In this past quiet week, we have had time to study the language and and meditate and reflect on the scriptures. Ken finally completed his study in the First Book of Nephi in the Book of Mormon and compiled some notes. He calls this section about chapters 15 through 22 "When Faith Doesn't Precede Miracles." He now shares this link.
He is not the only one who has explored this book in this way. Here is a link to an article that takes another approach. It is called: "Nephi's Masterpiece: The Amazing Structure of First Nephi"
We did manage to capture photos of a few interesting moments in this week.
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| Sisters Allen, Monson, Karlsson. Elders Jorgensen, Jensen S., Herrod, Houston, Franckowiak and Allen |
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| In the back -- Sisters Karlsson, Monson and Sue Seated F-B: Elders Franckowiak, Jensen S., Herrod (He's our newbie) Standing: Elders Jorgensen & Houston |
The District was working together on information on the computer, too.
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| President Rawson and the Transfer Board Elder McOmber on the right, Sister Pettit with blond hair. Not sure who the others are. |
The volunteers from Shuvalovo were also in the building having their District meeting with President Rawson. He was showing some of us the Transfer Board--photos of each volunteer organized by where they live and work.
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| Lobby of Dental Office |
Wednesday morning we went to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned. It had been over a year and we were about due. The international medical clinic also has a dental office, where people speak English. They did a good job. It was like sandblasting our teeth.
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| Elder & Sister Carlile, Ken, Sue, Sister & Elder Peck |
Elder and Sister Peck usually live in Novgorod, but they came to St. Petersburg for two days. Their friends, Jason and Pamela Wilson Carlile from Moscow Church Office were here visiting. Sister Peck and Sister Carlile grew up together in Pocatello, Idaho, and Sister Carlile is also the sister of our Stake President Dow Wilson from home in California. Yes, the Church is again a small world. We met them all for dinner at Mama Roma's on Wednesday evening. That's Elder Peck's favorite restaurant in St. Petersburg, and it's just down the street from our home and office.
On our way walking home from the restaurant, we ran into Elder Jorgensen and the two Assistants on their way to put luggage in the car for the trip to the airport. His flight was just before midnight. We got one last photo. This was about 9 pm--notice the lack of darkness. Sunrise is now before 5 am and sunset after 9 pm. Our nights are officially shorter than eight hours.
Ken now has his tomato and radish plants out of their little starter-cups and into big buckets. He put them on the railing of the balcony where they can get lots of sun. But the apartment management people asked him to take them down for fear of their falling and hitting someone or making a mess. Sue agrees.
Most of the week was slow, but Friday and Saturday got busy! We went to do our Hermitage service on Friday afternoon and found the downtown area getting all decorated in preparation for Victory Day. May 9th is the celebration of the end of the Great Patriotic War. (World War II to Americans.) There is a military parade in the morning and a parade of the survivors and descendants of the 1941-1943 Siege of Leningrad in the afternoon.
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| Palace Square is all cleaned and painted. The big red sign says "Victory Day." |
We watched the workmen putting up the reviewing stand for the dignitaries at the parade.
The parade will go down Nevsky Prospekt, so the street is full of banners.
We wish we could go watch, but we are discouraged from attending large gatherings for safety's sake, and we have Zone Conference that day anyway.
After we left the Hermitage we stopped for dinner at the "Coffee House" because Sister Peck had raved about this dessert they have. The restaurant is on Nevsky Prospekt in the first block southwest of Palace Square, so the menu is in English, too, and the waitresses speak English. It's the most touristy part of the city. We had fettuccine with salmon, a cheese pizza, and this yummy caramel/peanut/chocolate thing that is to-die-for. Sister Peck is right!
Friday night Ken went to the annual meeting of the homeowners association for our building complex. It was held in the chapel of the church building. There are about 400 apartments, but many are rented out and only owners were invited. About a dozen people came. It was all in Russian, so Ken didn't understand much, but they read lots of long legalize, and voted on raising garbage removal prices. Some people complained about all the expensive concierges. Each lobby of the building has someone who sits there all day in an office--just in case. There are eight lobbies, so that's a lot of people sitting all day. 
