Sharing the Gospel in Russia

This week's Russianism: People shop several times a week, so there’s no reason to have multi-packs. Besides, there’s not a lot of room for storing extras in the apartments. The missionaries have commented on some of our unusual storage places (such as inside a stool).

A comment made by one of the Elders explains a lot about the struggles the missionaries face here. He said the culture in Russia is that everything is very short term, especially here in Barnaul. They simply live for today. Jobs provide just enough money to get by; there aren't a lot of career opportunities in Barnaul, which is fine with them because they probably wouldn't take advantage of them anyway. They shop several times a week because they just need enough to get by for another day or two. Short expiration dates on dairy products? Not a problem, we'll use it up and buy more tomorrow. Not a lot of bulk buying opportunities? That's fine because we only need a little today. We got a kick out of the individual packets of cat food. Going out and getting drunk is very common, especially among the men. They don't care about tomorrow because they'll deal with that when the time comes, hangover and all. Now try introducing the idea that they can be with their family forever or the concept of eternal life. It just isn't comprehensible to them, and they don't even want to try. It's totally against anything in their culture and upbringing. Not only is it foreign to them, they just can't get their minds around it. We have such a wonderful message to share, but it's hard to get past the cultural limitations.

The family unit isn't valued much here. We see a lot of women pushing strollers or buggies by themselves. That isn't because their husbands are busy doing something else--in most cases there are no husbands. Either they're divorced or more likely never married. Even among those who do marry, divorce is almost inevitable. Families are small, often a mother and a child, occasionally two. A member of the Church introduced herself and said she has a large family--she and her husband have 3 children.

Another problem we face is that the Russian Orthodox Church, or Pravoslavia Church, has made a big deal out of "If you're Russian, you're Pravoslavia. If you're not Pravoslavia, you're not true to your country." That doesn't mean they attend church (because most don't), just that they can't be part of any other church. Some people, especially the older ones, feel very strongly about that. Others simply choose not to believe (logical after the atheistic doctrine of communism) or will grasp at a multitude of religious ideas, embracing the good they see in all religions and ignoring the parts that don't mesh, or looking for multiple gods. In spite of all of those challenges, occasionally we find someone who is ready to receive the gospel.

That said, we are seeing some limited success. The goal in Barnaul is to have one baptism a month. This year so far they had two baptisms before we got here, another one yesterday--Anna, and have some people investigating who look very promising. It is so exciting to see the change in their lives when they come to understand how much their Heavenly Father does love them, and the joy they feel as they learn the gospel principles and gain a testimony. It brings hope to them in a way we'd never realized could be such a blessing, just because we've always had it. Thanks Mom and Dad, (and their parents and grandparents and . . .) Recently we were talking to someone from Ukraine and she asked if we had been raised in the Church. When we answered yes, she asked about our parents, then grandparents. When we told her that we both had ancestors who crossed the plains to Utah, she was amazed. To me our heritage is just part of my life, one more thing I now realize we take for granted.

Here are some pictures from yesterday's baptism. Anna is very sweet and reminds me a little of a reserved Emily Fuller (my niece). Maybe it's because they're both artists, or Anna's smile or eyes, but we both sense it. We've been able to sit in on some of the discussions the Elders had with her and fell in love with her very quickly. She asked us to give the opening and closing prayers at the baptism. Fortunately they allowed me to do it in English. Dave got brave and gave his prayer (written out ahead of time) in Russian.
This is Anna with the three sets of Elders in Barnaul. One Elder is from Latvia and all the rest are from the U. S. They're all good guys. Elder Hansen, one of the Zone Leaders, is the missionary in all white.


This is everyone who came to the baptism except for the person behind the camera. Of the twenty people, eight are members of the branch--including Anna now, one is a friend of a member, three are investigators, and then the eight missionaries. It looks like I'm holding a rose, but Anna (in purple) is holding it.

Typical Week

Now that you've heard all about how we've settled in, we thought you might be interested in what it means to be Member and Leader Support missionaries.

