Transfers, Thanksgiving and Temple

It's Transfer Week, and Thanksgiving, and Temple/Visa Trips. So this week is three blogs in one! And we feel like it's almost really winter. No snow yet! But we are officially going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark and the temperature outside is pretty much always below zero. But there's been a little sunshine, if we walk outside in the middle of the day. And tonight is a beautiful big full moon!

The Allens, with Jeff & Susie Whiting

Last Sunday we had guests from Springville, Utah, for the day. Susie and Jeff Whiting came to church and then spent the day with us. They were here for their son Austin's wedding to Anna Grishina. In Russia, like most other countries of Europe and elsewhere, you must have a civil wedding. Church weddings don't 'count.' So Anna and Austin were married in St. Petersburg on Saturday, then had a couple of days of honeymoon, while we took care of Austin's parents on Sunday. They had just arrived on Friday afternoon and were still under jet lag and culture shock, and then their suitcases got lost and not returned to their hotel until Sunday afternoon. Susie had to go shopping on Friday night to buy clothes for the Saturday wedding! They went to Helsinki to be sealed for time and all eternity on the next Saturday. See the end of the blog!

Ken snuck this photo of Sue while she was fixing dinner and talking to the Whitings. He says she can't talk without her hands.

Ken's cold has come back with a vengeance, so he stayed home on Sunday afternoon and Sue took the Whitings to see the Hermitage. Here is a photo from the Whiting collection.

Sue then took them to the Siege Memorial out by Moskovskaya because their hotel was near there. Susie's warm winter coat was also in her luggage, so she was glad to borrow one from the collection we keep in the office. Some volunteers going home don't want to take their Russia-cold-level coats home to Florida or Arizona. They leave them behind and hand them out to new volunteers coming in who might need a warm coat. And of course Sue didn't remember to take any photos of this outing. 

Anna's step-father taught the Sunday Priesthood lesson. We like it when he teaches, because he always does a computer presentation that is in both Russian and English.

We had a busy week with many volunteers coming in and out of the office every day. Monday they came to work on their emails to home and reports to President Rawson. It's fun to see so many of them. And they were all talking about Transfers. President calls everyone on Monday morning and tells them if they will be moving, or who their new companion will be, or if they will be training someone just arriving from the MTC, or if they will be one of the Mission leaders. It's a morning full of energy! We didn't have our usual Monday night dinner. We had dinner guests the previous Friday night and Sunday night, and more planned for Wednesday, with Thanksgiving on Thursday. Too much! But not really... .

Sisters Drake & Anania-Matafai, Elder Owens,
Birthday-Elder Ogden, a friend here for a lesson
Elders Thieme and Jensen

Tuesday some wandered through the office for various reasons, but we happened to have this group all at once, so we broke into song and sang Happy Birthday to Elder Ogden!

Sisters Bettinger, Nestripke and Alder on their way home!

Wednesday was Transfer Day, and also a fond farewell to Sisters Bettinger, Nestripke and Alder. They become each-other's companions on the last day and can wander wherever they want in the city doing last-minute shopping and sight-seeing. Sue gave them their Departure Packets. It has useful stuff like plane reservation, emergency phone numbers, and pass-along cards to give away once they are out of Russian air space. It also has their Transfer Board photo. They'd never actually seen the Transfer Board. This is a white board in President's office with a photo of each volunteer in a magnetic case. President uses it to decide possibilities of who will be with whom during the next Transfer. It usually has a curtain drawn across it so those coming into the office can't see why might, or might not, happen in the future. Since this was the first day, there were no changes yet and the Sisters got to see the layout.

President and Sister Rawson with new arrivals
Sister Stockman, Sister Davis, and
Elder Ershov (back to camera)

This is a typical arrival scenario: All day Wednesday the office is a zoo. The new arrivals (four of them this time) come in for trainings. Others come from outlying areas whenever their bus/train happens to get them into the City.  

