The Week of the Post Offices

Elder D. Jensen, Elder Owens

So, now we are many fewer. It does solve one problem. There is not such a line-up to do emails in the office on Mondays. Here are some photos for the Mom lurkers.

Elders Cummings, Houston, Packer

We used to have the triple of Center Sisters who rang our doorbell at 7 am each Monday morning to borrow Sue's laptop so they all could do emails at the same time. Now that we have fewer companionships in Center, they don't have to start so early. But we still have a triple for a couple of weeks. Sue's laptop and iPad were in use on Monday morning for the Assistants--and also Ken's office computer. He stayed home to do some video editing on his Mac.

Elder Packer, Elder Cumming, Igor, Elder Houston,
Elder & Sister Allen

Monday night we had the three Elders come for dinner. They brought a wonderful young man named Igor. After dinner we had a lesson with him, and there was such a strong spirit there. Igor said the opening prayer, and we all felt the spirit in the room change. It was amazing.






Now we begin the saga of the Post Offices.

The way it SHOULD work: 
Letters are addressed to the office, and are put into the mailbox that hangs on the wall outside the office door. This usually works fine.  


Packages are sent to the P.O. Box at the huge main Post Office near St. Isaac's Cathedral. Those sending a package send Sue the tracking number so she can follow the progress online. When the box is there, Ken goes with someone to pick it up.  

The red-circle-hearts are our Post Offices for this week.
We are the blue dot in the center right on the river. Main Post Office is on the far left. 
Distance as the crow flies between those two is 5.8 km or 3.6 miles.
Our trip Saturday afternoon was to the upper right corner. 
Our neighborhood post office and Metro station are in the bottom right corner.

Not so easy this week. So far the packages have come to FOUR(!) different post offices. And none of them were the one next to the Metro stop that we all walk by all the time.

Sister James' box came to the second closest Post Office. She is assigned here in Center, so on Monday, while she was on her way to go grocery shopping at Lenta, she and her companions stopped by and got her box. All is well.



Elder McOmber's box got sent to an "EMS" post office north of us next to the Finlandskaya Train Station. We've learned this week that EMS is the international service that moves mail between countries. The box was addressed to our P.O. Box at the Main Post Office, but for some reason it was left elsewhere. The Assistants and Ken went in the President's car to get that one on Tuesday morning. The traffic was awful, but the trip was a success.  

Elders Cummings, Houston & Packer at the Post Office

Friday night at 9 pm Ken and the three Assistants drove the car to the Main Post Office. We "knew" there were three or four boxes there. Nope. They got just two--one for Elder Owens and one for Elder Thieme.  

Afterwards the Elders were amazed driving back down Nevsky Prospekt at 10:30 pm on a Friday night in the summer. They've never been there at night before, and they couldn't believe all the people.  











It was just barely getting dark, and the streets were very busy.

Elder Houston drives, Elder Cummings rides,
Elder Packer takes pictures

We know that in most missions it is not strange at all for the missionaries to drive, but here it is a brand-new experience. Our granddaughter Megan Mills is currently serving in North Carolina, and she and her companion have a car to drive all the time. Here there is only the President's car. Elder Houston has been driving for a couple of months but generally only with President along on long trips. Elder Cummings and Elder Packer just got their Russian-approved driving papers this week, as Elder Houston goes home next week.

And Ken sits in the back getting chauffeured around the city.

Up through Friday we had packages at three post offices. Saturday we did #4. Elder Bohman's package should have been at the Main Post Office. That's where it was addressed. But it wasn't there. The clerk at the Main Post Office looked it up on her computer and said it was at another random neighborhood post office in another part of the city. Sue got onto the tracking website and found the location. Elder Bohman is serving down south in Avtovo neighborhood, so he could have been sent to pick it up himself, but it would have been about 90 minutes each way on Metro and mini-bus. It was only 15-20 minutes each way for us, so it being our P-Day we hopped on a Marshrutka mini-bus and went and retrieved the package Saturday afternoon. It was pretty easy, although we couldn't understand what the postal clerk was saying. Finally we figured it all out with gestures. Elder Bohman will be in the Office on Wednesday and can pick it up then without having to make an extra trip.

We are still waiting to see where Elder Packer's package "lands."  The tracking says it "Arrived at the Place of Delivery" at the Main Post Office at 1:46 am 26 July. Two minutes later it was "Redirected to Correct Address" and has been bouncing around to two other post offices since then. The Main Post Office is the Correct Address!! Saturday morning it left one sorting center and went to a different one. One day soon it will stay put so we can go pick it up. 