We have the same morning routine as the missionaries: an hour each of personal, companion, and language study. As a confirmed night owl, I've had to do some adjusting, and it's taken quite some time to change my sleep patterns. Some days we do better than others. Language study continues to be a challenge. Some mornings we don't get in all our studying because we have meetings, activities, or end up baking in preparation for something, and have to squeeze study time in later. In the afternoons and evenings we meet with people as much as the Elders include us. When they have an appointment with women and no adult men are present, they're supposed to have a member join them, and when no one from the branch is available they ask us to go with them. Sometimes they translate a lot of what's being said, sometimes not much, but often we're able to form a bond that transcends words. We've been pleasantly surprised at how friendly people are after such a connection is made, because on the streets the people don't smile or look at each other much. When we sit in on a discussion the Elders are more likely to translate everything and we will often be able to contribute to the lesson. Lately we've been sitting in on a discussion or visiting with an inactive an average of at least once a day. We're pleased the Elders are including us more now. Unfortunately, all too often we meet the Elders to go visit someone and the person isn't home, doesn't show up, or calls at the last minute to cancel. Fortunately we do have cell phones.

Sundays are pretty much the same as at home. We have church of course and sometimes leadership meetings or choir practice.

Mondays we have Family Home Evening for the singles. It's held at the church because that's a central location. Most of those who attend are in their early 20s and are not members (except for the missionaries, of course). We start with a song and prayer, have a short spiritual thought (usually 10-15 minutes) as they call it, and then the rest of the time is spent playing games. They LOVE to play games. Sometimes they are games with cards like Uno or with physical pieces like Jenga, and sometimes games like Duck, Duck, Goose (the Elders said that one was a big hit a couple of months ago). They also make regular use of the ping pong table in the back room. Once in a while someone brings refreshments. The whole evening lasts a little more than an hour.

Tuesday and Thursday evenings we have English Club. We aren't allowed to call it English class or claim that we're teaching English because we aren't certified, so it's called English Club. There are three groups: beginning, intermediate and advanced. We lead the advanced group because they understand pretty much everything we say and we don't have to try to explain things in Russian. In our class we pick a subject and ask everyone to talk about it. They get to practice their English, and we learn about Russia and they learn about the U.S. Much of their English is from school and is British English, so once in a while we tell them the American words--they'd rather speak American English than British English. Lately we've started the class with homophones (won/one, hear/here) and they really seem to enjoy that. Classes last about 45 minutes and then all three groups meet together. In the joint meeting someone from the third group translates and the rest of the night is in both English and Russian. They briefly discuss what has been talked about in each group and then one of the missionaries tells a short story with some sort of moral and another missionary give a 3-5 minute spiritual thought on a general gospel topic. Then we invite everyone to come to our meetings and other activities throughout the week.

Saturday is Sports Night. We go to a field close to the church and play frisbee, soccer, modified football, or whatever people are interested in and there are enough people for. In winter or bad weather we play games in the church.

Wednesdays are P-days. Since we have laptops and the iPad, the Elders like to come to our apartment rather than go to an Internet cafe--nicer environment and we don't charge! Dave also cuts their hair as needed. There's always food, whether it's cookies or pancakes or something more substantial. We've decided we're going to plan to feed them more, since they seem to enjoy hanging around and visiting and munching even after they're done with their computer time. There are six Elders in our city.

Fridays we have the District Meeting at our apartment at noon. During this time we discuss goals and how well we've done the last week, what's happening with investigators and reactivation efforts, motivation, focus on a particular missionary theme, and they even give us time for our "Senior Moment" when we share things that we think could help them, like encouraging them to be outrageously obedient to mission rules or give them a scriptural passage to commit to memory. Of course we feed them, but we try to make it something like cookies or banana bread that they can grab and run with as they head out for appointments or to go contacting. This all lasts about two hours.

We're having lots of fun!