While Ken was upstairs, Sue stayed down in the office for another three hours working on the project she had started on Thursday. These are her 82 file folders and 20 yellow packets. It's all because of Russian data-privacy laws. At Zone Conference next week, every volunteer has to sign six forms allowing various Church entities to have access their private information. Each form is the same, except that the line with the name of the entity is different. Sue managed to do a mail-merge and pre-populate all the forms with the personal info for each volunteer that has to go at the top--name, citizenship, passport number, issue date, issuing entity and home address. Otherwise it would take the entire day for everyone to do these! We also have to sign two other forms which state that the volunteers will properly handle any private data that they have access to for other individuals--that is, the name/ address/ phone for church members here. And all this has to be done twice by each person. We keep one set of originals here in St. Petersburg and send another set of originals to Moscow Church offices. Those are the brown and green folders--41 of each color. The other part of this is in the yellow packets--one for each companionship. When anyone joins the Church, she/he must also sign forms saying the Church can see their private data. Russia takes all this stuff very seriously! |
| Foyer of the Concert Hall at Finlandskaya Station |
Afterwards a woman asked us in English what we thought of the program. We told her how wonderful it was. Her daughter played one of the young ducklings. She had with her one of the administrators of the theater--a woman who didn't speak English. They asked us if we would be willing to write a short review in English for them, so we did. They are trying to get out more publicity about their theater, and it deserves it!
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| The cast of The Ugly Duckling |
The opening song is sung by about eight townspeople riding in a horse-drawn carriage. There are two "ruffians" up on the back of the carriage. As the people leave, these two manage to pick someone's pocket. Evidently pickpockets are familiar in this culture. In fact, this was our third encounter with real pickpockets this week. On Wednesday, on their way from downtown to meet us for dinner, Elder Carlile lost his wallet to pickpockets on the Number 7 trolley bus. Elder Peck had just reminded him to zip his pouch and watch out. A few minutes later some men jostled him, but he didn't really notice. A few minutes later he got a text message that his credit card had just been used and refused. So he looked in his pouch, and sure enough his wallet was gone! Luckily his passport was attached to his belt inside his pants. That's why we wear them that way!
Then on Friday as we were changing trains to come home from the Hermitage, Sue stepped aboard, grabbed a seat and looked for Ken. There she saw him in the doorway surrounded by about 5 men. We had seen them on the previous metro car we had been riding. We think they picked out Ken and followed us from one train to the next. We are pretty obviously English-speaking Americans. But we know better. Ken's passport was inside his pants, and his wallet was in the inside zipped-up pocket of his zipped-up jacket. He had his hands in his jacket pockets and his pants pockets were empty. When they surrounded him, he pushed out his elbows and pushed them away so make them back off. They stepped back off the train and didn't even come into the car with us. Whew!
While looking at Google Maps to find our way to the play, we noticed around the corner was the "St. Petersburg Museum of Bread." That sounded a little unusual, so after the play was over we went to visit. Another bargain at 150 rubles each. ($2.25) It was most interesting and very well done.There are displays about growing and harvesting grain--what is done in each season in historical times.
There is a cutaway model of a bread factory--from mixing dough at the top to finished loaves at the bottom. There are actual bread-making machines. There is also a display of the amount of bread people were allowed to eat during the Leningrad Siege. Workers were given more than old people and children. It could be as little as 125 grams/day. That's about 2 slices! And there wasn't much else to eat besides that bread. That's why 3% of the siege deaths were from bombing, and 97% were from starvation.
Now for a little side-track: One of the things that has kept us (mostly) happily married for 47.5 years is learning to live with each other's opinions. Sue is a moderate Democrat. Ken is a moderate Republican. That's OK. We agreed to disagree years ago.
But this blog is causing a problem. Mostly Sue writes and then Ken edits. But we have a running debate about spacing after a period. Sue uses two, since she learned it that way in 8th grade typing class with Pica and Elite type. But Ken writes and edits with one space because the font here is Times New Roman, a variable-space font, because his law firm mandates one space in its missives in Times. (Courier spacing would be different.) Single space in Times seems to work well, according to Ken. But we are not alone in this debate. And it doesn't help that this blog messes up formatting, depending upon how wide the viewing page is. Then Ken found a hilarious article in the Washington Post on Saturday morning that clarifies our debate--sort of. [Yes!! It agrees with Sue!!! So says Sue. But Ken, the editor and final arbiter on grammar in the family, disagrees with that conclusion, noting that even the editors of the journal that published the scientific paper deleted all the two-space sentence endings. The conclusions were based on research using fixed-width fonts only without kerning, so the conclusion of "science" is flawed, according to Ken. And Ken gets the last word, at least on this page.] Read this hilarious article.
As we said, we considered this a slow week.
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