Now we know why previously about a third of the packages sent to our volunteers ended up going back home again--but that was before we learned how to follow tracking numbers. If a package sits in some random post office for a month and no one picks it up, it is sent back to the sender. With tracking numbers we know where they are and when they arrive. Now we get them all!! Big thanks to Kostya Serebrennikov for showing Sue the Russian Pochta online tracking site!

Other than that it has been a quiet week. No new visitors to the Mission Office from the USA. On Tuesday night we went to a library looking for a German conversation group, just for fun, but we didn't find it, so instead we went to an English one instead. They were glad to have us, because of course our English is good, but it's not something we really need. Then we stayed for the Russian conversation class--which was what got us there in the first place. It wasn't so good--way over our heads, so we doubt we'll go back.

We worked a three-hour shift at the Hermitage both Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon. With our small number of volunteers there are not enough in the City to fill all the shifts. We are doing an extra one, and the Pecks, our other senior couple, are doing another extra. After August 29, our next Transfer Day, we should have enough to cover them all.

Saturday is mostly a day of domesticity. It's too hot/muggy (82F and 90%) to be outside much, and the city is too full of tourists to do anything touristy. So, here are the pictures of our home life, too.




Ken's tomatoes are looking good and loving this hot weather that is so hard on the rest of us. He's got more than 25 little green balls!














He tends them carefully each day.











It was Ken's turn to clean the bathroom, which he got done early. Then Sue started on the laundry--which is also in the bathroom. Now that we have a dryer, it can all get done in one day. Hooray!

Three big shopping bags of stuff ready to go down to
the Office. This is the 'view' from the kitchen door
into our front entry hall. Bathroom door is on the right.

She also did the dusting/vacuuming and some cleaning out of cupboards.  She had to get the vacuuming done before the first load of wash finished.  We can only run two appliances at a time or we blow the circuit breaker. No vacuum and dryer at the same time. We have so little storage space in our tiny apartment that Sue decided anything we didn't need could be moved down to storage in the large Office storage closet. We don't need four sets of sheets--two can go downstairs in the "extras" pile for other apartments. We had a pile of books that are standard to be kept in each volunteer apartment in case they are needed for teaching. But we generally don't teach, and we have access in the Office storage room to all these books if we ever do need one. So, down they went, too. We are living the old adage: Simplify your life.

Then it was time for grocery shopping. Lenta really is a wonderful store, and we love the great fruits and vegetables available here from all over the world. Each sign over a bin gives the country of origin and its flag.

Here are apples of various kinds from (L-R) South Africa, Serbia, Chile, Chile & Russia

Peaches from Serbia, Plums from Turkey
and oranges from Macedonia

When you buy any fruit or vegetable you take it to the weighing station. Each item has a number on the sign with the price and country. Bananas are always #1. This melon was #204. You touch the number on the screen, and it shows a picture of the item so those of us who read poorly know that we got the right one. Then you touch that picture and it prints out the price label. For the melon Sue could just stick it on the skin. For a bag of peaches or tomatoes, it goes on the bag. The cash register scans the sticker and knows the price. Great system!





After getting the groceries we went across the mall hallway to drop of Ken's suits at the dry cleaners. Sue signed the usual receipt form saying they had two suits. But this week she was handed an extra form. It was permission to process her private information! The Church is not the only entity dealing with all these new privacy laws. (For more on this see our May 12 post "Memorial Days.")



While Ken deals with post offices, Sue answers questions. He calls her "Sister Siri." The young volunteers do not have smart phones, so Sue is their information source. Here's a sample from this week:

Q:  What is the nearest metro stop to Nevsky Prospekt 46. We're meeting someone there for lunch at Teremok.  (Yummy blini fast food)
A:  Gostiny Dvor. Come out, turn right, go kitty-corner across the intersection using the underpasses.

Q:  Are there any tickets left for Cinderella ballet tonight?
A:  Only two, at 7500 rubles ($119) each. (If there are empty seats 45 minutes before the show, they are sold for 200 rubles ($3.17) each. Volunteers like to do that, but they are scarce in the summer.)

Q:  How many free bags do I get on my flight to the US this week?
A:  Just one for check in, and one carry-on. (This was asked by a Russian friend going to the USA on vacation.)

Q:  How much are the tickets for the Opening Game of the Zenit season? (Zenit is the pro soccer team.)
A:  300 to 6,000 rubles. But check with President. I'm not sure that soccer games are on the approved list of "cultural events."

Q:  We have a friend who is moving to Kamchatka. Is there a branch of the LDS Church there?
A:  Nope, sorry. The nearest one as the crow flies is probably somewhere in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska! Nearest one in Russia is thousands of kilometers south in Vladivostok. Kamchatka is really remote, even more remote than for the people in Murmansk who attend Church here in St. Petersburg via Skype!