This week's Russian Oddity: There are little shops everywhere - on every corner as well as down the blocks. Each one has its own specialty. The flower shops are the most common, and there are other shops selling fruits and veggies or magazines or beer or cigarettes and candy (explain that combination) or ice cream or watches or phones or . . . . Grocery stores simply sell groceries. Lenta is their big "Costco-type" store where you buy a membership, but it’s more like a Smith's Marketplace or Target as far as their selection. But you can get more than just groceries! However, you check out the groceries and pay, and then check out again with any electronics--things like a digital scale, iron or other small appliances. And multi packs? Forget it. After a while we were finally able to find 8-packs of toilet paper, but in general, packages are smaller here. Even the largest wastebaskets are small. I'd guess they hold about 4 gallons.

A Week in Review

For the most part, this has been a busy week. It started with five phone calls/Skype for Mother’s Day–one to my mother and four to those who made me a mother (and their families). I’m SO glad senior missionaries have different rules. It was wonderful to hear the voices and even see some of the faces of those we love and miss so much. We finished up the calls Monday morning here (it was still Mother's Day in SLC).

May 9 is Victory Day in Russia. It is a very big holiday here that commemorates the day the Russian army arrived in Berlin to stop Hitler. It is a “lockdown day” when the missionaries don’t even bother going out to try to contact people, and they have to stay home in the evening because of all the drinking. The missionaries loved the change of pace. After morning studies they came to our apartment and spent the day together. For lunch we had шаурмас (in case you don't know how to pronounce it, that's sha-oormas), kind of a burrito-looking thing filled with meat, carrots, cabbage and spices. Very delicious. Then they got to watch two movies–they chose Toy Story 3 and Invictus. One was in Russian with English subtitles and the other was in English with Russian subtitles. After that they sat around writing in the journal/diaries of the missionaries who were getting transferred out on Wednesday and talked and munched on snacks. I had fixed four 9X13 pans of baked MacCheese. For once, they didn’t eat everything I had fixed! Here they are, all ready to watch Toy Story 3. Left to right: on the chair is Elder Vargin (Moscow, Russia); the couch has Sergay (mini missionary*, Novosibirsk), Elder Field (Washington), Elder Hanson (Missouri), Elder Sargsyan (Armenia); and on the air mattress is Elder Erickson (Cottonwood Heights). The couch is a kind of hide-a-bed affair. We thought it was a skinny trundle bed but found out the bottom "bed" lifts up and makes a fairly comfortable bed.
*A mini missionary is a young member from another city who is willing to fill in temporarily when a regular missionary leaves because of visa issues before another missionary arrives. Sergay did that here and lived the mission rules for two weeks. That really helps the missionary effort.

The next couple of days the missionaries traded around temporarily as needed as some Elders left and others arrived. While we kept our 3 American missionaries, we lost our 3 Russian-speaking missionaries, gained one from Latvia who speaks English well, one from Enoch (by Cedar City) and one from St. George. Yes! Now the weekly District meetings are in English and no one has to translate for us.

We’ve been asked to sit in on appointments several times this week. The missionaries are great to translate so we know what’s going on, tag teaming as one talks to the investigator and the other translates for us and then they trade off. It amazes me to see how easily they jump between English and Russian and back again, and that they can translate while the other person is talking--they don't have to wait for a pause. The missionaries are doing the teaching, but they like our comments and make us feel a part of the lessons. Most of the investigators speak only Russian. A few speak English quite well and don’t need our comments translated, but the lesson is still taught in Russian. Two of the people we met with have had all the lessons and attend church from time to time but haven’t been willing to commit to baptism yet. One of those keeps saying he wants to think about it, but never quite gets around to reading the scriptures or praying or attending church regularly or whatever. He just wants to think about it first. Friday night he said he will try to find time. I told him that wouldn’t work because he won’t ever find the time. He has to make it. That really shocked him. He actually gave the closing prayer and before he left that night he said he’s going to work on making time. He stayed for Sunday School today (in the past when he's come, he would leave after Sacrament Meeting).

