Elena

Happy Pioneer Day!

At church today there was no mention of Pioneer Day or the early days of the Church and the pioneers crossing the plains. There was one brief comment in Relief Society that the Russian members of the church today are modern-day pioneers, but no reference to the early pioneers at all.

Elena

The Elders have been working with Elena for a little while now. We got to sit in on a few meetings with her. At first she seemed really ready to receive the gospel and even set a baptismal date. Then, within a week or so of the scheduled baptism, she backed off and said she needed more time. The next week she suddenly asked when she could be baptized. She realized she knew it was true and that she wasn't being pressured (hmm, does "free agency" sound familiar?), so she shocked the missionaries by asking if she could get baptized the following Saturday.

As many of you know, before someone gets baptized they need to be interviewed by someone other than the missionaries who have done the teaching to make sure they've been taught and understand everything correctly. Usually that's the District Leader, or if the person has been taught by the District Leader, the Zone Leader. Here, because of the distance between cities, the District Leaders are the Zone Leaders. That means Dave gets to do the interview (it's the only time we're considered to be a step above the Zone Leaders--the rest of the time we answer to them). He does his best, but he doesn't have enough Russian, so an Elder from another companionship sits in on the interview and translates. So far, everyone he's interviewed has passed. That means he's two for two.

Elena was baptized yesterday. She was so excited and so ready. She has a strong testimony and will be a great asset to the branch. She's had a rough life and has a sense of maturity about her.

Elder Hansen baptized her. He's performed the last four baptisms here in Barnaul.

She asked Dave to speak at her baptism. He did a great job, in spite of having to pause often so a missionary could translate his comments into Russian. It's hard for us to give talks or teach lessons because we say a phrase and wait for the translator, give another phrase and so on, but that's easier than trying to speak in Russian ourselves!

Here are some pictures from her baptism. In addition to the missionaries and members of the branch who attended there were 5 investigators--that's a lot! This time we had two women who wanted to be photographers more than they wanted to be in the picture, so there were actually two more people attending than are in the picture.

We're excited for Elena, but we're also excited because this is what we're here for!


This week's "only in Russia" tidbit--at least I hope no one else has had to put up with this:
We have a new bed! To understand our excitement, you'd need to have spent time on our old mattress. It was misshapen and more than worn out. To say it sagged is a gross understatement. It would be interesting to take it apart and see inside because it felt like the springs were small and mostly horizontal--like sleeping on a bunch of ridges. We flipped it a couple of times and it would feel a little better for part of a night. We found a mattress that looked like what we wanted and had the Zone Leader talk to the landlady about it. She hemmed and hawed and finally agreed to pick one out herself. Our new mattress was delivered yesterday and is WONDERFUL! It's almost twice as deep and there are no ridges. And much to my delight, it has a daisy print! Last night we felt like we were back in the hotel in Helsinki--it was SO comfortable! (Can you tell how excited I am by all the !?)

These pictures don't do justice to how bad it was:














The Elders carried it down and put it by the dumpsters. It was there when we left this morning but gone when we got home from church. We're guessing someone took it to use at their dacha. They may decide sleeping on the floor is more comfortable than using this mattress!