Happy New Year!

New Year's is THE big holiday in Russia. The week-long vacation is from January 1 - 8 and everything except retail stores is closed up tight. It all ends with Christmas on January 7. So here is our report of the week's activities.

We started the New Year in the Mission Home with President & Sister Rawson and the other volunteers who live at Malookhtinskiy 16. It's a huge complex that includes the LDS Stake Center, Mission Office and about 400 apartments and offices. The Mission has six apartments: ours, the Mission Home, two for Elders, one for Sisters, and one "Transfer Apartment." That's a spare for out-of-town mission visitors.

Clockwise from the bottom:  Pres Rawson, Sue, Elder Wallace,
Sister Camano, Sister Rawson, Sister Mohlman, Elder Tribe,
Elder Franckowiak, Elder Jensen.  (Ken took the photo.)

President said all the volunteers needed to be home by 9 pm--the hard partying starts late in St. Petersburg.  But those of us who live around the Mission Home didn't need to worry about traveling late at night with the drunks on the Metro, so we were all invited to party with the Rawsons.  

We brought treats and games and had a good time.  

The Mission Home also has an amazing view of the Neva River and all of downtown St. Petersburg. At midnight the fireworks started. We could see the displays happening in several different places across the river.  And there were even some right below our windows along the expressway.

Monday is normally Preparation Day for all the young volunteers, but we do that on Saturday. This week we also took Monday off.  No one expected the office to be open on New Year's Day, of course. And because of our trip to Helsinki we'd missed our usual Saturday shopping and chores. We slept in, cleaned house, went grocery shopping, etc. And Sue spent a lot of time this week, nearly every day, talking to her sisters and children about her Mom and plans going forward. We really are blessed to have the instant world-wide communication that exists today:  FaceTime, Snapchat, email, etc., mean it's not nearly so difficult to be so far away from family.

Oops--Sue hadn't put our Zone Conferences on the Stake building calendar. Who would need the church building in the middle of the day on a Wednesday or Thursday? Last Sunday in Church, President and Sister Rawson heard Shuvalovo Ward announce that their ward Christmas Party would be on Thursday, starting at noon. So we moved Zone Conferences to the Fontanka building. This had been the original building rented by the LDS Church in St. Petersburg. The Church used to use a lot of the building, but now it only has the right side of the first floor. It's a great location downtown on the Fontanka River just a few blocks south of the main street, Nevsky Prospekt. It's used as the LDS Institute of Religion where classes are held for the Young Adults. Serving at a similar LDS Institute in Germany was what we did on our mission to Germany in 2005-06. [And Sue has already put all the Zone Conferences for 2018 into the building calendar!]

The word on the top line says Burrito
in Russian -- Бурито

Although it was a nuisance to haul stuff (mail, props etc) to Fontanka for the meetings, there was one really big plus. We always order take-out food for the 25-30 people at each Zone Conference. It's often Telepizza -- because they deliver--or Chinese from the local take-out place. And Ken has to arrange for payment. But the Fontanka building is just a few blocks from our favorite Mexican restaurant in St. Petersburg. So we ordered burritos, chips & guacamole for everyone. It was a big hit!  Ken forgot to take a photo until it was about gone, but that happened pretty quickly. Sue also made 100 chocolate chip cookies to go with the Mexican. Everyone was happy.

On Wednesday morning about 10:30 a.m. Ken got an alert from a news feed on his phone that Thomas S. Monson, President of the LDS Church, had just passed away. We were at the office, because we attend only the second day of Zone Conference. We knew those attending on Wednesday would want to know, so Sue sent a text to President and Sister Rawson. President was teaching, but Sister Rawson saw Sue's text pop up on her phone, and so she interrupted President Rawson to show him. He said later he thought it must be pretty important if she was going to interrupt him with a text in the middle of Zone Conference! And it was.  

We had previously shared this website "Latter-day Apostles" with the Rawsons. It was done by our friend in Palo Alto, Erik Jacobsen. It is an excellent explanation of the leadership and succession in the LDS Church. President Rawson brought it up and talked about this with all the volunteers on both days at Zone Conference. The new President of the Church will be Russell M. Nelson. He's a former heart surgeon who is 93 years old, but still travels the world. He acts like he's 60! He was here in Russia and the Baltic states in October--although didn't come to St. Petersburg. He will be a great new leader for our world-wide church. (He speaks Mandarin!)

