First of all, this is the last of our Saturday postings. Next Saturday we will come home from Finland at close to midnight. In the past, most of our interesting activities happen on Saturday, so we stayed up late to get the blog written. We've decided to delay posting all future blogs by one day. Our Sunday afternoons are typically quiet, so writing the blog will give Sue something to do after she's finished with the NY Times Sunday crossword. [She's been a daily crossword addict since high school.] Sorry, Mom lurkers. You'll have to wait until Sunday morning, USA time zones, to see the photos of your volunteers.
To conform to Russian personal privacy laws we can only keep on file records of those who have signed the Privacy Agreement with the church. Most of the records are kept in a vault in Moscow. Sothis is the box with photocopies of the baptism records for all those baptized in St. Petersburg Russia since 1999. We are sending them to Moscow. They will match with originals to make sure they have all the information and then shred these. We do go back occasionally to look up people, so it will be a nuisance to have to ask someone in Moscow to do it instead, but that's life in our new everything-is-online world. Russian members' information will not be available in the LDS Church on-line systems of LDS Tools and LCR after December 1. Only the Bishop will have access, consisting of one printed copy of the total ward list, and he is very restricted in who he can give it to. We know Europe has also recently enacted more stringent personal privacy laws. More countries are sure to follow.
It is spectacular. It's the fourth largest cathedral in Europe. St. Petersburg has done an amazing job with the restoration. During Soviet times it was the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. All religious things were removed. A Foucault pendulum was installed at the top of the very high dome.
We were there in the winter, and almost at closing time, so Ken got a photo of the almost-empty church. In the summer it is wall-to-wall tourists. One small sanctuary to the left of the main altar is reserved for actual worship. The main church is used for services only on special religious holidays.
The front wall of the inner sanctuary has six malachite columns, and two in the center which are blue lazurite.
There are three sets of huge bronze doors, patterned after the ones in Florence, Italy. They are probably never opened. Tourists and worshippers come in through smaller, but still very large, side doors.
We came back to our apartment for soup from the crockpot. Sue knew she'd be gone all day long. We took the electric trolley from the Metro to near our apartment and stopped by the baker for fresh bread to go with the split pea and ham soup. We talked to Ryan about his art and life in Qatar, and then we put him into a taxi directly for the airport. At least Qatar is in the same time zone as St. Petersburg, so he doesn't have to deal with jet lag. And Qatari Airlines has non-stop flights! But it was a red-eye of 6.5 hours. If you want to see his art, his website is www.ryanbrowning.com.
Saturday at noon we went to the Children's Theater to see "The Frog Princess." This is a Russian fairy tale about a young woman turned into a frog during the day but is a princess at night. She catches the arrow shot by a prince to find his wife. We didn't understand much of the Russian, but the music, singing, dancing and costumes are so wonderful that we loved it anyway. Most of the audience is 6 to 8 years old, and the theater is beautiful.
We went straight from the play to the grocery store, so we didn't have our usual rolling babushka cart coming home. It was a long, heavy walk, but we made it. We unpacked the groceries, had a quick dinner and went back to the Metro and headed to the Church Institute building on the Fontanka River Embankment. It was Game Night. We played different card games and had people rotate between them. There was a good crowd who stayed around after to snack and visit. Sue is on a kick of eating less junk food, so she brought a big platter of cut-up carrots, celery and broccoli, with Ranch dressing made from powder brought from the USA. Ranch dressing isn't sold here. Sometimes restaurants have it, but it isn't the same at all.
And so there you have a "normal" week in St. Petersburg.
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| Attending Sunday Church in Murmansk via Skype |
We have three active LDS Church members in Murmansk--way up on the Arctic Ocean. We cannot send any volunteers up there--it's mostly a military submarine base. But these three "come" to church faithfully each week via Skype. Sue sits with her iPad perched on the edge of a bench where they can see the podium and hear the speakers.
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| Monday dinner--Sisters Allen, Alder & James & Elder Allen with friends Dasha & Elena |
Monday night dinner was with Dasha and Elena--our two friends from the knitting group the week before. We decided we like photos of us around the table. Ken puts iPhone and little tripod on top of the microwave, and it looks down on us, the lasagna, and the green salad.
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| Elders Packer & Cummings one-handed accompanists |
Tuesday was District Meeting for our ever-fluctuating district. We miss Elder Fife and his excellent piano playing, but with Elder Packer on left hand and Elder Cummings on the right we had music for our opening song.
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| Assistant to the President with his Assistant, and with the Assistant's Assistant's Assistant: Elders Packer, Herrin, Gianni |
Yes, our District changed again. Elder Cummings left in the middle of the transfer and went to Novgorod to become the new Branch President there. He will be companions with Elder Mortensen for two weeks before regular Transfers happen. Elder Gianni, who was in Novgorod, came up to Center to be companions with Elder Herrin, our District Leader. But Elder Fife left the week before to replace an Elder in Nevsky who needed to go home, leaving Elder Herrin without a companion. He moved next door to live with the Assistants, and so we called him the "Assistant to the Assistants." Now Elder Gianni is living there, too. So we have a triple living in the Assistants apartment. We thought Elder Packer was young in the Mission to be called as an Assistant to the President when he had been here for just seven months. Now Elder Gianni, who has only been here one month, is an "Assistant to the Assistant to the Assistant to the President."