Greetings and chaos

The new arrivals come into the conference room for orientation with Sue and Ken. They sign all their privacy and behavior agreement and powers of attorney for mail and visa documents. They get their Hermitage badges and learn about that service. This time we had two new Russians--Sister Ventsova and Elder Ershov. We have Sister Stockman from Australia and Sister Davis from Washington State. The first three did not need the Useful Conversions sheet that Sue gives to those from the USA--European clothing sizes, oven temperatures, etc. [When will the US join the world in using SI decimal system???]

Then it's upstairs to the Transfer Meeting. Those who go to Narva, Estonia for their quarterly visa trip arrive back sometime after noon, so the Transfer meeting is at 1 pm, preceded by Dodo Pizza delivered. This meeting is actually pretty brief. Those moving trade the SIM card to the person taking their places. Those leaving the city may also trade Metro cards with those coming in. And thus it goes.

Wednesday night we had dinner guests--the Pecks, and our guest of honor, Chrissy Fox who is the mom of Sister Nestripke. She came to pick up her daughter and spend a week in St. Petersburg. Chrissy had emailed Sue and asked about logistics from airport to hotel to Mission Home. Her flight was coming in about 5 pm, so Sue told her to just come to us for dinner and then we'd take her to the Mission Home, in our same apartment complex, at 9 pm when Sister Nestripke was ready for pick-up.  




It was fun to get to know her a little. She looks a lot like her daughter! And her younger daughter just got a mission call to Russian-speaking Ukraine, so the two girls will soon be able to blab without Mom getting a word. [Our kids do that to us in Spanish.]

Sisters Bettinger, Allen and Alder

And while we were up at the Mission Home, we got to do final farewells to these wonderful young women. They came to the Mission after we did, because girls serve 18 months and we are doing 23. We've watched them blossom into great Russian speakers and teachers. We took this photo because Sister Alder is wearing the hat she just finished knitting. Sue got her started to cable-stitch hats, and that's been fun. We know we'll see Sister Bettinger again, because she's from almost our home town. Her family lives in Mountain View, about five miles from us.

And we needed a photo with Sister Nestripke, too.










Sue and Sister Rawson had talked about trying to have a Thanksgiving dinner on Transfer Day for the whole mission, instead of the usual Pizza. But we decided it was too much. She had to do fancy dinners for the new arrivals with the Assistants and the Sister Training Leaders on Tuesday night, then breakfast for the new arrivals and their new companions on Wednesday morning, then dinner for departing Sisters on Wednesday night. Thoughts of a whole big dinner to-do on Wednesday afternoon in the middle of all that was too much.  

Then Sue decided to just invite the eight people in our Center District to dinner on Thursday, and have it be pot-luck. But there was another visa trip on Friday (see below), and a bunch of extra people were staying in the Center apartments Thursday night. Including Rawsons and Pecks made it about 18 people: Too many for our little kitchen, so it got moved to the Mission Office. Then Sister Rawson said we could do it at the Mission Home if she didn't have to cook it all. Pecks decided to invite their Shuvalovo District to their apartment, but Sister Rawson invited Avtovo to the Mission Home--they are the other District that is close in to Center.  

It was a true pot-luck. Sister Rawson got a couple of hams. Turkeys here are almost unheard of, and tiny if you can find them. We told each companionship to bring two items, and only one could be a dessert! So, we had a great feast. Sue made two pumpkin pies and cut each into 12 pieces. There was even some left-over. Sue also made "Christmas Punch" which is a long-standing tradition in our family: Equal parts cranberry juice ("mors" in Russian), pineapple juice and Sprite. All easily bought anywhere here. It was a great party! At our table Sue asked what was everyone's favorite Thanksgiving Tradition. The vast majority said football games!

Elder Packer and Elder Cummings
President and Sister Rawson

We've mentioned before that Nevsky Prospekt is a total tourist-trap place. One of the indications of that is the street artists who volunteer to do caricature portraits. Elder Cummings has moved to Novgorod after two Transfers as an Assistant to President Rawson. He and Elder Packer wanted to do an appropriate gift to mark their time together. They came one day to Sue and asked if she had a photo of the Rawsons, which of course she had. She printed it out for them, and they took it down to Nevsky and had this picture made. It now hangs proudly on the wall in the Mission President's home office.  








