Apartment Inspections

This was another interesting week. We are seldom bored!

On the Metro Sunday afternoon with Sister Sergeyva

In the one uncrowded Metro car

The Dennis family invited us and Sisters Gregory and Pettit for Sunday dinner at their new condo. We took the Metro and a marshrutka mini-bus to their home in the countryside northwest of St. Petersburg. Enroute we met a sister from Avtovo Ward who was heading home from Stake Choir practice. They are preparing to sing for Elder Uchtdorf, one of the Twelve Apostles, who is visiting St. Petersburg next week and speaking to the members and the volunteers in special meetings. You'll hear lots more about that next week!

Entrance to the Dennis's new home

It was fun going to visit the Dennis family because they moved here recently from Monterey, California! We feel like long-time friends. Chris Dennis is an American computer whiz who can live anywhere and work remotely, while Katya is Russian. They have two boys, ages 12 and 15--Victor and Dima. They have been raised in the US, but with a Russian mother. Dima commented that culturally he often feels more at home in Russia than in California.  

With the Chris Dennis family at home

 

Sister Efimova's birthday party with the
regional Church business staff and the volunteers:
Gennady, Andrei, Tatiana, Sister Efimova, Veroneka, Igor,  
Elder S. Jensen, Aleksey Federovich, 
Elder Franckowiak, Sister Allen

On Monday at the office we celebrated the birthday of our wonderful Sister Galina Efimova. She is the one who takes a huge burden off Ken and President Rawson, because she is the housing coordinator. She finds new apartments when we need them and negotiates with landlords when we have to close an apartment. She deposits the rents and utilities for the volunteers in St. Petersburg. For most places this means visiting the landlord and paying in cash. She and her husband (since deceased) were the first mission president and matron in Yekaterinburg in 1993-1996, so she knows first-hand what it means to keep a mission running. She speaks this wonderful mixture of Russian and English. It's Sue's goal to speak Russian as well as Sister Efimova speaks English.

Dinner with Sisters Karlsson, Monson & Camano
and with Vasily and Dasha

Monday evening we had two wonderful young people join us for dinner, along with three Sisters. We have a 'troika' now at Center. Sister Karlsson arrived on April 3 from the Spain Missionary Training Center. She was the only one in her Russian language group not going to Ukraine, so she came mid-transfer.  She is from Sweden, and is the one Sue took to the Swedish Consulate last week. Her grandparents joined the church many years ago, and her brother attended Stanford in 2014-2015, living on campus at Escondidio Village and attending Menlo Park Ward in our home stake.  She came to visit him with her family, so has been to Palo Alto.

This is the last District Meeting for this Transfer.  We know there will be lots of changes.  Sister Camano and Elder Hansen are going home.  We know one of the Assistants will change, because they go home together next Transfer, and President will not want to have two brand-new Assistants.  And what else?

Elders Allen, Scott Jensen, Franckowiak, Sisters Camano, Karlsson, Monson, Elders Hansen, Mortensen, Sister Allen

While we were in the meeting, one of the Russians who works in the office came by and said, "It's Tuesday.  Why are you dressed like that?"  Good question!  Because of tensions between the US and Russia over the Syria bombings last weekend, the Area President sent down a notice that all volunteers should dress in casual clothes when not in church meetings, 'until further notice.'  So we had three days of jeans and t-shirts until Wednesday night when the change was lifted.  All is well in St. Petersburg!

Inspecting an apartment of the Sisters 
Camano, Karlsson & Monson

One of our duties is apartment inspections. Everyone has his/her apartment inspected by someone each Transfer (6 weeks). We are responsible to do the three at Center in our complex. Those are easy, as they are just down the block. Orange is Sue's favorite color, so she always likes to see the Center Sister's kitchen. We inspected the Center Elders' apartment on Tuesday morning, too, but forgot to take a picture. We'll do the Assistants on Monday next week.

