Memorial Days

This was a week of Memories--old and new.

First of all, on May 11, The Church News published an article featuring a photo of Elder Uchtdorf visiting with our departing volunteers. We have updated our "Special Addendum" with the article and photo.

Ken, Sue, Rudolf, Sisters Baker & Gregson

 Monday night we made new memories.  The Sisters from Avtovo Ward came for dinner and brought their friend Rudolph.  They thought he was German, but he was actually born in Hungary before WWII and has lived most of his life in Estonia and Russia. We enjoyed getting to know him.

Sister Yegorova and Sister Pettit bring balloons and muffins

Tuesday was a memorial to Sue, and a recognition that she is getting old and older. Several of the young Volunteers gave her cards and well-wishes.  

Sue has a standard card that she prints out to give to each of the Volunteers on their birthdays.  Inside it says Хэрри Бертьдай, which is just Happy Birthday transliterated into Cyrillic characters. And she includes a couple of bite-sized candy bars. So Sisters Bettinger and Berge returned the favor. Their hand-made card is even better, and also included the candy bars.

Sue's Birthday Dinner: Tres Amigos con seis amigos

Tuesday evening (after the cemetery activities below) we went with President and Sister Rawson and Elder and Sister Archibald to Sue's favorite St. Petersburg restaurant -- Tres Amigos.  Pretty good Mexican food, especially for Russia! 

Elder Houston watches, Elder Franckowiak navigates
President Rawson drives!

Tuesday was also a memorable day for President Rawson. It was his first time driving the Mission Van! We have lost our Mission Driver, and so the President and his two Assistants are doing all the driving. The Assistants are not allowed to drive the van because it is a stick shift. We wanted to take eight people to the cemetery procession, so that meant we couldn't fit in the small car that Elder Franckowiak can drive.  President did a fine job--no door scrapes getting out of the basement garage. 



We drove to the Piskarvkoye Memorial Cemetery. We were there last year, and in January, for this same procession. It is in honor of all those who died during the Siege of Leningrad for almost 900 days from September 1941 to January 1944.  

We marched down the red line on the map.  

LDS Church Delegation

What a glorious day!  Spring is here, warm and  beautiful.

We had to put in this photo from last May again. Last year on May 8, we were all bundled up in coats and hats and about froze!






This year our delegation from the Mission and the Stake stood in line with all the other religious groups from around the city. Our Church members had a good time visiting with the Buddhists, Evangelicals, Russian Orthodox, Lutherans and others while we waited for our turn to march.  

We walked past the honor guard around the eternal flame, down the steps past the graves and up to the platform where Mother Russia guards the graves, placing flowers at the memorial wall.

On both sides of the path of the procession are a couple of hundred mass graves from those who died during the Siege.

President and Sister Rawson

We wore the traditional black and orange memorial ribbon.
With Elder Franckowiak, one of the Assistants, 
who goes home in June

And because we were acting in the capacity of official representatives of the Church, we had the privilege of wearing our nametags in public. 

Ken got this photo from live TV--we weren't there. May 9th is Victory Day. It featured parades of millions in the streets of Russia, military reviews and flyovers. Morning is the official military parade. Afternoon is the people's parade, where all the survivors and descendants of the Siege march down Nevsky Prospekt.

On Wednesday and Thursday, instead of watching parades, we had two days of Zone Conferences for the Volunteers, where Sue led the Volunteers in an important exercise: Signing official documents about privacy.

Wednesday Zone Conference

Thursday Zone Conference with Sue giving instructions about all those privacy forms

Signing 16 forms filled out courtesy of
MailMerge and Sister Sue Allen

Everyone signed all 16 pages, and filled in the other information. Sue sat and checked each one when they were done and found only a couple of mistakes. Some people accidentally wrote 2018 for the year their passport was issued! That's obviously not true if they've been here since 2016. We got it all done in the 45 minutes allotted for the process.

Depicting typical Volunteer activity: 
meeting people in the subway

After a lunch of Telepizza and salad (the latter made by Sue with Ranch dressing), we had an afternoon of instruction from the Assistants, Zone Leaders, and Sister Training Leaders. The Assistants did an hilarious skit contrasting what we really do with what people think we are doing. And the afternoon break was highlighted by yummy cinnamon rolls from Sister Rawson.

The sad memory of this week is sending home the Archibalds. They have been our anchor here. They picked us up at the airport when we arrived. They spent two weeks when we first started to train us on our new jobs. They came and stayed for ten days and did our jobs while we were in Utah for Sue's Mom's funeral. They have supported the small church branches in Novgorod and Kaliningrad. We have no other couple coming to replace them--and they are irreplaceable anyway. Losing them leaves a big hole here, but we know the work goes forward. The Lord's work doesn't depend on individuals.

Clockwise from lower left:
President Rawson, Elder Peck, Sister & Elder Archibald,
Ken, Sue, Sister Peck, Sister Rawson

Usually those going home get a farewell dinner at the Mission Home, but Sister Rawson rightfully said she couldn't be in Zone Conference all day and do a dinner party. So we took all eight of us "adults"in the Mission and went to our favorite Azerbaijani restaurant. It's on the Okhta River, just a long block from the Mission Office--but the river is in the way, so we walked the mile around to reach a bridge to get there.   

This restaurant features entrees for two served on a platter above a bowl of hot charcoal. It includes grilled meat and various vegetables. We had lamb with potatoes, eggplant, peppers and mushrooms.  











Friday we did our regular Hermitage service in the afternoon. When we came out about 5 pm the weather was so glorious! People were sitting in Palace Square listening to a singer/guitarist do music that had a 1950's jitterbug beat to our old ears. We don't ever remember a day last summer when the weather was nice enough to do this.

The Hermitage: the General Staff Building opposite the Winter Palace on Palace Square

Now it is Saturday. We opted not to do anything "cultural" today.  During Zone Conference, President Rawson admonished the Volunteers to keep their apartments clean. We are taking that to heart and doing some serious spring cleaning. Ken cleaned the balcony so Sue could sit in the morning sunshine and work on this blog. In the background. Ken's tomato plants bask in the sun. 

Now that he's managed to get the stuck living room windows both open, he could clean the screens and wash them. Sue's next project was to vacuum and mop all the floors. None of it will stay clean very long. We leave the windows open a lot, and the air is quite dusty (Coal?) That's okay.  

We got out and about later and enjoyed the walk to Okhta Mall for groceries. Ken is all out of root beer!

Happy Spring to you all!!