Barnaul's Birthday Party

Yesterday was the birthday celebration for Barnaul city. They shut
down some streets and had all sorts of festivities such as a parade (mostly with vintage cars), balloons all over--even a lot of the adults carried them, games and activities for kids, skits, and fireworks that night that we could see from our apartment across town. It was fun to be a part of it.

They put these flags out for holidays and celebrations. Usually the flags are white, red, and blue, the colors of the Russian flag, but sometimes they're purple or green or whatever!

This ferris wheel has been up the whole time we've been here, so it wasn't new for the festivities, but they were constantly loading and unloading it. Literally. Riders don't get to go around and around. Each car gets unloaded/reloaded every time it goes around. Never do they let the riders go all the way around without stopping. And that's not just yesterday because there were so many people wanting to ride, it's all the time. I guess to them it's a view, not a ride.

Elder Bowler, excited about his toy for the day

There was an area with a whole bunch of these little battery-engine cars. As far as we could tell, the kids could just get in a ride them around that area, no tickets necessary. There was a lot of silver confetti on the ground and just enough of a breeze to kick it up into the air and make things festive for the kids. There was also a man nearby who was selling bubble guns and he was making lots of bubbles. Those two things combined with little cars made for lots of fun for the kids in that area. In other places there were games for the kids to play, including things like riding a bike on a slalom course between cones. We saw a cotton candy machine and the guy making it just kind of waved the paper cone around, making for very loose, lopsided cotton candy. A little while later we saw another one, but that guy knew what he was doing. With the humidity, the cotton candy was probably pretty messy to eat!

King Hansen, our fearless Zone Leader, with his royal scepter

They put their fire trucks on display and let the kids climb around and play all over the trucks--the Elders called them fire truck jungle gyms. The kids were loving it. We get the impression there isn't much need for fire trucks here, even though you'd think they would because of all the smoking that goes on. However, most of the homes, whether they're apartments or houses, are made of thick cement walls, inside and out. If someone starts a fire by falling asleep with a cigarette, the damage is pretty much limited to just to their furnishings and doesn't spread to other apartments or houses.

We went to see the skit done by an investigator, Marina. Here we are in front of part of the set, Irina, Arline, Marina. At least we think we got the names straight. They're very attractive identical twins.They even got two of the elders to join in the circle dance like many other spectators (No, they're not holding hands--that's the camera angle)

Behind them you can see part of one of the props they helped make for the skit

This week in Russia:
We finally have our new mission president. We were expecting President Peterson to arrive on July 1, but mid-June my nephew Tyler told us we were getting someone else. We hadn't heard anything about a change so we thought Tyler misunderstood. Surprise--he was right! Apparently President Peterson had visa issues, so when the Missionary Department found out, they switched President Peterson's assignment to Arkansas Little Rock. President Gibbons, who was supposed to go to Little Rock, was reassigned to Russia Novosibirsk at the last minute. They announced the change at their farewell. It takes more than a couple of weeks to get a visa to Russia, so one of the senior couples here became the interim president while the Gibbons were getting their visas and changing gears. The Rolfes did a great job before heading back to Irkutsk, which is now part of the Vladivostok mission. Although we never did actually meet them, we emailed and were involved in conference calls with them. They did a lot for the mission in a short time. We will miss them.

We already love the Gibbons. They are very warm, humble, and slid right into place. He even speaks Russian! In his pre-Russia life, President Gibbons was a judge and we recognized him from some training videos. We have been very impressed with both President and Sister Gibbons. We've only met them once . They came to Barnaul for what we called a Meet and Greet session and a quick interview with each missionary. We've also Skyped with President Gibbons twice since then. He brought a lot of new energy to the mission. To a certain extent, it's kind of like a transfer on steroids. Each time we get new missionaries in Barnaul, whether they're new to the mission or just new to Barnaul, there's an increase in excitement and energy. Of course, President Gibbons' "transfer" and the resulting energy will last 3 years, not 6 weeks!

High on a Mountain Top

Warning: Long blog, lots of pictures. Read when you have lots of time or in bits and pieces.

Yesterday was the annual branch party. It's a big affair each year. They spent several weeks planning the activities and trying to get as many people involved as possible, and they did a great job! The theme was "High on a Mountain Top" and the basic idea for all our activities was building unity. Артём (pronounced Artie-yome) was in charge and for weeks he's been telling us that we would have the activity, no matter the weather. I think he cursed it, because it rained off and on and was cold (low 50s) all day. But everyone was prepared with umbrellas and warm clothes. We stayed dry and warm, partly thanks to the alpaca sweaters we got from Brad.