But we also inspect the Sister Training Leaders' apartment in Avtovo--90 minutes via subway south of us. And then we inspect the Sister Training Leaders' apartment in Shuvalovo--80 minutes north of us. But it's a big triangle. Avtovo and Shuvalovo are on the same subway line, so it's only about an hour from one to the other. We had hoped to do them both on Thursday morning, but then the Shuvalovo Sisters had a teaching appointment that could only be kept at the time we wanted to come, so we bumped them to Friday before our Hermitage service.  

The Avtovo Sisters live on the 21st floor of this modern, glass-walled building, which is "gianormous" as Sister Mohlman calls it.

It's a nice apartment with room to study for Sister Mohlman and Sister Baker.

It has an amazing view out over St. Petersburg.

Panorama via from west to north to east toward 
downtown St. Petersburg

While Ken was taking the picture of the big building, we smiled at the billboards. The one on the left probably looks familiar, especially with the English brand name. The word at the top right is "Hit!" The word on the top left is pronounced "Shampoon!" 

The billboard on the right caught our eye because so much of it was in English. (The young and well-educated in Russia all speak some English.) The part with the English word "Smart" reads in Russian "Smart-apartments on the Finnish Bay." It's an ad for ocean-front vacation condos between here in St. Petersburg and the border with Finland. 

The Toreza apartment tower

Friday morning, before our Hermitage service, we went up north to visit Sisters Gregory and Pettit in Shuvalovo. Their building is not quite as large, but still pretty big. They are on the 9th floor.

Checking off the inspection list
Sisters Gregory & Pettit with Sister Allen

We have a form that lists all the things to be checked in the apartment for cleanliness and repair--furniture, appliances, floors, smoke detectors, etc. We go through room by room.  













The Gazprom tower is under construction about 10 km west of the downtown, but you can see it from almost everywhere. It's about 88 stories tall.

Sisters Gregory and Pettit 
with their inspirational reminders

Most of the volunteer apartments are decorated with inspirational sayings and posters on the back of the front door. Reminders of who we are and what we are doing as we head out into the big wide world.

At home--The Electronic Bookworm

Sue took a couple of pictures of Ken flaked out cold for past blogs. Now he is getting even. E-books on the iPad are a good wind-down after a busy day.

  

Saturday had just too much going on to do it all, so we had to prioritize. Ken's cold is persisting. There was a St. Petersburg Stake service project to clean up the famous cemetery park across the river as we did last year on this weekend. But it was cold and raining and windy and generally miserable outside, so we stayed home and cleaned house and did laundry. 

Elder Houston, Aihan, Elder Tribe

At 1pm we joined the Shuvalovo Ward at the Stake Center to witness the baptismal service for Aihan Moosayev (Айхан Мусаев) from Azerbaijan (a country by the Caspian Sea). He has a great spirit, and the people welcomed him so warmly.



Some weeks ago Sue went for a speedy walk, since Ken was home sick and didn't slow her down. Doing 3.5 miles over icy sidewalks in boots is not a good idea. She somehow badly strained her right foot. It hasn't healed. So after the baptism we took the bus to downtown St. Petersburg to the Medem medical clinic to get an x-ray. Fortunately the x-ray revealed that nothing in the foot is broken, though it remains swollen. We are getting old...

We came home in the windy rain to change in order to do our weekly grocery shopping. We caught the free shuttle to nearby Okhta Mall and had dinner at the new KFC in the food court. Judging by the long lines at the food court, it is doing quite well.

We enjoyed this totally unhealthy meal for $10, including a "Duet Basket" with two legs, four wings, four chicken tenders, and two bags of fries. We also had two drinks and a fancy hot dog, or XOT ДОГ, which in italics is хот дог. Go figure.

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And on a side-note from home. For years the NPR newscaster, Carl Kasell, has held a special place in our home. He passed away this week. Here is a link to a New York Times article of April 17: Carl Kasell-the passing of a legend. Read about this amazing man.

Carl Kasell reporting to Peter Sagal

One of our really fun treasures is Carl Kasell's voice on our own answering machine! Back in February 2002 Sue was a contestant on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR ... and won! Here is the clip from that radio broadcast. And here is the clip of Carl Kasell's voice for our own personal voicemail.