet, so it is considered unsusually mild here. The big news of the week: a bright young African man was baptized. The next day, a young brother and sister were baptized by their father. In all cases, the water was warm--warm rain well above freezing, and heated warm water in the baptismal fonts.

In addition we PLAYED floorball, saw two "retiring" Elders return home, welcomed two new Elders from America, managed a mission-wide transfer, sent half the volunteers on their visa renewal trips (due every three months) to Estonia and--for the first time--to Finland. And we were visited by a Church General Authority from South Africa who is touring St. Petersburg for a week. (We will say more about that visit next week, as Monday is a special zone Conference with him.)
     --- Several weeks ago, we told of how senior Elder Archibald had miraculously found our Turkish friend Fikret at the St. Petersburg bus station on the way to Novgorod. Elder Archibald and Sister Archibald have since been transferred to remote Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea coast. Last Sunday night, Ken and Elder Archibald arranged a lesson and discussion with Fikret via Skype. He was in the LDS chapel in Novgorod, where the local young Elders arranged a Skype station. Elder Archibald was visiting in St. Petersburg, and so we Skyped with Fikret from Ken's home computer. Most interestingly, since Fikret speaks fluent German but only limited Russian and no English, and since Ken and Elder Archibald have only limited Russian skills, Ken and Elder Archibald conducted the lesson in German. Ah! The gift of tongues!

Sisters Berge & Eaton, Elders Mortensen, Derek Jensen, Houston, Cummings
Scott Jensen, plus Ken & Sue  

This week Sue and a very non-morning-person Ken actually got up early (6 am) and played floorball for the first time ever--and for the second time and the third time. This week's video shows Sue making a goal! (at 5:40 in the video, or 2:10 past where that link starts.) Ken played goalie. With encouragement from the young volunteers, we may continue to show up. After all, the floorball court is next door to our apartment building, in the gym of the Church.  

Around from bottom left:  Sue, Elders Wilson, Muhlestein, Simmons,
Rindlisbacher, Sisters Eaton and Mohlman.  Ken took the photo, of course.

It was the last day before Elder Rindlisbacher  (top right) went home.  He wanted to do one last "slam." This is a strange ritual where you take a cookie, called a "kontiki" and suck fruit tea through the cookie and then lean your head back and get it all in your mouth before the cookie gets too soggy and falls apart all over everywhere. So, this is the last day of Center District as it has been. The two Elders on the left side were the "Officeniki." They did a bunch of different tasks around the office. But, as the mission size is shrinking, things have to be rearranged. We no longer have Officeniki. Now we have Officenitza instead -- same word, but feminine. The responsibilities are being split three ways, with the Assistants taking on some, the Center Sisters taking on some, and Sue taking on some. We told Elders Wilson and Muhlestein that they were so good it is taking five people to replace them! Sue will take on the library & supply room inventory, and keep up mission directories & phone lists. The Assistants will deal with scheduling visa trips. The Sisters will do the things that require speaking Russian, because Sue can't do those, like ordering plane & train tickets, ordering food for Zone Conferences, and dealing with the cell phone company.

Visa trip group, plus a few others
Front row:  Elders Gerrat, Jensen (D) & Rindlisbacher
Back row:  Sisters Monson, Berge, Pettit & Pitt,
Elders Mortensen, Hansen Wilson & Simmons 

This week was Transfers--but done like they have never been done before. President Rawson didn't like people going out for visa trips one or two or four at a time on random days whenever a visa expired. It's disruptive to the work and expensive to bring people in from outlying cities. He wanted to try sending half the mission on Transfer Day every six weeks. On that day most of the Mission group comes to Center anyway, and all the Work is totally disrupted. So we each go every twelve weeks. That's 84 days, and that works well with our 90-day visas. Usually the volunteers like to stand out and be noticed, but not on visa trips. So it was decided that they should all go in casual clothes--jeans and T-shirts instead of their usual men in suits and women in dresses. The visa department people were concerned about too many going together. So instead of renting one big bus, they were sent in three smaller groups: One group went on Wednesday afternoon to Estonia. Two other groups left early Thursday morning--one to Estonia and one to Finland. They were in 8-passenger vans, so much smaller groups.

This is our farewell photo of Elders Rindlisbacher and Hawkins with Elder Scott Jensen, the new Assistant in the middle. The two went home this week, but Elder Jensen was companions with each of them previously. We also received two new Elders this week--and one is also Elder Jensen. So that's why they will get identified with first/last names.

The transfer meeting was held as soon as the group got back from Estonia--so most people were still in casual clothes. It was a grand experiment, and seems to have worked mostly OK. We'll see what happens with the next group in December. There were a few glitches and "lessons learned."

We stayed pretty close to home all week. We didn't even take our Hermitage service shift, because that was on Transfer Day. Sue made a quick trip to the US Consulate on Thursday afternoon to order second passports for our two new Elders. We all have a "spare" that is kept in the office to use for ordering new visas and in case one gets lost or stolen. It has happened... .

But we did make it down to Avtovo Ward, just south of St. Petersburg, on Friday evening for the baptism of Mohamed.

And then there was a baptism on Saturday of a young brother and sister, done by their father. A great family day.


In conclusion, here is from Ken's scripture study: 
Pondering the Meaning of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  
This is an extension of previous observations on the Real Meaning of Sacrifice and should be read together.