This week's Russianism: On our way home yesterday we passed by the Russian version of storage units. Dad, you thought the Storage Center was great. Look at these babies! Each is an individual, stand-alone unit, just put next to each other and covered by corrugated tin.


And another set of them just down the street.
They have similar but nicer and fewer storage units in a row by many apartments. We’ve seen people park their cars in some of the ones by us. They drive up, put little ramps down by the curb and drive into their shed.

One Month in Russia, Part 2

Here are some more things we've learned and adjustments we've made:

Spring in Salt Lake vs. spring in Siberia. According to the online forecasts, except for Mother's Day weekend when we woke up to snow, the weather in Barnaul since we got here has always been warmer than in Salt Lake, sometimes by only a few degrees, sometimes by 20+ degrees. How does it feel to know you're colder than Siberia? Unfortunately that won't always hold true. They've told us that it almost always gets down to -40 here at some time every winter.

Thermostats vs. government provided heat or lack thereof. When we first got here the temperatures were in the 70s and the heat in the buildings made things miserable. We turned off the radiators in our apartment and always left the windows open. Sometime in the last few weeks the heat that is piped throughout all of Russia via hot water pipes got turned off. No announcement, no fanfare, just turned off. We didn't notice it at first, but as is typical with spring weather, it's turned chilly again. However, the heat is off now until they decide to turn it on again in the fall. We have a small electric heater we can use in our apartment if necessary, but church is another matter. It's downright COLD in our meetings now. Oh well, at least no one falls asleep.

Large quantities of any item vs. frequent shopping trips, which is fine because there are grocery stores on nearly every corner and we shop often. Since we carry everything home (sometimes taking the bus depending on where we shop) and up 3 flights of stairs, we don't want big packages of anything. It's taking us less time to shop now than it did three weeks ago as we're becoming more and more familiar with their products and don't have to spend quite so much time trying to figure out what things are.

Clothes dryer vs. drying rack. Now instead of sitting in a laundry basket getting wrinkled, the clothes come out of the washer that way :) Because the best place for our drying rack is in our front entry, we put clothes away as soon as we can after they dry so we can move around the apartment again. One of the missionaries said he's never seen a dryer here, either in stores or in anyone's home. When we first got here I looked and looked for dryer sheets to help with some static problems. Now I know why I can't find them! I've learned how much tumbling clothes takes out wrinkles. I've also learned to time the laundry so I'm home when the washer stops and can hang things immediately, which helps a little, and iron Dave's shirts while they're still damp, which helps a lot. We're just glad to have a washer in our apartment. It takes about 2 1/4 hours to run a load, and it holds about half of what my washer did at home. That's nice--we don't have room to dry more than one load at a time.

Bread mixer vs. kneading dough by hand, another thing that helps me realize how much we take for granted. We do have a hand mixer that's great on higher speeds and works for making cookie dough. The slowest speed is broken so I'm still trying to figure out how to add flour to things without covering the whole kitchen in a fine layer of dust. But Dave kneads his bread by hand. It's a good thing he's so strong!

Bags of Grandma Sycamore's bread vs. bags of refrigerated bread dough. Quick and easy, but not quite the marshmallow texture of Grandma Sycamore's bread. They do have a lot of different kinds of bread here, and we'll be trying out some in the months to come. However, the bread is good the first day, dry the second, and goes moldy within a few days.

Skim milk vs. 2.5% milk. Milk comes in approximately 1/2 liter bottles or bags. We wouldn't want them much larger than that because they have very close expiration dates--the bags are good for about 4 days, the bottles about 5-6 days.

Ziploc bags/containers vs none. I like to use them for a lot of different things. I'm hoping some bags are on their way in a package that is coming from home. They do have some small containers that can be used for leftovers, but not the big ones we're used to.

Aluminum foil and plastic wrap in boxes vs. on rolls. It saves room in the drawer, but it's harder to deal with.

