We have described bits and pieces of our home and workplace in St. Petersburg, but we have never put it all together and shown a map.
We live and work in St. Petersburg, on the east bank of the Neva River in the Malo-okhtinskiy district {malo=little}, a small peninsula between the Okhta River (Охта) and the Neva River (Нева) between the Peter-The-Great Bridge and the Nevsky Bridge. Just north of the Peter Bridge on the east side of the Neva is the site of the fort the Swedes built when they ruled the region, just south of that bridge is the original (1723) naval instruments factory. We call it the temple site, because it is a big empty lot. There are a couple of colleges and old factories along the river. The district east of the Okhta River is called Okhtinskiy. On the northwest corner of this map is Smolny Cathedral. Our subway stop (Novocherkasskaya) is toward the southeast corner of the map. At the southwest corner of the map is Alexander Nevsky Square, Nevsky cathedral, a convent and the cemetery where Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dostoevsky and other famous Russian are buried.
To the west about 5 km and around a big bend in the river (off the map to the northwest) is The Hermitage and the traditional capital of Russia, dating from the 17th and 18th Centuries. To the east, across the Okhta River in the photo below is the new Okhta Mall--the blue building just beyond the high rise in the foreground is just beyond the mall. That is where we shop. The walk there must be via one of the bridges across the Okhta--about 1.6 km.
(Ken took this picture from the eleventh story of our building during a spectacular thunderstorm on Sunday.)
As said, the building is near the Neva River. In between there is a row of buildings, an Avenue and an Embankment expressway along the Neva River. This is a view from the windows of the church building.
News of the Week
Following Saturday's sessions (reported last week), Sunday morning was the final Stake Conference session, with visitors from Moscow and from the US: Elder Aleksey Samaykin, an Area Authority Seventy and Counselor in the Area Presidency from Moscow; Elder Patrick Kearon, a General Authority, one of the Seven Presidents in the First Quorum of Seventy. They are shown here just before Stake President Boris Leostrin begins the Sunday Morning Session of Conference.
Elder Kearon is English. His wife is Jennifer Hulme Kearon, who is from Saratoga, California, near our Palo Alto home. She is sister of our friend Diana Hulme Peterson, and her parents went on a trip to Israel with Sue's Mom in 1976. (The Church is a dorf!)
Some 500 members and visitors filled the chapel and overflow, as seen here below just after the session ended. In addition, the session was carried live over the Church video conferencing network to several remote locations, all in Russian of course. The English speakers were accompanied by side-by-side translators at the podium. We Russian-language-challenged English speakers used personal wireless receivers to listen to simultaneous translations of the Russian speakers. Ken set up and operated the main video and audio feeds and the remotely controlled camera. Sue set up a separate video and audio feed for our members at home in Murmansk. Reports were that everything worked as intended. (Oh, the wonders of technology!)
Afterwards there was a lunch in the Mission Office for the visiting authorities, as well as the Stake Presidency and their families. President Rawson was not around because he was visiting the Branch in Kaliningrad with Elder Dieter Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Here Sister Kearon pours apple juice and Elder Kearon cleans up after helping in the kitchen.
Monday Night Home Evening
We were glad to have Sisters Gregson and Pemberton come for dinner on Monday night and bring their friend Svetlana. We had a good visit!
President and Sister Rawson came and joined our District Meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Ken calls us a "Sistrict" because we are six Sisters and only three Elders. That's backwards from most places.
On Wednesday morning the office got a phone call from the US Embassy in Moscow. The passport applications Sue did last week for the five Elders with visa-problem-denied stamps had all been done on the wrong form. She used a DS-11. They wanted DS-82. So she did them all over and then had to scramble to get signatures from the far-flung Elders. But it happened, and all is well.
We also heard back from the Helsinki Temple and they can accommodate our group on Oct 10-12. We are excited!
Game Night at The Institute Building on Fontanka Embankment
Our District sponsored a wildly successful Game Night at the Institute Building. The week before the two Assistants/Elders had given the English-language lecture about Utah at the library just up the street from the Institute Building, and they invited that crowd to come. A few of them did, and a whole lot of other people, too. We had about 40 people there!
