First Vision Party

This was not a quiet week!! Lots and lots going on. You've heard about some of it on national news. More about that later....

We started out on Monday with a "First Vision Party." Usually we have one pair of volunteers over for dinner on Monday night and ask them to bring someone they are teaching. But at our District Meeting the week before, there was some light contention about whose turn it was. "Rock/Paper/Scissors" was supposed to decide it. But then Ken piped up that Monday this week was the "best-guess" date for Joseph Smith's Vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ in 1820. That's what started this whole restoration of Christ's church in modern times and why we are out trying to tell everyone about it. So we decided to invite everyone to come and bring a friend or two. That meant we had twelve people in our tiny apartment for dinner. Elders Hansen and Mortensen made blini (Russian pancakes, but thin like crepes.) Sue made meat stuffings of stroganoff and chicken/broccoli. Elders Jensen and Franckowiak brought bananas and maple syrup. Sisters Camano and Monson brought jam and sour cream and sweetened condensed milk. These are all favorite Russian "stuffings" for blini. We ate and talked and then watched a movie about Joseph Smith and the restoration of Christ's church.

Elder Franckowiak, Vlad, Elder Mortensen, Vanya, Olga, Anastasia, Elder Jensen
Elder Hansen, Sisters Monson & Camano, The Allens

March 26, 2018: remembering 198 years ago

Spring is just around the corner. But it's a cold spring.

Sorry, we saw this photo and just couldn't resist.

Tuesday afternoon Sue took the mini-bus to the U.S. Consulate to drop off a passport for a volunteer from Novosibirsk. It had a mistake and so needed to be replaced. It's a pretty standard procedure to get it fixed. Sue has gone over there a lot in the last year. Every six weeks when new volunteers came in, she went to apply for their new second passports, and two weeks later she went to pick them up. We all have two passports so that one can be sent back to the US for a new visa while we carry the other one on our person at all times. We've talked about our quarterly visa trips before. But last fall, someone in the Church Travel Department wisely decided that since the new volunteers are spending two months in language training usually in Provo, Utah, or sometimes in Madrid, Spain, that the second passport could be applied for while they were there. So, since December, the new volunteers have come in with second passports already in hand. The Lord provides... More about that later.

Wednesday and Thursday we had our every-six-weeks Zone Conferences. Half the Mission gathers each day for instruction from President & Sister Rawson, and from the other young volunteer leaders. 

Sisters Baker and Monson did a fun "cooking" lesson about using things that are already prepared for us. No need to start from scratch for a PB&J.

Elders Gerratt and Wallace helped us through the steps of meeting people and bringing them to accept Christ.

Thursday evening President Rawson called us about 8 pm and asked if we were watching the news. We were not but turned it on. We then saw the announcement that the US Consulate in St. Petersburg would be closed in one week. Oh No!! We are OK, because we don't really need it regularly anymore. But they still had the passport that Sue had dropped off on Tuesday. We needed it back! So she called and emailed her friend, Mary, who works in American Citizen Services. Mary called back on Friday morning and said if we could come in about 90 minutes we could pick it up. We were about to have our weekly office staff meeting, but we made it short so Ken and Sue could head off to the Consulate.  

As we walked down the street we noticed the flag at half-staff. We walked up to the door and the guards asked us why we were there. The Consulate was already officially closed. I told them to call Mary and she would let us in. While we were waiting one of the guards said, "Thank you to the American taxpayers who have paid my salary for 13 years." The ten Americans who work at the Consulate are US State Department employees. They will all just be assigned to other jobs. But the 60+ Russians who work there are now unemployed. It's very sad.

We went inside to find Mary. There was dust and grit on the stairs from where they were pulling wires out of the ceilings. The big heavy bomb-proof door into the waiting room was propped open. Mary and her boss were wearing jeans and T-shirts and packing boxes. Their computers had already been taken apart. The Russian employees were all gone, except for the guards at the front door. Mary said they all had to be out of the building by Saturday night!! The Residence building for the Consul General is a beautiful old home that was a Duke's palace before the 1917 revolution. We don't know what will happen to it. We enjoyed the July 4th party there last year. There won't be one this year.

When we went into the building we saw two or three cameras being set up on  tripods across the street. By the time we came out, only 15 minutes later, there was a whole row of cameras facing the building. The crews asked us if we had been in there, and we said yes, but didn't comment to them. We're not supposed to speak to the press. But it all makes us sad. The Russian people are wonderful! And most of them like Americans. They don't really want the Consulate closing. Now they must go to Moscow or another country to secure a US visa, a real hassle.