We had a little problem understanding where it was going to be held. Just before we left to catch a tram to meet up with everyone, we found out we weren't supposed to TAKE the tram, just meet at the tram stop that was a 15-minute walk from our home. We walked over and saw a lot more people than we expected. Dave thinks there were about 45 people there. Considering we get around 50-55 people to church on Sundays, that's a pretty good turnout! There were several people we didn't recognize. Some were less active members, investigators, and a few were friends of members. When everyone they were expecting had arrived, we all walked across the street, down a dirt road, past dachas (small homes/huts with prolific gardens), over the river and through the woods until we arrived at the designated place. (The "river" was a ditch they were digging for a water line.) It was about a 20-minute walk.

The adventure begins

Friends: Zina, Arline and Tatiana

We stopped at one of the highest places in the area, but in reality little more than a bit of a hill. Someday we'll have to explain to them what a mountain really is! The area was totally undeveloped--some of the paths were double rutted (wide enough for a car), but many were only walking paths. There were no buildings of any sort, no water, no electricity.

Our "mountain top" for the day

Weeks ago we had been divided into 4 teams. Each team was given a name (broom, tornado, something about the beautiful earth, and ours was torn sneaker). We had enough time to meet and plan several things in advance: a statement about our team name--ours was "even with a hole in the shoe we can still run to victory"; a team flag--Anya, the Lord of the Rings artist, was on our team and she made the flag; make a bow and arrow (Dave did ours and it was great, especially considering the fact that we didn't know how to go buy anything so he did it with things we had around the home and some branches, and he even had an arrow tip and feathers, both made from a milk carton), and various food assignments.

Once we gathered and got settled in, the first activity was to shoot the bow and arrow each team had made. One of the elders didn't have a string, so he used his tie for the string. Their arrow didn't fly very far.
Each team then decorated a space in the forest, something to do with the team name. We had a series of games/activities/skits interspersed with spiritual thoughts by each team. One game was a type of relay race and we won that. Go Sneakers! Each team was given a song (different songs for different teams) and a word (prayer, prophet, love--ours, and Book [of Mormon]) and they had to rewrite the words to the song to incorporate that word. The songs were Russian folk songs that we weren't familiar with, and of course the two of us couldn't participate in rewriting the words or singing, so we got to act it out. Dave was the young man leaving on a mission and Arline was his girlfriend who missed him. We dreamed of each other, wrote letters, and then when he came home from his mission, she left on hers! All in all, we did pretty well, especially considering we only had 6 people on our team show up. Fortunately, numbers didn't matter.

High on our mountain top, flags and all

Getting ready for the watermelon relay

Our team: Liliya, Arline, David, Anya, Sasha and Lena
Anya, Lena and Liliya

There was also a lot of good food.

Throughout the day as a team did something special--won a game, shot their arrow the farthest, whatever--they were given an envelope with something in it. At the end we were told to open the envelopes and there were puzzle pieces that we tried to put together, first as individual teams, then as a big group. I think it was a picture of a cake from the branch activity a couple of years ago. Then they brought out this beautiful cake and we all got to eat ourselves sick on it.
Everyone enjoyed it.
They passed out small banners to all who attended. In case you can't read it, it says:

Церковь Иисуса Христа
Святых последних дней
Бапнаул
Высоко ра Горе
2011
www.mormon.orgAnd in case you still can't read it, it says:

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Barnaul
High on a mountain
2011
www.mormon.org

At one point a car drove past us and a few minutes later we heard some gunshots, and kept hearing them sporadically throughout the rest of the day. We thought maybe someone was doing some target shooting, but were told they were training for a biathlon. We remembered that on the way in we passed several people who were finishing a cross-country run, complete with the ski pole-type walking sticks.

Russians aren't very good at picking up after themselves--even they say that--and usually when people have gatherings in the forest or along the river, they leave all their trash behind, like this:
I'm pleased to say that our group cleaned up not only our mess, but this garbage that was there when we arrived as well.

