ALIENS in Russia

It's a matter of international note: We are aliens in Russia. Sister Allen helped prepare for a visa trip for October. To Helsinki. For three days. Just one more bridge to cross. Will the way be blocked? Check next week.

Twelve volunteers are scheduled for a visa trip to Estonia on October 10. Last week eight of their second passports came back with a big black stamp saying their visas have been denied. Why??? No idea. This happened in Samara Mission about six months ago. Fixing the problem takes two steps:

1.  They must leave the country by October 12. So, the plan is to go to Helsinki, give up their current passports (which have no Denied stamp) for three days--time enough to get a new visa in that passport, and then come back to Russia. 

This is a problem and a blessing. Those eight, plus one other companion, plus us two "have to go" spend three days in Helsinki, mostly at the LDS temple there. We are not feeling too badly about it, and the young volunteers are very excited. We got to go to the Helsinki Temple last December, and were going again in November. The young-uns never get to go, usually. Those going (for the parent lurkers) are Sisters Bettinger, Alder & Nestripke, and Elders Bohman, Brown, Fife, Mortensen, Jensen, & Woodruff.  Elder Fife didn't get a denied stamp, but his companion is going, so he gets to go, too.

2.  Those with the denied stamp can't ever get new visas using those passports. So Sue spent most of two days doing new passport applications for the five Elders. Their old passports are declared "damaged" and are sent to Moscow with a bunch of paperwork so they can be replaced. I guess those parents know about that because Sue had to email all of them. The new applications want parents names, birthdates and place of birth. We don't have that information on file. These new passports will be used to request visas for the next trip in January. The three sisters don't need to deal with this because they go home in November!  

It's been a little crazy figuring this all out! But now it should be set. Except the Assistants have been working with President Rawson to figure out what everyone else is going to do during those three days we are all gone. There are six new volunteers coming in and just two Sisters going home. Some of the companions for those newbies may be on the visa trip. Many people will have temporary companions for a couple of days and have to hang around St. Petersburg. But it will all work out. We'll write all those adventures on the trip home on the train from Helsinki on October 12. It's a high-speed train (140 mph) that does the trip in 3.5 hours and it has WiFi.

NASA! In St. Petersburg?   

Strange sight in our neighborhood. This minivan is usually parked on the street by our building. Why??

International cuisine - 
French dogs from a Finnish convenience store, 
chili con carne,
flowers from somewhere in the Stans

We try to go for a walk each evening after sitting in the office all day. In the summer when it was light so late we went after dinner. Now we go earlier. We were walking along the river past the Neste gas station & convenience store. It's a Finnish company.  We were hungry. So we stopped and bought two French Dogs to go with the left-over chili for dinner. Our "international cuisine" dinner.  

Wednesday Zone/Mission Conference!  

This was Zone Conference Week, but since the mission is still small we are only one Zone. It's good to get everyone together for all day Wednesday.

Sue likes to knit, and Sister Alder came by one day last week and wanted help to make a hat, so Sue got her started. By Wednesday Zone Conference it was almost finished. As is Sue's shawl.

The Nevsky Troika  (and Elder Mortensen)

Mission Conference lunch--Mexican Taco Time

There is another Mexican restaurant in Shuvalovo area that the Elders there like to frequent. Elder McOmber asked if they did catering or delivery, and they said yes! So they came and brought meats and beans and rice and salsa and corn tortillas! It was so good! Just like being back in California. Sue asked him what his source was for corn tortillas in St. Petersburg. Big flour ones are easy to find, but we haven't found small corn ones yet. He said he makes them himself. After it was all over and Ken was paying the bill (his job as Financial Secretary), Ken asked him for a few extra tortillas for Sue. But she gave them to Sister Bettinger who is gluten intolerant and needed them worse. 

Mission Conference lunch break

These two photos are for Elder Woodruff's parents. They share our September 8th wedding anniversary! Sue found that out when she emailed them for their birth dates and places on Monday. They said they read our blog, so she promised them a photo from Zone Conference. Sue and Elder Woodruff were posing and Ken said we looked too stiff and formal, so then we weren't.  

But we decided we needed a photo of the food, too. Elder Woodruff is holding the jar of Salsa--Uncle Ben's brand. It's pretty good, especially for being in Russia! We had 36 people and used 1.5 of these jars. 









Most of Zone Conference is much more serious, of course. This time Stake President Boris Leostrin came and talked to us about how we can better interface with the Ward and Branch leaders and Russian members. Then Kostya Serebrennikov, Second Counselor to President Rawson, talked to us about learning Russian better. He speaks great English, which he learned when he was a missionary in St. Petersburg 15 years ago!

President and Sister Rawson both spoke, of course. And the Assistants did some training, and the Zone/Mission Leaders, and the Sister Training Leaders--below are Sister Gregson and Sister Pemberton.  

But Sue didn't hear their talk because she was downstairs getting ready for the afternoon snack break. This time it was banana splits!

The MTC Group
Elder Baptista (Portugal/Germany), Elder Sherwood (USA)
Sister Anania-Matafai (New Zealand) & Sister James (USA)

After the conference was over, this group wanted a photo. They were all in the Provo MTC together, but didn't get an arrival photo together because Sister James had visa issues and arrived three days late.

English Conversation Group at the Fontanka 46 Library

14 Sept 6:30 pm

Elder Packer and Elder Cummings with the library poster

After successfully doing this talk at a different library in early August, the Assistants wanted to do it again. There is a regular Friday evening English conversation group here.

They have a presentation that Sue made with different things about Utah, and then they stop between some of the slides and have the small groups talk among themselves. It was a lot of fun, and the attendees seemed to enjoy it.

Stake Conference! 

On Saturday, four General Authorities including Apostle Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught a Leadership Seminar in a live feed via closed circuit from Moscow.

It was a four-hour-long meeting, so there was a break in the middle for pizza.  

President Rawson had flown to Kaliningrad on Friday night, and then found out that the leadership meeting could not be broadcast there. So Sue took prolific notes--16 pages worth! But it's easy when everything has to be translated side-by-side. The talks are much slower and Sue could type the English while the Russian translation was being spoken aloud.  

We had a minor miracle. When the group stopped for the pizza lunch, Sue ran home to put in another load of wash. [We were missing our usual Saturday off.] When she was walking back across the driveway to the church she happened to run into the three Center Sisters going to their Hermitage service. But Sister Kosmynina mentioned that Sister Bettinger was not feeling well. Sue said, "Why doesn't she stay here with me?" So she did. It was better for her to sit quietly in the chapel than to have to stand for three long hours and travel on the bus, etc., for two hours. And then in the meeting after the break, there was a discussion session with the other people in Moscow in the same meeting asking questions in Russian, for which Sue had no translation. So it was good that Sister Bettinger was sitting there and could translate for Sue! After the meeting, we all came back to our apartment, and Sister Betting just flaked out on the couch and slept for a couple of hours until her companions came back. It worked out well for all of us. The miracle was that we are both only in that driveway for 30 seconds or so. The timing was just right. The Lord knew that Sister Bettinger needed to sleep, and that Sue needed a translator.

After the meeting with Moscow was over, Elder Kearon and his wife flew from Moscow so they could be in St.Petersburg in person to speak at our evening session of Stake Conference! That's another miracle--modern communication and transportation.  

There will be another conference session on Sunday morning, but that's next week in "blog-time."