Crisco vs. butter. They don't have shortening here, just butter and margarine. Fortunately, so far all of the things I've made have turned out just fine.

Cool, clean water vs. cool clean water. For the first two weeks we were here our water filter wasn't working so we had to use bottled water. We boiled water for washing dishes and tried drinking it after it cooled, but one sip was enough to convince us bottled water was worth the price. It's very rusty and has an awful taste and not safe for Americans to drink unfiltered/unless boiled. We finally got the missing part and hooked up the filters. It hooks on the faucet on the sink and runs water through 3 filters--one we change every other month, one every 4 months and one yearly. We have to be careful to run only cold water through it or the filters melt. There's a little tab we pull out to make the water run through the filters. The water tastes SO much better with the filter. The Elders have told us the filters look awful when they change them. Here's a picture of what the set up looks like (sorry I can't get the picture to turn). The filtered water comes out of a separate little spout to the right of the faucet. When we push the tab in, water comes out of the faucet normally.

A dishwasher vs. small plastic dish tubs (slightly larger diameter than a dinner plate). We don't have enough dishes to fill a dishwasher anyway. The small size of the tubs makes it a little tricky to wash pans. We wash dishes often enough that it takes longer to heat the water than it does to wash, dry and put the dishes away. Most of the missionaries just put soap on a sponge, wipe the dishes and rinse under running warm water, but I feel better using the tubs and hotter water. They have a neat appliance here called a Chineck that heats water quickly. Although it looks like a big coffee pot, you can't heat anything in it but water. It's that black thing behind the plate in my hand.

English vs. Russian. Oh well, we haven't quite found solutions to everything just yet. No, we don't always have interpreters like they originally told us we would. The missionaries are REALLY good at simultaneously interpreting during meetings, but they aren't always around when we need/want to talk to people on the street, in stores or on the bus. We just need to spend more time studying Russian in our down time.

All in all, we can't complain. We have running water, rugs on the floor, decent food, an air conditioner in our bedroom that we hope works in the summer, email & Skype, a new-found appreciation for what we had at home, dedicated missionaries, and most of all, the gospel. We are truly blessed.

One Month in Russia

Happy Mother's Day! Russians celebrate it a different day, so there were no Primary children in church today singing sweetly and/or embarrassing their mothers.

We've now been in Barnaul a month and have learned a lot. I thought I'd list the things that are really different from home and tell how we're adjusting. For the most part we've enjoyed it. Hope you enjoy these new insights:

Clocks. Besides being a half a day different from Salt Lake, they use a 24-hour clock. Of course, that's only noticeable on digital clocks. It's really weird to roll over and look at the clock during the night and see 0:02 (2 minutes after midnight.)

Bottles of vanilla vs. powdered vanilla. It took us quite a while to find vanilla, but now that we know to look for the packets instead of bottles, we can find it easily--if the store stocks it. The only problem is that we've gotten several different answers as to the equivalent, all the way from one drop of liquid vanilla is equal to one gram (the size of the packet) to 1 tsp. equals a packet to "I just guess" or whatever.

Brown sugar as we know it vs. granulated brown sugar. The big benefit is that it doesn't go hard. The flavor is milder. Dave thought it made the chocolate chip cookies sweeter. I think it's that the brown sugar granules are big and don't dissolve into the batter and that adds a little crunch to the cookies. Either way, the cookies are different but good.

Powdered sugar vs. slightly granulated powdered sugar. It works, but frosting doesn't have quite the same smooth texture--it's slightly crunchy. It also comes in flavors like chocolate. Mostly it comes in small packets, enough to lightly dust the top of a cake, so we were excited to find one store that sells it in 1/2 pound packages. We won't say how much it costs but it is more than a 2 pound bag at home.

Ground spices vs. whole cloves or allspice berries and a hammer. Interesting results.

Chocolate chips vs. chocolate bars and a knife. We've learned that freezing the chocolate bar and then hitting it on the counter produces big chunks and lots of little chocolate splinters. It's easier just to cut it into small pieces with a knife.