After nearly 6 hours we were in sort of a fog--literally. It wasn't raining, but we could feel moisture as we walked around (we got home and checked the weather report--100% humidity!) It looked like the party was about to break up, so we started walking back. Since we were the first ones to leave, someone asked if we knew how to get back and we thought we did. However, we missed a turn and things didn't look too familiar. We kept heading in the direction we knew was home and eventually got there! It was a long, fun day.

We were impressed with all the work that went into this activity. It didn't have all the glitz a similar production would have in Salt Lake, but it was a lot of fun and there was a lot of time and effort put into planning and pulling this off.

Update: Anya has been called as YW President. Since she never went through the Young Women program, she's feeling a little overwhelmed. However, her sweet nature will get her through as she loves the two Young Women in the branch.

This week's Russianism:
The food our team supplied was cake, decorated to look like two sneakers.

Lena and her cake

It was very tasty, so Arline went over to our team leader to ask who made it. Instead of asking who made it (кто), she accidentally asked what (что) it was. They all thought it was hilarious. No, our Russian isn't improving much. However, last week at English Club, we gave them a choice of what we would discuss that night--things that Russia does well/US does well, or answer some of our questions from our Russian studies. They wanted to help us with our Russian. We asked questions like what's the difference in the four ways to say here. Or how can "da" be used 3 ways: yes, and, but. We did learn something new--apparently it can also be used to say no in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, the answer to our questions that night was often along the lines of "yeah, that's how we do it" rather than something we could understand. See why we're struggling with Russian?

Birthday Party!

Today's post has a few pictures some of you may find a little redundant. However, some of the missionaries said they wanted to share today's blog with their families and most missionary moms are hungry for pictures of their sons, so please bear with it.

Elder Liljenquist (one of our elders) had a birthday yesterday. We decided to celebrate and throw a surprise party for him on P-day, the Wednesday before his birthday since that gave us time to play, rather than try to figure out how to do a quick cake and ice cream moment on Saturday. All of the elders except Elder Liljenquist were in on the surprise, and Tuesday night at English Club two women, Lena and Lillya, found out about it and wanted to come, so we had a nice group--as many as we could semi-comfortably fit around the kitchen table. Unfortunately Elder Hansen was in Novosibirsk for Zone Leader Conference so he missed the fun and games and food.

When Elder Liljenquist arrived at our apartment we told him there was something we wanted to show him in the other room. He walked in and saw this:

Roughly translated that says "Happy birthday Elder Liljenquist"

Liliya had made him a birthday poster. He was a little confused. We all shouted "surprise!" and he was even more confused. It's one thing to have a surprise party ON your birthday, but we were 3 days early, so it took him a moment to figure out what was happening. From there on out it was all fun.

Lena, Elder Liljenquist & Liliya

We fixed what we'd been told were some of his favorite foods. We started with hamburgers. Since the "buns" they have here are more like small dry rolls, Dave has been experimenting for a few weeks with different recipes to come up with a nice, soft hamburger bun. He succeeded and they were great! The burgers were cooked on the stove since we don't have a BBQ grill. We were very happy to find sliced bacon--until last week we'd only seen slabs of bacon in the meat case that we'd have to slice ourselves. We weren't able to have lettuce or pickles, but had the other traditional burger toppings, including mustard (from Helsinki--mustard isn't available here). Dave also found a recipe for baked beans and a yellow cake, and cut up a watermelon and a torpedo melon (kind of a little bit similar to sort of like a type of a white cantaloupe). We also had grapes, lots of chips and, as always for the missionaries, сок, some of the great Russian fruit juice. They all seemed to enjoy the food. It was the first time Liliya had ever eaten a hamburger.

After we stuffed ourselves we had a paper airplane contest.

L-R: Elder Bowler, Elder Peterson, Elder Liljenquist, Elder Fitzgerld, Liliya, Lena, Elder Ortner

L-R: Elder Bowler, Elder Peterson, the guest of honor, Elder Fitzgerld, Liliya, Lena, Elder Ortner

Elder Bowler was the winner with Elder Fitzgerald coming in a close second. You can see the winning design, surrounded by the also-rans.

We broke out a new set of Uno cards and Elder Fitzgerald taught us how to play spoons.

Clockwise from the top: Elder Liljenquist, Elder Bowler, Liliya, Elder Ortner, Lena, Elder Fitzgerald, Sister Holbrook

Clockwise: Elder Fitzgerald, Sister Holbrook, Elder Liljenquist, Elder Bowler, Liliya, Elder Ortner, Lena.

