Last Sunday was Testimony Meeting, when the program is open, and anyone can get up and express their feelings. Our newest convert, Alyona ("Helen"), stood up first and talked about how thrilled she was to be part of this Church. Before she could get back to her seat, Sue got up and pulled her back to the microphone to be translator. This is our last Testimony Meeting before we go home, so we both wanted to speak and express our love and appreciation for our time in St. Petersburg, for the wonderful people here, for this Church and our Savior Jesus Christ. Sue spoke, and then Alyona stayed and translated for Ken, too. March 3 would normally be another Testimony Meeting, but that is Stake Conference, and that is a whole different program and still a very special meeting.
It has been good for us to watch how the Church community continues to thrive and grow in spite of the difficulties of operating within the restrictions of Russian law around religious teaching and personal privacy. People seek us out and want to hear our message and join our community.
Andrey Lermontov, one of the Church Office workers, has this banjo. It's only a 4-string banjo--most in the USA are 5 strings. Ken had it in his office to perhaps learn to play it. But he has had no time. Elder Packer stopped by one day and began to play it. He's not bad. He's really a cellist and pianist.
Not much happened in the Office this week. It was Sue's turn to prepare Arrival and Departure packets for next week. But we only have one Young Elder coming in and two going home, so that was pretty easy. Other 'normal' missions probably process about 25 people per transfer. Arrival packets are mostly bunches of forms to sign (due to all those privacy laws) and also some fun stuff, such as the Hermitage badge, the list of cultural sights to see in St. Petersburg, and a two-page hand-out of conversions--Fahrenheit to Centigrade, Russian clothing sizes, pounds to kilograms, etc.
Departure packets are airline itinerary, emergency numbers, Transfer Board photo, second passport, etc. And there is also a packet that goes to the Stake President with the Release Certificate and letters to parents and home bishop. Sue has normally used the "Correspondence Module" in IMOS (Internet Mission Office System). It's essentially just a mail/merge module that puts the name of the volunteer and name and address of the recipient properly into the letter. It also gets all the he/she and him/her pronouns right.
But this week when Sue clicked on Correspondence, this is what she got! We are now seeing this a lot. We are not allowed to see any LDS Church sites that might have any private information about Russian citizens. But IMOS simply doesn't! Sue put in a Tech Support help request and they said that, Yes, it shouldn't be blocked. We'll see what happens.
Thursday morning Sue walked into the kitchen, and saw that the sky was beautiful colors of red. She asked Ken to take a photo. He went up the stairs to the 11th floor balcony and got this wonderful photo of the sunrise. The best part is that he took it at 8:57 a.m. The sun is now coming up before 9 in the morning! That means we are both going to and coming from the Office in the daylight!!
Friday about 15 minutes before we were due to finish our Hermitage Service, Vera (Asst. Volunteer Director) came and told us they were having a Chinese New Year's Party in the volunteer office. So we came to join them! There were lots of goodies brought by various people, but we didn't eat much. (See below.) There was another young volunteer going home to Switzerland in a few days, so they asked her to say a few words, and then asked us, also. Sue was able to express how much we personally, and all our Church volunteers, love helping the Hermitage.
We didn't want to eat much at the Hermitage party because we had a date-night appointment to meet the Rawsons and Pecks for dinner at Tres Amigos. Pecks had never been there, so we needed to introduce them to our favorite Mexican Restaurant in St. Petersburg.
Saturday we started to REALLY clean the apartment. Our replacements, Elder and Sister Wood, arrive next Saturday. They are already in the MTC! They are from Delta, Utah, population about 3,500 and located about 90 miles southwest of Provo on Highway 50 going towards Nevada. So, big-city St. Petersburg will be a bit of a culture shock, but we think they are going to love it as much as we do.
In anticipation, we vacuumed behind the couch and on top of the wardrobe cabinets. We pulled out the washer and dryer and cleaned under and behind. We cleaned around and under and behind the shoe hutch in the front hall. We washed the windows--but only on the inside. We can't get to the outside.
