Spring is Arriving

This weekend marks one year since our arrival in St. Petersburg. On last April 16 we were picked up at the St. Petersburg airport to start our adventure. It was Saturday night before Easter Sunday. We have loved our year here, but it has gone by so fast!

We are really seeing Spring now. The snow is almost gone everywhere. The temperature is always above freezing in the daytime. It's been sunny and beautiful all week. And the tulip leaves are starting to show through the dirt in the planted areas around our apartment.

Last Sunday night we went up to the Mission Home to watch the Priesthood Session of LDS General Conference with the Rawsons and the young Elders who live near Center. It is such a joy to hear the words of Prophets in our time.

This photo was a duo-effort. Notice Ken on the left end and Sue on the right end. Ken started doing the panorama, and when Sue was out of the picture, she ran around the back of Ken and took over the camera while he went and sat in the chair on the left.  

Ken, Sue, Elder Mortensen, Vova, Elder Jensen

Monday night we had two Elders come for dinner with us, and they brought their young friend Vova. He wants to join our Church, and is so excited about it! They invited him to observe a baptism last week, and he wanted to get baptized himself right then! The Elders had to explain that he needed to have the basic lessons first so that he would know the commitments that he would be making. So he is presently planning to be baptized on May 5.




It was a really quiet week around the office, but then on Thursday morning Sue got to accompany our newest volunteer, Sister Karlsson, to the Swedish Consulate to get her second passport. She had gone once and they said No! That could be a big problem. So our visa people figured out what extra paperwork she needed. Her father called the Consulate from Sweden to explain the situation. Sue went with her and explained that we have been doing this for about 15 years. Currently we have people with two passports from the US, Germany, Portugal and New Zealand! The woman hesitated, told us how unusual this is, but granted the second passport. Whew!! Of course Sue forgot to get a photo of the event, so we took one of us, Ken and Sue, in front of the Swedish Consulate on Saturday when we were back downtown. It's the pink building in the front with the flags. The yellow building just beyond it is the Swedish Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg.



On Friday afternoon we went to do our regular Hermitage Service to help at the front entrance. It's starting to be tourist season. There is one entrance for individuals and another for organized tour groups. During the Winter the tour group entrance has few groups, except school classes on field trips. They usually have a group ticket and the teacher just handles it all. Now it's Spring. The school groups are still coming, but the busloads of tourists are starting to come, too. That man just to the left of the big pillar is Ken helping people through the turnstile. Here you can see the black/white checked floor like in the child's painting we posted last week.

Friday after our Hermitage service, it was such a beautiful day! The sun is shining. Temperatures are up in the 40's F. So we walked down Nevsky Prospekt to the subway stop. As we crossed the canal we were a little higher than the usual flat sidewalk because we were on the bridge over the canal. We looked ahead to a solid sea of people on the sidewalk as far as we could see. Nevsky is a very busy street!

Eric and Ken with "Holy Rus" by Nesterov.
It is our favorite Russian painting --
Christ visiting in Russia after his Resurrection

Saturday we had a guest from California. Eric is from Mountain View and is a Stanford professor here giving guest lectures. As we showed him around downtown we had a great time comparing notes and talking about mutual friends. It turns out he even knew Ken's Bishop from Ken's high school days in San Rafael. He had moved into Eric's stake in rural Oregon. 

Sue, Ken & Eric with Catherine the Great in the Russian Museum

We had lunch at the Literary Cafe (the last place Alexander Pushkin was before he went off to a deadly duel) and then to the Russian Museum. We tried to show Eric the Summer Garden, but it is closed for the month of April for "drying out" as the sign says.  

On our way over to meet Eric we had waited 30 minutes for our #7 trolley bus that is supposed to run every 12-16 minutes. Then as we were driving down a street that was in the middle of getting re-paved, where about three inches of asphalt had been removed,  something under the bus caught a man-hole cover that was sticking up. The bus pulled the whole top part of the manhole out of the ground, leaving a gaping hole, which one of the bus wheels fell into, but luckily got out of again. The driver stopped the bus to check, because one woman was knocked out of her seat by the jolt, but she was OK. So the bus went on its way, and we just hoped someone came to fix the hole in the street before a smaller car dropped into it.

Later, as we were waiting for our bus home after the visit with Eric, we watched as the #7 trolley bus got tangled in the overhead cables by a bucket-truck parked along the road. The woman bus driver had to get out of the bus and work with the bucket truck man to get the cables back working again.

We got home uneventfully. The street with the manhole problem had already been totally repaved and looked beautiful! That's a sign of spring here--getting rid of badly potholed streets after a hard winter.







And Eric brought us a treat!  Sue's favorite See's Candies from California.  Yum.













Now for a post that should have been done last week, but Sue doesn't usually take pictures, so forgot she had these.

Last week on Thursday night, Ken flaked out cold on the couch.  Even today he still doesn't have all his energy back after the flu last month.  








Sue knew there was a Saints-vs.-Volunteers floorball game at the church, so she went over next door to cheer for our Volunteers. The Saints team is made of Russian members. They usually play every Thursday night together. We know there are some Volunteer moms who follow this blog to see photos of their kids.  [We promised Eric not to use the word 'stalker.'] Here they are. 

Elders Zach Franckowiak, Spencer Hansen and McKay Gerratt

It was a hard-fought game, with the score going back and forth-- first the Saints ahead, then the Volunteers ahead. The Volunteers are the white-shirt team.

Elders Scott Jensen, Spencer Hansen and McKay Gerratt

But in the end the Saints won 15-14. We were a little sad, but last time they played, the Volunteers got totally routed, so this was much better.

Volunteers in white shirts:
Back row--Elders Jon Wallace, Scott Jensen, Spencer Hansen.
Front row--Elders McKay Gerratt, Zachary Franckowiak.
Kostya Serebrennikov, counselor in the Mission Presidency is holding the Russia flag. 
Kostya is also the person who goes to pick up packages at the Post Office for us.