Comings and Goings

First, the weather report.  May was absolutely glorious.  It never rained one day.  Temperature was in the mid-70's every day.  The sun shone.  We felt like we were back in California!  

Now it's June and we're back to "St. Petersburg Summer."  Temperature in the high 50's.  Rain on and off every day.  But the sun hardly goes down.  Sunrise today was 3:39 am and sunset will be at 10:17 pm.  It doesn't get totally dark at all -- just dusky when the sun slips barely below the horizon.  The St. Petersburg White Nights are back.  Sue sleeps with the airline-supplied eye mask under her pillow.  When she wakes up at 4 or 5 am and the sun is shining through the dark heavy curtains she can slip the mask over her eyes and go back to sleep.

Monday night we had our usual Dinner, but this week it grew.  And got slid to Tuesday night.  It was Elder Scott Jensen's last night with us. He went home on Thursday morning.  And his companion, Elder Herrod was being transferred to Veliky Novgorod, three hours away.  They wanted to take the opportunity to introduce some of the people they are teaching to Elder Wallace who is moving into their apartment.  So we said, "Sure!  Bring them all!!"

Front:  Sergei, Elder Scott Jensen, Elder Niles Herrod

Rear:  Ken & Sue, Ivan, Elder Jonathan Wallace, 

Elder Pierce Wilson, Pavel

Elder Jensen brought an interesting lesson.  It started with a cup of flour turned out onto a plate.







He then placed an M&M on the top of the flour, and people took turns cutting away the flour with a knife.  The person who made the flour stack fall had to then pick up the M&M with his teeth.  Elder Herrod got the "privilege. " Of course his face got covered in flour.  But he was given a napkin to clean it off.  Now read Isaiah 1:18:  No matter how messy our sins, Christ (the napkin) can clean them off for us!








It's 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning and we are on our way to Estonia!  Hard to believe, but it's already been three months since the last trip.  This time they decided to put all 13 of us in one mini-bus together.  (The mission is getting smaller.)  We were supposed to be 15, but no one told Elder and Sister Peck that they were supposed to come.  We didn't realize it until we were getting on the bus and found that we had their second passports.  We didn't want to call and wake them at 5 am and tell them they had five minutes to be dressed and downstairs, so we left them. They had to go by themselves the next day.  If we had known we would be driving past our building (pictured here) an hour later after picking up some Elders who slept in, we could have taken them this trip.  Senior couples arrive in the mission at times different from the young volunteers, so sometimes it takes a couple of cycles to get them on the same visa trip dates.  We thought they weren't going until July.

All lined up safely across the border in Narva, Estonia
Sue, Elders Christian Packer, Evan Thieme, Ian McOmber, Conrad Cummings, Logan Despain
Griffin Houston, Sisters Ariana Monson, Jenelle McColm, Nicole Pettit, Gabrielle Baker
Kirsten Berge & Ken.
Elder Despain looks funny, because that's where Ken handed off the camera to Sue so
that we could both be in the photo!  Sorry about that.

It was a glorious day.  This is the view from the Russian side of the river across to Estonia.

We arrived back at the Mission Office about 1pm in time for lunch and then Transfer Meeting at 2 pm.  The Elders in Kaliningrad are not being transferred, but Elder Meek needed to make a visa trip.  Rather than flying him 1.5 hours each way (plus airport time) to St. Petersburg so he could drive 2.5 hours each way to Estonia, the Mission had someone from the Kaliningrad Ward drive him just 1 hour to Poland.  Much more efficient, and it all seemed to go well.




Things are gearing up for World Cup!  There are flowers planted everywhere--even in the "drunk park" as we call this area with benches near our home.  

In general its visitors are middle-aged men with nothing else to do than to drink and smoke, sadly.  Last summer it didn't get flowers.  Notice that Sue is wearing her "summer coat."  
















And everything else is looking ready, too.  Here's what Ken bought for snacks this week.