It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like ....

It's beginning to look a lot like the end of the year! Last Sunday was  the annual Children's Program in church. It's a small but mighty group here in St. Petersburg. Like most inner-city wards, this one has few children. People with kids prefer the suburbs. But they all spoke a piece and they sang so well! It's a favorite program of the year.

Sister Peck, Sister Stockman, Elders Packer, Gianni, Thieme
and Herrin, Sister James

And! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Monday we dug the boxes out of the back of the storage room and put up our office Christmas tree. In honor of the Crèche Exhibit in Palo Alto, everyone fluffed Christmas tree branches. They found the color-coded slots to put them in the tree 'trunk.' It's a far cry from the days when we went out and cut one down from the tree farm.  

Elders Packer, Herrin, Thieme and Gianni

It was Preparation/Play day for the young volunteers, so they all came in for a bit in the afternoon to help with the decorating.  

And then on Tuesday night we got the boxes down from the top of our kitchen cupboard and decorated our own tree, too.

And it's beginning to look a lot like 1990. Oh what interesting times we live in! We are all working diligently to comply with Russian laws on both religious activities and privacy. As of Wednesday morning, none of our LDS Church computer resources and systems were available. We are back to paper, and even that is severely restricted. Church techies are in the process of removing any references to Russian citizens from all LDS databases, but it went rather overboard first. We could not get into IMOS--our main missionary database. But we had removed all Russians from that over a  year ago, so we got that back by Thursday. We also could not get into LDS.org. They've fixed that. But Ken still cannot get into any of the financial management systems: That better not last! And Sue tried to play Tabernacle Choir music from the Church website on Saturday. No luck. 

Because of the strict Russian privacy laws, any information about Russians must be on servers located in Russia, and we must have written permission from that person to keep their private data--including name, phone number, address, birthdate, etc. The Bishop and the Stake President no longer have access to organizational information online. Membership records can no longer be transmitted electronically. Only members who have signed the privacy forms will be included on a spreadsheet sent to the Bishop of each congregation. He will keep it at home and share it very sparingly. Anyone else will have their records kept only in a vault in Moscow accessible only by one auditor. He can add the information to the Bishop's spreadsheet if the person requests it in the future. We cannot order supplies from "store.lds.org" because ordering requires name/address/credit card information, which would be on the web servers in the USA. This is why we only put in first names of any Russians in our blog, and tell all of you readers not to share any of our information anywhere else!

It's a whole "old" world. And it makes Ministering difficult. 

Sergey and Katya with the Sisters who taught her

But Thursday was better! It's beginning to look like the LDS Church is growing in Russia anyway! Katya was baptized on Thursday evening. Her son Vova joined the LDS Church last April at age 13. Mom said he could, but she didn't much care about it. She thought it was just some strange teen-age boy thing. But now she's watched the changes for good in his life over the last six months and decided she wanted this in her life, too. 

Sergey, Katya, Vova, Sisters Kosmynina & Ventsova;
inset on Skype: Sister Bettinger with her mom and sister

Katya chose to be baptized on Thursday because it was Sister Rebecca Bettinger's birthday. Sister Bettinger had taught Katya, but she went home the week before. So she "came" to the baptism via Skype. Elder Jorgensen, who had baptized Vova last spring had also gone home, but joined the meeting digitally.

After the baptism people enjoyed visiting with Sister Bettinger, her mom and her sister.

On Friday we did a little trading around of Hermitage service. Sue and Ken both needed to be in the office on Friday afternoon to orient the new sister. Sister Peck wanted to go to the Relief Society Christmas Conference on Saturday, her usual Hermitage time. So Sue and Sister Peck spent Friday morning helping at the Hermitage. The Avtovo Sisters came Friday afternoon instead of morning, and Ken went on Saturday with Elder Peck, while we girls did our partying. More below.

Chrissy Fox (the Mom), Madison Nestripke

The point of all this is that Friday while Sue was gone, Sister Nestripke and her Mom came by the office to say good-bye before they flew back to the USA on Saturday. Sister Nestripke is ever the active volunteer. She brought the name and phone number of someone she had met on the Metro who was interested in English game night.