We were a little more crowded in Fontanka building, but made it all work.

The blow-up antlers made another appearance for an
object lesson--Elders Franckowiak & Jensen put them
on Elder Packer--one of our newest who came on Dec 19.

Friday afternoon we did our usual service at the turnstiles at The Hermitage. The week before, just as we were about to leave for Helsinki, Mikhail called from the Hermitage volunteer office. He said that the first week in January is their busiest of the year and could we be sure to have volunteers to help at the entry turnstiles every day. Usually when it is Zone Conference people will just skip their shift, especially in the quiet of winter. We were glad he called. Sue called volunteers and did a little rearranging so all the shifts were covered. And was it ever needed!  

Red line shows the line of people waiting to get in.
For perspective, the small white rectangles on the right
side are all monster tour buses.

When we arrived at 1:30 on Friday afternoon, the line was out the door, through the courtyard, out the gate and most of the way across Palace Square. By the time we left at 4:30 the line only went out the gate and a few people were in the square. The first Thursday of every month the museum entrance is always free. That was the day before. Mikhail said the line on Thursday was about twice as long as the one we saw. It went under the big arch, out to Nevsky Prospekt and down to the Metro stop.

We didn't stay at the Hermitage after our shift to see more of the museum, because we had the assignment to pick up the Chinese take-out and deliver to the Mission Home. President Rawson was doing a two-day training with three Branch Presidents from the far-flung branches that belong to the Mission and not to the Stake. Sue was invited to stay for dinner, and then Ken stayed for the training meeting, as he is the Mission Financial Clerk. Branch Presidents from Kaliningrad, Petrozavodsk & Pskov are on the left. The Mission Presidency is on the right.

Friday night we stayed up late to participate electronically with the burial of Sue's Mom at Wasatch Lawn Cemetery in Salt Lake City.  We will go to Utah for a week for a Memorial Service on February 10, but this week just the immediate family gathered for the burial. It was a sweet time for a few of the adult children and grandchildren to share a favorite memory. Then each person placed an orange rose on the casket and it was lowered into the ground. Orange was Mom's favorite color.  



Here are a couple of favorite Mom photos:

Mom was the first female cheerleader at BYU. It was during WWII and there weren't very many men on campus. Previously all the cheerleaders had been men. Many years later the BYU mascot, Cosmo, was our son, Keith. We treasure this photo of the two of them--both part of the BYU Cheer Squad but sixty years apart--1945-48 and 2007-10.

At the last Christmas party - Mom with Keith and Rachel
with the reflection of the hanging Christmas tree 

We knew that this Christmas would be the last family party at Mom's house. She had recently moved to assisted living and we are going to sell the house in the Spring. But we didn't know it would be the last Christmas with Mom. She was doing really well! She loved her family and her home, in that order, but pretty close together. December 23 our son Keith and daughter Rachel got to be there with  many others of the family for the traditional dinner, visit from Santa and re-enactment of the Nativity story by the great grandchildren. We woke up at 5a.m. to share in some of it electronically. She loved the party and told us all about it at least twice. It's hard to believe that she didn't live another week.

One of the joys of the burial was all that blue sky and sunshine. It was a glorious day in Salt Lake City. We saw a bit of blue sky in Helsinki, but we haven't seen the actual sun since a week or two before Christmas! It's been high 30's here almost the whole month--and raining more than snowing. Weird weather for St. Petersburg for sure.

Ken went back to the Mission Home on Saturday morning for more of the training. Sue stayed home and did the usual Saturday stuff. She walked the one mile over to Lenta at Okhta Mall for groceries, pulling her babushka cart and got rained on walking home. She did laundry, paid some bills, and wrote this blog!

Saturday night was the Christmas Eve party for the Center Ward where we attend. (The Julian calender Christmas is January 7.) There was a program prepared by the Young Men's group with music and videos, followed by group folk dancing and goodies.

 С Новом Богом  и Счастья Рождество

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!