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?