Christmas is coming! And we are ready!
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| #осветиэтотмир |
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a campaign each December called "Light the World." It encourages people to do service in December as a way to follow Christ's example as He served the people of His time and everyone else via His life and sacrifice and atonement. In most countries there are hand-outs and publicity around this in many forms. In Russia we can't do that. But as an experiment, the LDS Church in Moscow put up four large billboards. They just say "Освети этот Мир." It's hoped that people will search for it, give service and perhaps find Church information. We'll see.
Monday was the annual "Volunteer Day" celebration at the Hermitage. All our Mission volunteers, plus many others, were invited to a special party in the Hermitage General Staff Building, in the wing to the left of this arch, on a day when the museum is closed to the public. There were games and activities and food and music and dancing--all provided by the volunteers. 
First, everyone is given a paper hat to cut out and wear. There were five colors which divided us into groups. 
Sue and Stake President Boris Leostrin are working on theirs.
The theme this year was Leonardo daVinci, so the Hermitage volunteer office staff were dressed as old Italians, and as various Roman Gods and Goddesses. |
| Elder Meek, Sister & President Rawson, Pres. Leostrin, Elder Mortensen |
We all sat on cushions on large steps to watch the program.
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| Elders Ershov, Woodruff and Herrod were part of the red group dance. |
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| Ken and Elder Ogden watch Mikhail perform as Leonardo. |
Each group had to perform a dance and present a poem, and this is what Ken's group came up with...
It was intended to be silly, and it was. Put on the spot, this is all Ken could recite from memory on short notice. It was either that or a nursery rhyme.
Last, but not least, food! It supposedly dated from those Italian times...even the Italian pizza
Then Tuesday came. This was our first District Council of this Transfer.
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| Ken, Sue, Elders Packer, Thieme, Herrin, Gianni, Sisters James and Stockman and Jesus Christ is at the Center of us all. |
Nevsky District came to the Office for their District Council on Wednesday.
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| Elders Baptista & Fife, Sisters Kosmynina & Ventsova. Elder Fife is the only American in the District! |
Sister-Training-Leader Anania-Matafia (that's a mouthful!) from New Zealand was on exchanges with Sister Gursch from Austria, and they came by the office.
We have eleven Sisters in the Mission and only four of them are from the USA! The others? Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and three from Russia!
We tried to go for a walk on Wednesday after work, but it had been freezing-rain, and the streets and sidewalks were just too treacherous. So instead we hiked up ELEVEN tall stories to the top of our building. It's always an amazing view from up there.
Daylight?? What's that? The sun is now coming up just before 10am and going down just before 4pm. And it never gets sunny--just barely dusk through the clouds all the time. Although one evening the clouds cleared and we saw three! stars (planets?) above the street lights. And it is affecting us, too. Sue slept nine hours on Saturday night and still had a hard time staying awake in church on Sunday morning. We just drag this time of year... .
Friday we were back at the Hermitage. It was a free-admission day! The first Thursday of every month is always free, but this was Friday. We asked why and were told that the 7th of December is the birthday of the Hermitage, and it's always free on that day. The lines were out the door and clear across the courtyard, of course. But they let people in as large groups every 10-15 minutes. They still had to go to the ticket booth and get a free pass, and they still had to pay if they wanted one of the guided tours. Ken took this photo of Sue during one of the rare quiet moments this week.
After our service time, we went in to see some special exhibits. Unfortunately, photos aren't allowed in those. We saw The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. You can look here online and see about it. We enjoyed looking at the facial expressions that are so amazingly executed by the artists.
Then we wandered over the indoor bridge to the New Hermitage, looking for a special exhibit entitled "Studying Michelangelo." It was just one drawing of the Crucifixion and then a small oil painting of the same figure, by Michelangelo. There were also copies of the drawing by other artists. In the room was also a bust of that famous artist done by someone else.
Outside in Palace Square, there is no huge Christmas tree like there was last year! (We looked back at photos and it went up before December 1, so we guess they won't be putting up a tree this year.) Instead there is this huge video screen about 25 feet tall playing a slow-motion computer-generated video of a stylized Nativity. The characters are larger than life-size and the scene constantly changes, but oh-so-slowly... .
As if we hadn't had enough art for one day, we walked the 1 km or so down past St. Isaac's to the Menage exhibition hall. We finally had time to go and see the exhibit about Qatar.
It consists of many photographs about Qatar done by artists from all over the world, and also art works done by people in Qatar.
Sue has been to Qatar to visit her sister Carol, who had lived there for several years as the local Faculty Librarian for the Virginia Commonwealth University campus. Carol's friend, Ryan Browning, visited us a few weeks ago because he is also a member of the faculty there, and he has this piece on display in the exhibit. There is more about Ryan in our post of 17 November.
As we were walking out, Sue said, "What a beautiful rug." Then she looked more closely: This is a sand painting!!
We left the Menage and decided to stop at the Main Post Office just in case there were any letters. We were glad we did.
We thought there were no packages in the pipeline, but we found a note in the PO Box that there was a package to the Church from Germany. It was for Elder Baptista! We didn't have the package of Powers of Attorney with us, which Ken usually takes there with him. So he showed the clerks his "Testimony/ID" that says he is here as a volunteer for the Church. The women at the window gave Ken a lecture about the need for the proper power of attorney for the addressee, but they did let us take the box! Whew!! (We are trying to get rid of the PO Box and have everything sent just to the office street address, but there are still some people out there with the old mailing instructions.)
It was now after 8pm and we were more than ready for dinner. We looked around the area and spied a restaurant called "The Idiot" in English across the Moika River from the bus stop near the Post Office. We figured it was named after Dostoevsky's book, and we were right. Good Russian food, with a menu in Russian and English. But it was slow food, so it was after 10 pm before we got home.
Saturday was P-Day or "Preparation Day" and time to clean the apartment. Sue did the laundry and cleaned the bathroom. Ken dusted and vacuumed and did the dishes. But we can't run more than two appliances at once without tripping the 15-Amp circuit breaker, so among a vacuum, a clothes washer, a dryer, a dishwasher, a microwave, a range, an oven and a teapot, we essentially have to have a sign-up sheet to use anything.
Sue got first dibs with the stove and the washer, then Ken worked with the vacuum while the dryer and the rest of the laundry waited its turn. Much later in the day Sue had to wait for a load of laundry to finish so she could put the frozen borscht in the microwave to thaw for dinner.
We decided we needed a quiet day at home. We've been gone all day the last two Saturdays. We read, knitted, studied and were generally lazy. It felt good.
Earlier this week, Ken forwarded to Sue an email from the Church Offices in Moscow about how we must order Church materials now that the "store.lds.org" website is blocked in Russia. (Since the store is based in the USA, it can't be used directly, since it would collect personal data on its users, and we are not allowed to collect, from outside of Russia, any personal information about any Russian. Of course, you can't order anything without giving them name & address... .) Well, when Chrome auto-detects the language of the page and gives you fairly readable English, it creates a few weird results. But it's at least good enough to know what's going on.
As you see, the original message was all in Russian, of course, because it went to all the Church congregations. This is the forwarded original:
After translating the message to English, Sue had to laugh. Not only was the text of the message translated, but also the From: field.
FYI, it really is true that "ken allen" translates directly from German to English as "know all." (Sue says Ken does know pretty much everything--except, to his frustration, the Russian language.)
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