48 Years

When we were young and skinny and
had dark hair!

Today, September 8, 2018, is our 48th Wedding Anniversary. It seems like we got married just a couple of years ago--but then we have these 30+ and 40+ year-old children who just graduated from high school a couple of years ago, didn't they? -- But one of them has a daughter on a mission. So, time flies when you are having fun!

Ken bought Sue beautiful roses and a balloon.
Orange is her favorite color!

And we are having fun. We are loving each other, and loving being in Russia and having this opportunity to serve and support this The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this amazing country.

It hasn't always been fun. We've had our share of problems and trials, as does any family. But we've always had faith and hope, so we've slogged through with help from the Lord and a lot of good friends and family. And life still isn't perfect, but the good outweighs the bad, which is all we can ask during this mortal existence.  

Now back to the Mission.....

Elders Packer & Cumings, Nikita, Sue, Ken

We had Monday night dinner, as usual. This week was with the Assistants and Nikita.  He recently moved here from Latvia and is coming back to the Church he left for a few years. A nice man, and we were glad to have him in our home. After dinner the Assistants taught him a good lesson about how the true Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored in these days through modern, living prophets. 





Tuesday afternoon is usually District Meeting, but it got bumped to Wednesday at 4 pm--not sure why. We have started calling us the "Sistrict" because we are six (6!) Sisters and only three Elders.

The Sentral Sistrict Birthday Bash
L-R:  Elder Cummings, Sister Pemberton, Elder Packer
Sisters Kosmynina, Bettinger, Gregson, Sue, James

Usually treats are a no-no for District meetings. They are supposed to be quick business/training meetings, not food fests. But this week, Wednesday Sept 5, was Sister Lily Gregson's birthday. So, after District meeting was over, we moved to the kitchen for a few minutes for ice cream [brought by Sue] and no-bake oatmeal cookies [brought by the Assistants.] And we sang, of course. She felt properly celebrated!





Friday afternoon Ken got to go on a "special" outing. The Assistants had to go pick up the car from the body shop. Our underground parking garage has narrow spaces, tight corners, and big pillars everywhere. Unfortunately one time the car and a pillar got too close together... . Ken went along for the pick-up to pay the bill with the mission credit card, and so they could also do package pick up. We have no idea why they send some of our packages to random outlying post offices. But Sister Anania-Matafai's package was sent about 5 km north of us, and it weighed about 17 lbs. That's more than we wanted to drag home on the bus with a two-block walk on each end. Now it is safely in the office waiting for her. Thank goodness for tracking numbers!!! Without that we never would have known where the box was.

That's about all the news for the week! President and Sister Rawson are in Moscow all week with all the Mission Presidents for the Europe East Area. So there was no Thursday afternoon Office Staff Meeting. Since the Mission "grew" by five more people on Aug 27, we are no longer doing two shifts/week at the Hermitage. Wednesday morning got dropped for us, and we traded away our usual Friday afternoon for Saturday afternoon because the usual Saturday afternoon Sisters had a conflict.

Saturday, our anniversary, was full of activities. Saturday morning Ken arose at 6:20am, early enough to play floorball with the Sistrict. He was goalie. The opposition scored once on several dozen shots on goal. Final score was something like 10 to 1... . Then it was time for housecleaning and laundry. Sue's week to dust, vacuum, mop. Ken's week to clean the bathroom.




After that we took off for the Hermitage. Ken decided to do a selfie. The place wasn't a zoo--we did have a couple of 30-second breaks where no one was in line! Summer is over.

At 4:30 we left the Hermitage and walked about 15 minutes south to the Main Post Office. Sue was working on her grocery list while Ken waited in line. They have a great system here for lines. I think we've talked about it before. There are a bunch of people standing around randomly. You say, "Kto Последный?" That means "Who's last?" One woman raised her hand, so we knew we were after her. A couple of minutes later another man walked into the mass and said the same thing. Sue raised her hand, and then he knew he came after us. It all works very well. No little paper numbers dropping all over the floor. No standing in long lines. You can sit wherever and wait. We got two packages--for Elder Owens and Elder Mortensen. They will be here for Mission/Zion Conference next Wednesday, so they can pick them up then.

We caught the #22 bus near the Post Office. It takes us almost all the way home. It stops by the "temple lot" [not really] and we walk home the last 1/2 km. We only went home long enough to pick up our grocery cart and some bags and head out again. Our feet hurt, so we took the mini-bus over to Okhta Mall.

Before grocery shopping we had our Anniversary Dinner at Steak Davai-- Стейк Давай. It means "Let's have Steak" roughly. We had salad and steak and vegetable, etc. It was yummy, but Ken forgot to take a picture.  







Then it was around the basement superstore for the usuals--cereals, produce, ground beef, milk, pasta, bread, tortillas, etc. If it weren't for the fact that many, but not all, of the food labels are in Russian, you'd think you were in any big supermarket in the US. Today we saw a whole display of jars labeled "Chocolate Hazelnet Spread." In English.  It's generic Nutella.










Finally that part was done and it got all packed into our cart for the trip home. We took the mini-bus again, and walked the final 1/2 km home. When we came outside there was thunder and lightning. It looked really pretty! But we were glad to get home before the rains started.









Ken told Sue he was going to the bank on Thursday, and while he was out he bought Sue the beautiful flowers. Sue never did get to go shopping without him, so she told him to buy chips and root beer while we were at the store.  He skipped the root beer, because we already had some at home, but he did splurge on the chips. Happy Anniversary!