Campbell's Soup vs. creative cooking. I know it's healthier to make your own sauces, but sometimes you just plain need the familiar flavors of comfort food. I keep trying new things. I've told the missionaries they're my guinea pigs, and so far they've finished off EVERYTHING we've fixed for them, claiming it's delicious. I'm glad Sr. couples aren't limited in their internet use, since we often look for recipes there. We're also grateful for our computers and a very quick internet connection. By the way, if you have any quick, easy recipes with ingredients ALL from scratch (i.e., nothing like taco seasoning or a salad dressing), especially cookies/snacks and main dishes, please send them to me at arlinejh@gmail.com.

Rules for young missionaries vs. Sr. couples. Different responsibilities and situations, hence some of our rules are different. For example, it's ok for us to send and receive personal emails from friends and family--we'll read every email and letter. Just understand that we might not be able to respond right away. We can also have people come and visit. (Hint hint. Changing 13 time zones isn't really all that hard and it only takes a week or two to adjust)

Maple syrup vs. homemade fruit syrups. No syrup and no Mapleline, which is fine with us. They have really good fruit juices here that are easy to make into delicious syrups.

Green bananas vs. a day away from being overripe. It's a good thing the Elders love banana bread and so much and wolf down all we make.

Convenience foods vs. everything completely from scratch. Bummer, we even have to grate our own cheese :) and there's no such thing as sliced meats for sandwiches. The biggest problem is that there are no instant mashed potatoes and Dave has a favorite bread recipe that calls for potato flakes.

No car vs. public transportation. Not a problem We're about a half a block from a bus stop at the end/beginning of a bus line, so when we go anywhere we can always find a seat. We can take public transportation just about anywhere, be it a bus, a minivan, a trolley car or electric bus. They come by every few minutes and pretty much cover the whole city. There's no such thing as a transfer where you only pay once and can change to a different bus if needed. Here you pay every time you get on. However, bus fare is less than 50 cents and the trolley car and electric bus are even cheaper. Dave found a neat website that shows where each bus is along the route at any given time. That will come in very handy in the winter--we can check it and then run out just in time to climb on the bus and not have to wait in the cold. Of course there are taxis as well.

No ice maker or even ice cube trays vs. putting 1/2 empty water bottles in the freezer overnight. In the morning we just add water. It lasts for a couple of hours. Those of you who know Dave well know how hard that must be on him. Those of you who don't, well, suffice it to say that we remodeled our kitchen a few years ago because our ice maker broke.

Grandkids vs. tears. We look at pictures and blogs. A lot. And treasure our Skype calls for Mother's Day.

When I started this I thought it would be a fairly short post, but as I got going I realized how much we've learned in the past month. Tune in again mid-week for more!

Backtracking

As promised, here's some info about our trip to Russia.

We got an early start the Monday after General Conference and Jeff got up to take us to the airport (thanks Jeff for getting up at 5:30). Here we are at the airport with everything we thought we'd need for 18 months. It looks like a lot, but we'll need all that--really! At least we think we will. We will be buying Siberian winter outer wear (coats, hats, boots, scarves) here in the fall. I folded up my U/U fleece blanket and put it in a pillow case and tucked it in a suitcase. When we got to Moscow and the weight allowances were less than for international flights, I took it out of the suitcase and carried my "pillow"--an acceptable additional carry on! It's been used a lot since we got here and it lets the American Elders know where our loyalty is, so I'm glad we brought it.

We had a full and very bumpy ride to Atlanta. We were concerned about our tight connection for our flight to Moscow, but made it just fine. It was both a relief and a disappointment when we got close to the gate and started hearing people speak Russian--a relief that we made it to the right gate in time but a disappointment when we realized we were hearing Russian but not understanding ANY of it. We wish we'd had more time to learn more Russian before we left. Fortunately that plane wasn't very full and we could change seats and stretch out and sleep, as much as you can stretch out with two seats each on a row. Dave stayed on our exit row (thanks MJ) and I moved across the plane to an empty row. Anyway, it's amazing how time "flies" when you change 13 time zones! (Still, it was a long overnight flight.)