The REAL news IN Russia this week has been a huge fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. 64 people died, including 41 children. It was the first day of Spring Break, and lots of families were at the mall. One whole fifth grade school class died together! The mall there was like the one where we shop here. The third floor has lots of kids activities--a Lego play area, petting zoo, trampoline venue, small soccer field, etc. It's a great place to go on a cold snowy day. As we walked out of the Hermitage on Friday afternoon we noticed some flowers around the Alexander Column--the huge memorial in the middle of Palace Square.  

This is THE main central place in St. Petersburg. As we walked closer we could see the mounds and mounds of memorials left for those who lost their lives in Kemerovo. There were flowers, teddy bears, candles, cards, etc., on all four sides of the fence around the tall column. Kemerovo is 2500 miles from St. Petersburg, but the people here are mourning, too. 

And also protesting. There have been demonstrations about this, and there was a general boycott of malls planned for this weekend. We usually do our grocery shopping at Oxta Mall on Saturdays, but we decided to just visit our neighborhood Cemya today instead. One of the executives of the Siberian mall that burned has now been arrested for negligence.

The green is German army reach.  Orange is where
Russians held their land.

Saturday was a bright and beautiful sunny day! And temperatures are regularly in the mid-30'sF in the afternoon, so the snow is melting a lot. We decided to do something tourist-y Saturday afternoon. We went out to see the large memorial to the Siege of Leningrad. (Remember that St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad from 1924 to 1991.) It is about 10 miles south of where we live and 10 miles from downtown St. Petersburg. The memorial marks the northern border of where the Nazi army reached during the siege. The memorial is in the middle of a very large traffic circle. You get there by going downstairs and under the street, then back up in the middle. The north side says ПОДВИГУ ТВОЕМУ ЛЕНИНГРАД or "The Achievement of Your Leningrad." 

 It was an amazing victory, but at a huge price. Almost 1 million people evacuated over the Ladoga Lake to the northeast. And about 1 million died of starvation in the city because of the blockade.  Another million soldiers died defending the city. Inside the memorial it says "900 Days" and "900 Nights." That's a long time with very few supplies. The area was devastated by bombings and the population in the area fell from 4 million before the siege to about 800,000 after the war was over. 

This is the 180 degree view of the memorial from the south side looking toward St. Petersburg from the Siege line. (As Ken was taking a panorama we decided we could do a "selfie" with both of us in the photo.)  

Downstairs under the memorial is the museum. It has a lot of artifacts from the time of the Siege, and also some interesting displays about how sports training was used before and during the war to help make the people physically fit for fighting.

Scroll around the image below to see the interior of the round memorial below and behind the obelisk at street level.

"900 days, 900 nights Leningrad siege (St. Petersburg) 1941-1944" - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Scroll around the image below to see the interior of the underground memorial.

"Leningrad Siege Memorial" just south of the Muskovskaya Metro station - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

--------------

Now for some shameless advertising for our children:
Every time we come up out of the Metro station near our apartment, at the top of the escalator is this ad for "Labrador Windows." It always makes me smile to see the dog in sunglasses, but it also makes me think of my daughter Rachel, who sells triple-pane super-duper replacement windows. If you live in Utah and need windows, call her! 1.801.335.9599

And our son Keith has finally launched his latest venture. Some of you may know him as KFaceTV on YouTube. (His Harry Potter parody has over 14 million views!) But almost a year ago he bought a 1974 VW bus and has almost single-handedly restored it and turned it into a snazzy rolling photo studio. He hires out for all kinds of events. Meet his new friend Ginger Snap Bus!

-----

Saturday night we joined the Rawsons and eight other young volunteers to watch live the Saturday Morning Session of the LDS General Conference. This was a special "Solemn Assembly" to sustain our new Prophet Russell M. Nelson, and also to add two new members to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, as two of the previous twelve died in the last six months. The two new ones are interesting choices--Ulisses Soares from Brazil, and Gerrit W. Gong from Palo Alto!! Gerrit's mother and sister still live in our ward there. He spent a lot of time in China and Hong Kong. He was assistant US Ambassador in Beijing at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

President Nelson is a renowned heart surgeon, long since retired, who helped develop the early heart-lung machine and participated in the first open-heart surgeries over half a century ago. He also speaks Chinese. He is 93 years old, and looks and acts about 70! (Ken's age.) He is leaving next week on a 12-day, 10-city tour around the world to England, the Middle East, Africa, India, Thailand and Hawaii. The man is amazing! And a prophet of God. We know God still speaks today through a prophet. His revelations didn't end thousands of years ago. He loves His children in all places at all times.

Saturday night was also a rare sight, a blue moon, the second full moon of the calendar month. We were glad to get to see it. It's usually too cloudy here to see anything in the sky. But the moon and a couple of planets were visible from our apartment. 

All are very good signs for the future.