Sue had made up the first game. It was a 25-square grid and each square had a statement that could be true or false about anyone. The trick is to get a different person to write their name in each square for something that is true about them. Sue could sign the squares that said "I am a parent" or "I have been to Paris." Ken could sign the squares that said "I am left handed" or "I speak a language other than English or Russian." But Sue also got a little Russian lesson out of this. One of the hard things about Russian is all the different endings on words. She used Yandex Translate (like Google, but better for Russian), and then had our Russian Sister Kocmynina proof-read that. But in doing the typing she missed one. The square said "Есть собакой" instead of "Есть собака." The first one means "I am a dog." The second one means "I have a dog." Oops.
After the games we had refreshments--fruit, soda, chips, and Sue's chocolate chip cookies. She brought 3 dozen, and they were gone almost instantly. Ken also contributed black licorice from Prizma of Finland.
President and Sister Rawson came, too. Elder Cummings has been wanting to challenge President to a game of Foosball and finally had the chance.
Elder Cummings won.
St. Michael's Castle/Russian Museum
For our Preparation Day outing today we finally made it to St. Michael's Castle. It's also known as the Mikhailovskiy Palace and the Engineer's Castle. It was commissioned to be built by Tsar Paul I in 1799. He and his family moved into the palace in 1801. They lived there for 40 days, and then Tsar Paul I was assassinated in his bed by some of the government leaders who didn't like his anti-corruption reforms. The family abandoned the new home and moved back to the Winter Palace.
In 1832 the castle became the Army Engineering School for almost 100 years. Then it became part of the Russian Museum. In just the last 15 years, a few of the rooms have been restored to their former glory, including the main grand staircase.
And this is one of the public rooms in the palace for the Tsar to greet guests. Sue liked the chandelier.
There was a special exhibition of the work of Konashevich. He was a painter and illustrator of children's books during Soviet times. He also did lots of water colors and interesting portraits.
We live and work in St. Petersburg, on the east bank of the Neva River in the Malo-okhtinskiy district {malo=little}, a small peninsula between the Okhta River (Охта) and the Neva River (Нева) between the Peter-The-Great Bridge and the Nevsky Bridge. Just north of the Peter Bridge on the east side of the Neva is the site of the fort the Swedes built when they ruled the region, just south of that bridge is the original (1723) naval instruments factory. We call it the temple site, because it is a big empty lot. There are a couple of colleges and old factories along the river. The district east of the Okhta River is called Okhtinskiy. On the northwest corner of this map is Smolny Cathedral. Our subway stop (Novocherkasskaya) is toward the southeast corner of the map. At the southwest corner of the map is Alexander Nevsky Square, Nevsky cathedral, a convent and the cemetery where Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dostoevsky and other famous Russian are buried.
To the west about 5 km and around a big bend in the river (off the map to the northwest) is The Hermitage and the traditional capital of Russia, dating from the 17th and 18th Centuries. To the east, across the Okhta River in the photo below is the new Okhta Mall--the blue building just beyond the high rise in the foreground is just beyond the mall. That is where we shop. The walk there must be via one of the bridges across the Okhta--about 1.6 km.
(Ken took this picture from the eleventh story of our building during a spectacular thunderstorm on Sunday.)
This is a photo of the Mission Office/Church Business Office/Stake Center. It is kind of hard to find. On the outside, it is quite unassuming: Stucco over brick, painted gray and severely weather-beaten. It is behind other tall buildings. There is no steeple and no outward signage that it is a place of worship. (The pillar you see is a smokestack on a neighboring utility building.) However, the interior was beautifully and robustly built out in 2004.