And after the dinner was over, the Assistants took Ken in the car to get Round 2 of packages at the post offices.  They made it to two offices and got nine packages. There are still a bunch in other places and in the pipeline. Some are getting here in less than ten days! But that will bog down now in the US. The next pick-up will be Tuesday. ("It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!")

Elders Baptista, McOmber, Meek, Cummings
President Rawson, Elders Thieme, Packer and Sherwood

Friday morning President Rawson got up early and took seven Elders with him on the 6:30 am train to Helsinki for their visa trip. This was the first time to try a one-day round trip to Helsinki so they could attend the LDS Temple there. It all went smoothly and everyone had a wonderful day. We'll repeat it in January. The Mission has received permission for each volunteer to take two visa trips during her/his service time to Helsinki. 

Selfie on the Helsinki Train platform
Sister Rawson (L),  Elder and Sister Peck, Sue & Ken (R)

While they got up and took the early train, we old fogies took the 11:30 am train instead, also heading to Helsinki. We Allens and the Pecks also needed to make a visa trip this week. We had already made our plans and reservations before the plans were made for the young Elders to go. We had to leave the country by Friday when our visas expired, but we really wanted to be in Helsinki for the Temple sealing of Anna and Austin Whiting.  

Rawsons, Allens, Pecks
Helsinki Finland Temple

So we stayed overnight in the Temple guesthouse and were able to be with them on Saturday. Sister Rawson came along, and President Rawson saw the young Elders off on their trip home on Friday night, but he stayed overnight to Saturday with us. That meant there were no "adults" in the mission for two days! Elders Packer and Thieme were in charge!! All was fine.

The beautiful Helsinki Temple during the few hours of sunshine. It was a beautiful day, but sunset was at 3:30 pm.

Here is a photo of most of those who attended the sealing. Anna and Austin in the middle with his mom Susie on the left and his dad Jeff on the right. The other man dressed in white is Brother Zaretsky from St. Petersburg, who is the Sealer in the Helsinki Temple. He performed the ceremony that binds them for Time and All Eternity.  

After the ceremony we went to the Temple Guesthouse and had cake and ice cream to celebrate!

Later that afternoon we went back to Helsinki to wait for our train and to show the Pecks around a little bit. This was their first trip to Helsinki. We had to laugh. Nearly every store had a "Black Friday" or "Black Weekend" sign in the window--In English. Similar signs are all over St. Petersburg--all written in Russian, except "Black Friday" in English.









This is an old insurance company building in downtown Helsinki. It has very interesting architecture with various animals around the outside (squirrels, bears) and these gargoyle type figures by the front door. 










There are street musicians all around, but this was a favorite. He was playing a bunch of bottles, and playing them very well!

Here is a short video of the bottle-bell musician above.

We took the Pecks to see the three Churches--you can look back six weeks in the blog and see those.

After touring, and it got dark so early, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.  Sue remembered to take her 360-degree camera!

Rawsons and Pecks with Ken and Sue. Dinner at Hard Rock Cafe in Helsinki, Finland. 24 Nov 2018 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Sister Zaretskaya, Sister Peck, Ken

Ken always takes photos and is seldom in them, so Sue took his camera for a minute. We are waiting for our train. Sister Zaretskaya is the wife of the Temple Sealer. They were on our same train back to St. Petersburg. He is also the Stake Patriarch and she is the Stake Relief Society President.

The train left on the dot of 7 pm and arrived in St. Petersburg on the dot of 11:27 pm--as scheduled. (We lost an hour to time zone shift.  It's a 3.5 hour ride.) President Rawson had called a mini-van cab for the 6 of us to come back to Center apartments. We were in bed and asleep by 12:15. It was a great trip and a great week!