We arrived in Moscow and were taken to the American Embassy where we arranged for second passports to be used for our visas every three months. As I said in my "Busted" post, we need to keep our passports with us at all times, and they need to send our passport to Finland for visas, so a second passport is required and legal. Then we got a brief tour of the Church mission offices in Moscow and were dropped back off at the airport where we had a 6 1/2 hour wait for our flight to Novosibirsk. Because we checked in so early, we got the exit row--again. About 45 minutes before our flight, a welcome sight showed up--a Sr. Couple who spoke English! It was McCauleys, the office couple in our mission. We'd talked to them several times on the phone and through emails and felt like we knew them. Then we got a little sleep on our 5-hour flight before we landed about 6:00 am. This was our second night in a row of trying to sleep on a plane.

President Trejo met our flight, took us to a nice hotel about a block from the mission offices and told us to get some sleep. Our room had blackout shutters and we were able to sleep very well. That night we had dinner with the Trejos and McCauleys and then got briefed with a mountain of information of what we needed to know. They said we seemed MUCH more alert than most arriving missionaries. When we told them we'd taken Ambien to sleep on the plane to Moscow, they said that was a good idea--they took sleeping pills after they arrived instead of sleeping on the way.

The next day they put us on the train and we arrived in Barnaul and you know the rest!

Open House

Yesterday the branch hosted an open house to celebrate that the Church has been in Barnaul 10 years. The actual translation is "open doors" rather than open house. There were several people who came to check things out. We saw a lot of new people, but then we've only been here three Sundays and a lot of people still look new! There was even a Barnaul City official who came to see what was going on. I guess he approved because we didn't get shut down. :) We didn't see any of the guests from yesterday back again today, but there was someone who couldn't make it yesterday who came to our meeting today, and the Elders have several new contacts to make. Last night's program was similar to today's Fast and Testimony Meeting, with members spontaneously talking about what the Church means to them in their lives. The main difference was that they had a variety of tasty Russian treats after. We hope some good comes from that.

Now to backtrack a little bit. Our first time to church was a little unnerving. To get to the building we walked along the side of a big apartment building and around down a little alley behind it. Then it opened up to this:


Then we went around to the back of that building to the front door of the church (and only door except for emergency exits that wouldn't cut it with OSHA because access is through closets full of stuff).

Inside on the ground level there is the coat room, restrooms and chapel. Here's the chapel before the chairs were set up:
There's also a second story with 5 classrooms, 2 offices and a kitchen down this hall:

It's not very big, but it meets their needs for now. There are plans for a new building. We don't know when that will be ready. They're hoping to have more members to help fill it up. Right now we average around 50-55 at Sacrament Meeting each week. We also have activities throughout the week in the evenings--Family Home Evening for singles on Monday, English Club on Tuesday and Thursdays, Seminary and Institute on Wednesdays, and game night (soon to be Sports Night and held outside as the weather warms up) on Saturdays. They call it English Club because according to Russian law we can't call it English Class because we aren't certified teachers.

A few people have reminded me we didn't post anything about our trip over. I'll try to do a short post mid-week about it. Nothing exciting, just travel, so you won't miss much if you don't read it. By the way, I got some pictures from our service project and added three of them to the Easter post. If you're interested, you can go to that post and look at them.

This week's new experiences in Russia: The Elders took us shopping for some things we couldn't seem to find in the stores. We discovered why. We went to the drugstore to get vitamin C, calcium and fish oil capsules. They had the vitamin C and calcium, but we had to go to a different drugstore for the fish oil. Then we went to the optical shop to buy contact solution, to the cosmetic store for facial moisturizer, to a shop that sold clocks and watches for an alarm clock. However, when we needed to get a duplicate key made, we went to a shop that makes keys and repairs shoes.