The Mission Office entrance is on the short far side in a passageway, which is also one of the entrances to the regional Church Business Office. On the visible right side (in the photo) is an awning-covered entrance to the Stake Center and also to the Church Business Office. Entrance is controlled remotely by electronically locked doors. The chapel is on the third floor on the far side, and the overflow/gymnasium is in the middle with a stage on the near side. The second floor has classrooms and offices for two wards and the stake leadership. The cloak rooms are on the first floor. Parking is in the basement and under the plaza in front of the Stake Center entrance. The entrance to the garage is under the far side of the plaza. As many people have learned by side-swiping the pillars and corners, entrance to the garage is tricky.
It takes awhile to decipher the street address of the Mission Office. The location consists of several buildings labeled as one building address. The complex "16/1" consists of about 400 different units, including ground floor businesses and a range of upper floor condominiums, some up to 13 stories high, such as the one seen in the background of the photo above. That is our home building. We are on the second floor with two windows facing east (to the left).
Above is the address sign for the Church. The address of the Mission Office/Church Business Office/Stake Center requires a little decoding. Here it is in English script and translation:
prospect (Avenue)
MALOOKHTINSKIY (Little Okhtinskiy)
16
korpus 1 (Building 1)
pom. {pomeshchenia} (Quarters) 11N, 12N
Note that Russian "11Н, 12Н" is really English "11N, 12N" --and as explained to me by our Russian brethren, both versions are recognized by the post office when a letter is addressed in English to the building.
It is frequently rendered in shortened form, quite understandably, in mixed Russian/English script:
Malookhtinskiy Pr. 16/1-11H, 12H
News of the Week
Following Saturday's sessions (reported last week), Sunday morning was the final Stake Conference session, with visitors from Moscow and from the US: Elder Aleksey Samaykin, an Area Authority Seventy and Counselor in the Area Presidency from Moscow; Elder Patrick Kearon, a General Authority, one of the Seven Presidents in the First Quorum of Seventy. They are shown here just before Stake President Boris Leostrin begins the Sunday Morning Session of Conference.
Some 500 members and visitors filled the chapel and overflow, as seen here below just after the session ended. In addition, the session was carried live over the Church video conferencing network to several remote locations, all in Russian of course. The English speakers were accompanied by side-by-side translators at the podium. We Russian-language-challenged English speakers used personal wireless receivers to listen to simultaneous translations of the Russian speakers. Ken set up and operated the main video and audio feeds and the remotely controlled camera. Sue set up a separate video and audio feed for our members at home in Murmansk. Reports were that everything worked as intended. (Oh, the wonders of technology!)
Afterwards there was a lunch in the Mission Office for the visiting authorities, as well as the Stake Presidency and their families. President Rawson was not around because he was visiting the Branch in Kaliningrad with Elder Dieter Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Here Sister Kearon pours apple juice and Elder Kearon cleans up after helping in the kitchen.
Monday Night Home Evening
 |
| Sisters Gregson & Pemberton, Svetlana, the Allens |
We were glad to have Sisters Gregson and Pemberton come for dinner on Monday night and bring their friend Svetlana. We had a good visit!
"Sistrict" Meeting
 |
| Pres. & Sister Rawson, Sisters James, Bettinger, Kosmynina, Pemberton & Gregson Elders Cummings and Packer, the Allens |
President and Sister Rawson came and joined our District Meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Ken calls us a "Sistrict" because we are six Sisters and only three Elders. That's backwards from most places.
On Wednesday morning the office got a phone call from the US Embassy in Moscow. The passport applications Sue did last week for the five Elders with visa-problem-denied stamps had all been done on the wrong form. She used a DS-11. They wanted DS-82. So she did them all over and then had to scramble to get signatures from the far-flung Elders. But it happened, and all is well.
We also heard back from the Helsinki Temple and they can accommodate our group on Oct 10-12. We are excited!
Game Night at The Institute Building on Fontanka Embankment
Our District sponsored a wildly successful Game Night at the Institute Building. The week before the two Assistants/Elders had given the English-language lecture about Utah at the library just up the street from the Institute Building, and they invited that crowd to come. A few of them did, and a whole lot of other people, too. We had about 40 people there!
 |
| Elder Cummings explains the "Ice Breaker" game rules in Russian while Sue looks on. |
After the games we had refreshments--fruit, soda, chips, and Sue's chocolate chip cookies. She brought 3 dozen, and they were gone almost instantly. Ken also contributed black licorice from Prizma of Finland.