Friday we met our newest volunteer. Last Sunday President Rawson got a phone call that there was a new Sister coming to us on Wednesday! She is from eastern Russia and was supposed to go the the England MTC (Missionary Training Center) and come to us in January. But she had visa problems, and then was denied entry in Ukraine, where she was trying to go to the LDS Temple there in preparation for her volunteer service. The border was closed to all Russians because of the Russian naval fight with Ukraine last weekend. So she flew to Moscow for a couple of days and stayed in the Mission Home there, and then she came by train to us. But President and Sister Rawson were gone to Helsinki for their own visa trip until Friday afternoon. The Sister Training Leaders picked up our new volunteer at the train station and kept her with them until President got back. We did our office orientation with her, and then she had her "Welcome Dinner" and met her new companions at the Mission Home on Friday night. While we were doing her orientation she mentioned that she had no name tags! Those are usually ordered in the MTC--but she never went there. Sue knew the soonest we could get one for her was January when the next volunteers come to us from the Provo MTC. Ordering and having it mailed would take just as long. BUT, we have a few old name tags in a cupboard. So Sue printed out her name with white letters on black background in the correct font and size, cut it out with scissors, and glued it to a regular name tag. Now this good Sister feels like a real volunteer!

One of Ken's jobs when new people come in is to take their photo for visas and Hermitage passes. While he was taking the one for our new volunteer, Sister Anania-Matafai of New Zealand said she wanted a new photo, too. She doesn't like her old one. But visa photos have to be "no teeth." She is such a smiley/happy person that she couldn't do it! (We'll use this photo for her Hermitage badge.)

Saturday was the afore-mentioned Relief Society Conference. It was sparsely attended--hard for women to give up a Saturday and travel far. But those who came had a good time. Afterwards there were goodies, of course. Russian buffet-style is the same food repeated on several tables, with a stack of plates on each table. You pick a spot and stand by the table and eat.

One of the activities was a Russian folk dancing class. Here is a video of Sue learning a Russian folk dance. 

It's beginning to look a lot like winter!  

Sue took this photo out of the church window on Saturday morning. You can see the ice floes on the river. This was new. It was all flowing freely with no ice on Thursday. But the river was flowing swiftly from left to right, sending ice out to sea.

That didn't last long. Less than 24 hours later when we came to church on Sunday morning the Neva River was frozen solid. We may never see it flow freely again!

And then while we were in church it started to snow. Not just a little dusting this time. By nightfall everything was pretty well covered. We'll see what it looks like in the morning. (But it's supposed to warm up and rain on Wednesday!)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! (Well, New Year's if you are a typical Russian.)

The lights are on in St. Petersburg. The downtown area is beautifully lit up with extra lights on the light poles, and big light banners across Nevsky Prospekt every block.

We had different plans for Saturday night than cruising down Nevsky looking at lights. Way back in September Sister Rawson saw an ad that Evgeny Plushenko, the famous Russian Olympic medalist and ice skater, was performing in an ice show in St. Petersburg on the first of December. We bought tickets for the Rawsons, Pecks and us to attend. Last night we took the Metro to the correct spot, but to our surprise there were few people in the train and the station 20 minutes before the show was due to start.We met two girls on the street as we came up the stairs. They asked us if we were going to the show and told us it was cancelled!! We guess others must have known and didn't bother to show up, but Sue bought the tickets on Kassir.ru--the local equivalent of Ticketron. They now have her email and send here two or three messages a week--in Russian of course--advertising new shows. She doesn't try to read; just hits delete. So we must have missed the message about the canceled show.  




President Rawson took a selfie of us showing the beautiful big Kpyaz-Vladimirskiy cathedral across the street from the arena. The arena is usually for the local professional hockey and basketball teams.












The cathedral is beautiful. Too bad it has so many fewer visitors than the arena. At this Christmas season, we need to remember Christ more!











So Sister Peck had the brilliant idea that we should take the bus home instead of the subway. Buses may be a little slower, but it's less walking, and it allowed us to see all the beautiful lights, pictured above.

Ken and I then took advantage of the unplanned evening and went to Okhta Mall (Охта Молл) to pick up the dry cleaning, do a little shopping and get haircuts. Sue tried to find a Christmas sweater, but with no luck. There were a few "winter" themed sweaters, but Russia isn't big on Christmas, and it doesn't happen until January 7 anyway.

When we served our earlier mission in Germany, Sue bought some clothes there that she really liked. We're on the downward leg here and she hasn't bought anything! While shopping yesterday she realized it's because the malls here all carry the international brands. There's H&M, Cotton, New Yorker, etc. The clothes all say "Made in..." not Russia! There evidently really isn't a Russian clothing industry.  

And one last tidbit. For those who love musical theater--even if done by amateurs--here is the link to the ward play done by our home ward in Palo Alto, California, last week. Colette Taylor is a master of original musicals and loves to get the whole ward involved. This one is a mash-up of about a dozen fairy tales featuring all the Young Women and Young Men, a bunch of the little Primary kids, and some adults, too.