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.