President and Sister Rawson came, too. Elder Cummings has been wanting to challenge President to a game of Foosball and finally had the chance.
Elder Cummings won.
St. Michael's Castle/Russian Museum
For our Preparation Day outing today we finally made it to St. Michael's Castle. It's also known as the Mikhailovskiy Palace and the Engineer's Castle. It was commissioned to be built by Tsar Paul I in 1799. He and his family moved into the palace in 1801. They lived there for 40 days, and then Tsar Paul I was assassinated in his bed by some of the government leaders who didn't like his anti-corruption reforms. The family abandoned the new home and moved back to the Winter Palace.
In 1832 the castle became the Army Engineering School for almost 100 years. Then it became part of the Russian Museum. In just the last 15 years, a few of the rooms have been restored to their former glory, including the main grand staircase.
And this is one of the public rooms in the palace for the Tsar to greet guests. Sue liked the chandelier.
There was a special exhibition of the work of Konashevich. He was a painter and illustrator of children's books during Soviet times. He also did lots of water colors and interesting portraits.
Service Project at The Hermitage
Now and then the Hermitage Volunteer Office asks us to provide help for special occasions. Today, September 22, was a "Festival" in the General Staff Building called Discover Your Europe. Most of the countries of Europe had displays about their history and heritage and things they do in St. Petersburg.
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| Vera, the Hermitage Volunteers coordinator, Sisters Anania-Matafia, Nestripke, Gregson, Pemberton |
We were asked to provide volunteers in the morning to help with set-up, and with Russian-speaking volunteers during the exhibition from 11 am to 6 pm.
Then they requested a few more young men to help with taking down the exhibition in the evening.
As we left the Hermitage a little before 7 pm to head home, Ken couldn't help taking some photos of the sunset. St. Petersburg has the most wonderful clouds!
Sunday 23 September is the Autumnal Equinox--first day of Fall. Boo Hoo! But the day with even day/night of 12 hours each is not until Tuesday: 6:49 a.m. and p.m. Why?? Sue [aka Sister Siri] had to look it up. It's because we count sunrise when the sun first peeks over the horizon, and we count sundown as when the last of the sun disappears over the horizon. That makes the day a little longer than it would be if we counted both sunrise and sunset from the middle of the sun coming up or going down. That's OK--now that the days will get shorter and shorter in a hurry, we'll count all the daytime we can get. The days get shorter by five or six minutes every day. At home in Palo Alto the days only get shorter by about two minutes/day. That's why the summer days are longer here and the winter days are shorter. And they will get really short!
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| Elder Meek (front) and Elder Packer take down and stack chairs. Which Section of the Doctrine & Covenants says that it is the duties of Elders to set up chairs and help people move? It must be there someplace... . |
Then they requested a few more young men to help with taking down the exhibition in the evening.
As we left the Hermitage a little before 7 pm to head home, Ken couldn't help taking some photos of the sunset. St. Petersburg has the most wonderful clouds!
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| Palace Square heading home from The Hermitage |
Sunday 23 September is the Autumnal Equinox--first day of Fall. Boo Hoo! But the day with even day/night of 12 hours each is not until Tuesday: 6:49 a.m. and p.m. Why?? Sue [aka Sister Siri] had to look it up. It's because we count sunrise when the sun first peeks over the horizon, and we count sundown as when the last of the sun disappears over the horizon. That makes the day a little longer than it would be if we counted both sunrise and sunset from the middle of the sun coming up or going down. That's OK--now that the days will get shorter and shorter in a hurry, we'll count all the daytime we can get. The days get shorter by five or six minutes every day. At home in Palo Alto the days only get shorter by about two minutes/day. That's why the summer days are longer here and the winter days are shorter. And they will get really short!
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