The other thing that will make life a little harder on us is that there is no Internet in the Center Elder's apartment! If we want to use computers or iPad we have to go to the Office. And we'll only have one working cellphone between us. We'll give one of our Mission phones to the Woods, and then when we leave they will have both phones. It will be our two-week social media "fast" as requested by President Nelson. But the blog will go on. We'll just stay in the office and do it next Sunday after church. Likewise with our Sunday-night/morning FaceTime with family at home.
Saturday evening we were invited up to Sestroretsk to have dinner with the Dennis family. Chris, the dad, is from Provo, Utah. Katya is from St. Petersburg. She joined the LDS Church as a teenager. They've been married about 20 years, and have lived most of that time in the Monterrey Bay Area of Northern California. They decided about two years ago to move back to Russia. Chris is a contract computer programmer, so he still works for his old company in California. They have two teen-aged sons, Dmitri and Victor. We had a good visit with them. We had been to their apartment a year or so ago when they didn't yet have a kitchen, so it was nice to see it all finished!
Elders Herrin and Thieme visited after church with Dmitri. He and his wife, Masha, were married a year or so ago and are stalwarts of Center Ward. Elder Packer wasn't around because he went to Novgorod Branch with President Rawson.
We know there's been a lot of cold weather and big snow storms in the USA recently. St. Petersburg is also having its coldest, snowiest winter in years. We haven't had any big blizzards, but we get 1-3 inches almost every day. It doesn't melt between storms, it just keeps piling up.
Here's the view out the church window to the River. Those brown piles out across the street are mostly sand-covered snow.
They do a really good job of trying to keep the sidewalks cleared around our complex, but they pile the snow onto the grassy/planter areas until now they are 4-5 feet high. This is the view looking south from our balcony.
Sue was looking at her phone to see if she had any photos for the blog this week. She usually doesn't. Ken takes most all the pictures. But she found this one. She took this photo for her next trip to the Apteka--the drugstore. She wants to buy a bunch of tubes of this pain cream. It works really well. The doctor told her to use it last winter when she sprained her foot. Now she's been using it on bad wrist (too much typing???) And she told her step-mother about it, as she also has foot pain. But in the USA the generic version has a $40 co-pay!! Here the "real" version is about $10. And there is no prescription needed here. Prescriptions are only for opioids, etc.
Next week's Sunday School lesson is about the Temptations of Christ. It's bound to be interesting. It's been suggested that St. Petersburg's own native son, Dostoyevsky, wrote "The Grand Inquisitor" section in Brothers Karamazov, with those temptations in mind. This should be good preparation to supplement the reading material in the lesson manual and Matthew Chapter 4. And that's the part of Brother's Karamazov that talks about Christ visiting in Russia after His resurrection. (See blog post from 19 Nov 2017.)
It has been good for us to watch how the Church community continues to thrive and grow in spite of the difficulties of operating within the restrictions of Russian law around religious teaching and personal privacy. People seek us out and want to hear our message and join our community.
Andrey Lermontov, one of the Church Office workers, has this banjo. It's only a 4-string banjo--most in the USA are 5 strings. Ken had it in his office to perhaps learn to play it. But he has had no time. Elder Packer stopped by one day and began to play it. He's not bad. He's really a cellist and pianist.
Not much happened in the Office this week. It was Sue's turn to prepare Arrival and Departure packets for next week. But we only have one Young Elder coming in and two going home, so that was pretty easy. Other 'normal' missions probably process about 25 people per transfer. Arrival packets are mostly bunches of forms to sign (due to all those privacy laws) and also some fun stuff, such as the Hermitage badge, the list of cultural sights to see in St. Petersburg, and a two-page hand-out of conversions--Fahrenheit to Centigrade, Russian clothing sizes, pounds to kilograms, etc.
Departure packets are airline itinerary, emergency numbers, Transfer Board photo, second passport, etc. And there is also a packet that goes to the Stake President with the Release Certificate and letters to parents and home bishop. Sue has normally used the "Correspondence Module" in IMOS (Internet Mission Office System). It's essentially just a mail/merge module that puts the name of the volunteer and name and address of the recipient properly into the letter. It also gets all the he/she and him/her pronouns right.
