Our Next Generation

On Sunday morning, March 18, Utah time, our granddaughter, Megan Mills, opened an envelope from a Prophet of God, Russell M. Nelson, who has called her to serve as a missionary for eighteen months in Raleigh, North Carolina. With her were her parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and many relatives and friends. Here she is as she opened and read aloud the letter and as we watched via FaceTime. We were hoping she'd get sent to Russia, but it was not to be. Where young missionaries are sent is totally up to inspiration by those making the assignments, but those applying can make general requests--which may or may not be honored. Megan had requested to stay in an English-speaking area, so we knew her chances of coming here were slim. The application also asks if you have any close family currently serving, and where. They tend not to send young people to serve with their grandparents.  





"Sun, glorious sun!" said Sue as we returned from Church to our apartment next door on Sunday afternoon. It was the last chance for the week.

By Monday it had started snowing again, and snowed every day all week. Not a lot of snow--maybe an inch or two each day.  But it was enough to make the trees look beautiful and the sidewalks again be treacherous.  

Sue was taking a photo of the pretty snow when Sisters Gregory and Pettit came out of the Mission Office door, so Sue put them into the picture to make it even prettier!











Tuesday was the first day of Spring!  And this was the view out of Ken's office window.

And Ken has "Spring Fever" --literally. Tuesday night he started feeling badly, and by Wednesday morning it was full-blown flu. So this is the photo of his week.

Each day at about noon we get an email with our Russian word of the day. We had to laugh, because this was the word for Wednesday.  






Except for you Russian speakers, it has a goof.  The pronunciation given for заболеть is, of course, for the word болной instead.  The first is the verb and the second is the adjective.  We like грипп.  That's a cognate to the German 'krippe' for flu.


So Sue had a quiet week, too. And she tried to stay as far away from Ken as possible. That's not easy in our tiny apartment. She tried to walk to get some exercise, but the sidewalks are too slippery. Then Thursday evening she was going to pick up dry cleaning, and realized that the huge Okhta Mall had three floors with a 'racetrack' layout. So she did two rounds of each floor before picking up the clothes. Then took the mini-bus most of the way home, because the snow was blowing sideways outside.

One project for Sue this week has been working on a ten-minute slide presentation for the Hermitage Volunteer Conference on April 6. Volunteering is not a common practice in Russia, in contrast to the US where parents expect to volunteer for PTA or soccer teams or .... And we help with Friends of the Library and Sierra Club and political campaigns and whatever else we care about. Those of us who are LDS are always volunteering in various church positions.  

Fifteen years ago Mikhail started a volunteer group for the Hermitage. Our LDS volunteers have been helping all that time, along with hundreds of others. Now other museums and music organizations in St. Petersburg are asking Mikhail how he does it. He's invited them to this conference, and has asked us and President Rawson to do a short presentation about volunteering in the US. When it's finished we'll send everyone the link.

All that is the long intro to this photo. Sue took it to put into the presentation, but we know we have some parents of volunteers lurking around our blog, so this is for them. Here are Elders Bohman and Cummings helping at the entrance turnstiles. You'd be amazed how many people can't figure out how to make a scanner read a bar code! So the Hermitage is glad to have us help. In March things are fairly quiet -- a constant trickle. In July and August it's a mob for three hours straight for each shift.






Since Ken was home sick, Sue thought she was going to have to find another companionship to take our shift. But the Lord provided. Thursday evening she got a call about a young couple from the US who are here for a couple of months, Daniel and McCall McCombie. Daniel has an internship here and served a Russian-speaking mission. McCall speaks almost no Russian and is feeling a little bored. They asked if there was anything she could do around the Mission Office.  

So she came to the Hermitage and took Ken's place at the turnstiles on Friday. In the middle of the shift we were also invited to come with all the other Hermitage volunteers for the day, about 30 people, to watch a short presentation some of them had done about Gerasim Lebedev. He was a Russian musician who moved to Calcutta, India, in the late 1700's and opened a theater to put on Bengali translations of English-language plays. This was the first of its kind. The presentation the young people did was very much in the "Bollywood" style, so lots of fun.

After the shift, Daniel came and joined us. Sue gave them a quick tour around the major rooms and layout of the Hermitage. She then went home and left them to explore on their own.

Before leaving, Sue stopped at the volunteer office and finally picked up the new volunteer badges for 2018. They've been slow in coming. She did the editing on 52 of them for our LDS volunteers. She was given the master form, and then put in the photos, names, and numbers for each separate person.  Each person has a number, in Roman numerals, that corresponds to the spreadsheet given to Hermitage security with their passport number on it. She included everyone who is here now and those who will be coming before June. Then the Hermitage printed them. And they each had to be signed and stamped on the back by the Hermitage Security Service. Russians are big on stamps. They are laminated, and a string is put through the top. Then we can wear them around our necks while we are at the Hermitage. They are also good for discounts or free entry at many of the other museums in St. Petersburg!