Wednesday was quiet, except Sue and Sister Rawson started to gather the photos for the Mission Christmas party slide-show. It's a fun project to see the overview of the year.
Thursday we had the Office Staff meeting, and the decision was made to postpone the scheduled December 4/5 Zone Conferences and have a Mission Conference instead on December 20. It will be Conference/training in the morning/early afternoon, and then switch to party mode for the rest of the day/evening. More plans to come.We'll post a link to the slide show when it's done--after December 19.
Thursday night Ken went up to play floorball with the Thursday night regulars from around the stake. He played some and videoed some.
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| Sisters and Elders with Members & Friends at Thursday night floorball |
Sue sent out an email to all the parents about a month ago recommending that Christmas packages be sent in early November. Now they are arriving! We already have two that only took a week!! Most take 2-3 weeks. But after Thanksgiving they get bogged down in the USA post, so it's best to get them out of the country early.
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| The first batch of Christmas packages |
Friday morning Elder Packer, who can drive, and his two companions took Elder Allen in President's car to the two post offices near the office. Thank goodness for Customs tracking numbers!! We can see where each box lands. They got three boxes from Novocherkasskaya Pochta and six from Bolshoekhtinsky Pochta. Some are for Christmas, and we also have a couple of people with birthdays coming up soon.
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| Carwash after the postal runs with Elders Packer & Herrin. Elder Gianni and Elder Allen in the back seat. |
After the Pochta run, they stopped to get President's car washed. The Elders acted like they had never seen a drive-through car wash!
Friday as we finished our Hermitage service we were met by Ryan Browning. He is a friend of Sue's sister, Carol. Carol and Ryan worked together at Virginia Commonwealth University's campus in Qatar on the border with Saudi Arabia. Carol retired two years ago and moved back to the USA, but Ryan is still living there with his wife and three children, where he is teaching in the school of Art and Design, as well as creating his own art. The Qatari Cultural Ministry has set up an exhibit of art in a gallery here in St. Petersburg, and one of Ryans paintings is included. He was here for the grand opening of the Exhibit last Wednesday. We'll go see the Exhibit in two weeks. It's not open to the public yet.
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| Ryan Browning of Qatar in St. Isaac's Cathedral |
Ryan had already spent a lot of time in the Hermitage before we met up, but he hadn't seen St. Isaacs Cathedral, so we walked down there together.
We were there in the winter, and almost at closing time, so Ken got a photo of the almost-empty church. In the summer it is wall-to-wall tourists. One small sanctuary to the left of the main altar is reserved for actual worship. The main church is used for services only on special religious holidays.
What is hard to tell from this photo, unless you look carefully, is that the whole center panel is just a painting on canvas! It is absolutely flat, but it's painted to give this perspective of depth. About 20% of the church is still walled off behind this panel, but you can peek through the cracks on the sides of the canvas to see the scaffolding and restoration work still going on.
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| Sister Allen & Ryan Browning in the Metro |
We decided to give Ryan a taste of normal St. Petersburg, so we took him home with us on the Metro (subway) at rush hour. It was standing room only on the Orange Line. And we get on at the first stop where the trains arrive empty. They run every 2-3 minutes and can be ten cars long.
We came back to our apartment for soup from the crockpot. Sue knew she'd be gone all day long. We took the electric trolley from the Metro to near our apartment and stopped by the baker for fresh bread to go with the split pea and ham soup. We talked to Ryan about his art and life in Qatar, and then we put him into a taxi directly for the airport. At least Qatar is in the same time zone as St. Petersburg, so he doesn't have to deal with jet lag. And Qatari Airlines has non-stop flights! But it was a red-eye of 6.5 hours. If you want to see his art, his website is www.ryanbrowning.com. Saturday at noon we went to the Children's Theater to see "The Frog Princess." This is a Russian fairy tale about a young woman turned into a frog during the day but is a princess at night. She catches the arrow shot by a prince to find his wife. We didn't understand much of the Russian, but the music, singing, dancing and costumes are so wonderful that we loved it anyway. Most of the audience is 6 to 8 years old, and the theater is beautiful.
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| And they all lived happily ever after! |
We went straight from the play to the grocery store, so we didn't have our usual rolling babushka cart coming home. It was a long, heavy walk, but we made it. We unpacked the groceries, had a quick dinner and went back to the Metro and headed to the Church Institute building on the Fontanka River Embankment. It was Game Night. We played different card games and had people rotate between them. There was a good crowd who stayed around after to snack and visit. Sue is on a kick of eating less junk food, so she brought a big platter of cut-up carrots, celery and broccoli, with Ranch dressing made from powder brought from the USA. Ranch dressing isn't sold here. Sometimes restaurants have it, but it isn't the same at all.
Every day at about noon we get an email with a Russian Word of the day to help with our vocabulary. This was the word for today, Saturday, Nov 17, 2018. We laughed and laughed. Not only is it a cognate to English, it IS English. The letters "W", "i" and "F" do not even exist in the Russian alphabet!
And so there you have a "normal" week in St. Petersburg.
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