But this week when Sue clicked on Correspondence, this is what she got! We are now seeing this a lot. We are not allowed to see any LDS Church sites that might have any private information about Russian citizens. But IMOS simply doesn't! Sue put in a Tech Support help request and they said that, Yes, it shouldn't be blocked. We'll see what happens.Thursday morning Sue walked into the kitchen, and saw that the sky was beautiful colors of red. She asked Ken to take a photo. He went up the stairs to the 11th floor balcony and got this wonderful photo of the sunrise. The best part is that he took it at 8:57 a.m. The sun is now coming up before 9 in the morning! That means we are both going to and coming from the Office in the daylight!!
We didn't want to eat much at the Hermitage party because we had a date-night appointment to meet the Rawsons and Pecks for dinner at Tres Amigos. Pecks had never been there, so we needed to introduce them to our favorite Mexican Restaurant in St. Petersburg. 
Saturday we started to REALLY clean the apartment. Our replacements, Elder and Sister Wood, arrive next Saturday. They are already in the MTC! They are from Delta, Utah, population about 3,500 and located about 90 miles southwest of Provo on Highway 50 going towards Nevada. So, big-city St. Petersburg will be a bit of a culture shock, but we think they are going to love it as much as we do. 
Moving day is Thursday. The "Center Elders" apartment is down at the other end of our building--it's a very long block walk. The President is not going to put any Elders in there this Transfer so we can live there and still be close to the office. Since we are leaving and have to pack up anyway, it's easier for us to move and let the Wood's come in and get settled here right away.
It will be hard on us. Our commute distance will more than double! It will take us five minutes to walk all the way down to the Office, which is way more than the two minutes it takes us now! Have we ever put a map of our complex into the blog? Here it is. You can see by how small the cars are that these buildings are huge.
The other thing that will make life a little harder on us is that there is no Internet in the Center Elder's apartment! If we want to use computers or iPad we have to go to the Office. And we'll only have one working cellphone between us. We'll give one of our Mission phones to the Woods, and then when we leave they will have both phones. It will be our two-week social media "fast" as requested by President Nelson. But the blog will go on. We'll just stay in the office and do it next Sunday after church. Likewise with our Sunday-night/morning FaceTime with family at home.
Elders Herrin and Thieme visited after church with Dmitri. He and his wife, Masha, were married a year or so ago and are stalwarts of Center Ward. Elder Packer wasn't around because he went to Novgorod Branch with President Rawson.We know there's been a lot of cold weather and big snow storms in the USA recently. St. Petersburg is also having its coldest, snowiest winter in years. We haven't had any big blizzards, but we get 1-3 inches almost every day. It doesn't melt between storms, it just keeps piling up.
Here's the view out the church window to the River. Those brown piles out across the street are mostly sand-covered snow.
They do a really good job of trying to keep the sidewalks cleared around our complex, but they pile the snow onto the grassy/planter areas until now they are 4-5 feet high. This is the view looking south from our balcony.
Sue was looking at her phone to see if she had any photos for the blog this week. She usually doesn't. Ken takes most all the pictures. But she found this one. She took this photo for her next trip to the Apteka--the drugstore. She wants to buy a bunch of tubes of this pain cream. It works really well. The doctor told her to use it last winter when she sprained her foot. Now she's been using it on bad wrist (too much typing???) And she told her step-mother about it, as she also has foot pain. But in the USA the generic version has a $40 co-pay!! Here the "real" version is about $10. And there is no prescription needed here. Prescriptions are only for opioids, etc.
Next week's Sunday School lesson is about the Temptations of Christ. It's bound to be interesting. It's been suggested that St. Petersburg's own native son, Dostoyevsky, wrote "The Grand Inquisitor" section in Brothers Karamazov, with those temptations in mind. This should be good preparation to supplement the reading material in the lesson manual and Matthew Chapter 4. And that's the part of Brother's Karamazov that talks about Christ visiting in Russia after His resurrection. (See blog post from 19 Nov 2017.)
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