By then the food had settled and we had room for cake and ice cream and Lena's cookies.

Elder Liljenquist is now 21.

L-R Elder Fitzgerald, Elder Ortner, the back of Elder Peterson's head, Lena, Liliya, the (almost) birthday boy

By the way, ice cream comes in a plastic sleeve here. They usually serve slices of ice cream--the picture on the package is of slices, not scoops.
Then it was back to the living room for more games. They had fun playing a Pictionary card game until it was time for them to leave for their appointments. During the approximately 5 hours they were here they also each got in their hour on the computer for checking emails, and writing home and to the mission president. That's why the elders aren't all in every picture.

Elder Liljenquist thought he was going to go bowling on his P-day. He didn't seem too disappointed that we changed his plans.

It was a lot of fun. It's the first birthday we've had to celebrate since we got here and probably the only time we'll be able to pull off a surprise party. We'll celebrate others as they come along, but we won't have the element of surprise again.

FYI: We were told last week that our P-day is changing to Mondays.

This week's Russianism:
Before we left on our mission, our son Brad set up two things for us that have been very helpful to us here--this blog site and something called TextFree on the iPad. We've been surprised how nice it's been to be able to send and receive texts in Russia. Here are a couple of examples of how it's been useful: When Brad and Heather left for the hospital to deliver Hadley, Brad texted us. That let us know to plug in Magic Jack and stay close to the phone. We were able to get his call minutes after she was born. Without the text, it is likely we would have been out running errands. Another time we wanted to transfer some money, but were asked for an access code. Dave typed the information into the computer in Siberia, and got a notice that the bank would call our home with code number. Dave quickly texted Jeff, who got the phone call from the bank in Salt Lake, texted back to Siberia where Dave typed the code in, and the money was sent to Albuquerque. All this had to be done within five minutes before the session expired and without tying up the phone. It wouldn't have worked without the texts.

Lord of the Rings

A while back we told you about Anna, a new convert. We have since found out she prefers to be called Anya.

One time when Anya was in our apartment, we told her she was famous and showed her the post (June 5) about the dinner we had with her parents, that we'd said how wonderful her Lord of the Rings book is and how we wished we'd gotten some pictures of it to share. Recently she brought her book to a meeting so we could get those pictures of it, so today the blog is all about her amazing book.

As a reminder and for those who missed the first blog, here's what we said about it previously: We found out Anna is a BIG Lord of the Rings fan. She read the three books in Russian, and then she and a friend tried to get copies in English because they wanted to read them in the language they were originally written in. When they couldn't get the books, they found them on the internet, printed them out and spent 6 months making their own book of over 700 pages. She made a fabric cover for it, complete with a silver tree embroidered on the front. It was the first time she had ever embroidered anything but it looked professionally done. She said she took the pattern from the tunic of a warrior in a scene in one of the movies. They drew maps and dipped them in tea to make them look like parchment. They hand numbered the pages. They even included pictures from some of the movies. Then they sewed the pages together by hand. It was AMAZING! The funny thing is after all that they tried reading it in English but couldn't because there were too many words they couldn't understand or find the translation for.

Even if you're like me and not a Lord of the Rings fan, you can't help but be impressed by all the work they put into this.

The cover

They glued the bookmark ribbon into the binding.

Table of ContentsTitle pages

They didn't have a color printer, so when they found color pictures they wanted to add, they planned where to put them and tried to guess how much room they would need and left space when they were printing out the text. Sometimes it got a little tricky because they needed to match up pages that had words they didn't understand! Then they took the printed pages to someone who could print the pictures and added them in. They did an amazing job and all the pictures look like they were part of the original print job, not added in later.

The maps were a major time commitment. They did a great job. All the maps look like they were done by one person. We asked Anya about it and she said that their styles are similar and so it looked like one person's work.

They spent SO much time on this, and they loved every minute of it!

This week's Russianism:
Dave needed some rubbing alcohol for his hearing aid but we haven't seen anything in the stores that we thought might be rubbing alcohol. We asked our pharmacist friend in our English Club group what the Russian name for it was. She didn't know. Dave asked her what they use to sterilize the skin before giving a shot. A couple of class members insisted that vodka could be used. The pharmacist didn't know the name of what is used but wrote the chemical name for it for us. They use hydrogen peroxide to sterilize! We hope we never have to go to a hospital here.