Transfers

Sorry for the delayed post this week. I guess delayed isn't the right word. Skipped is more like it. We lost internet access, and it's kind of hard to post without it! I kept thinking we'd be able to get a post done--tomorrow. They kept saying the same thing about our internet--tomorrow. Oh well. Since this is so long you can just think of it as two weeks of posts wrapped into one.

Transfers happen regularly--every 6 weeks, to be exact. Sometimes things get a little crazy around transfer time. Since we arrived four transfers ago, 10 missionaries have left Barnaul (out of 3 sets of elders). A few transfers ago we lost 4 elders. One left on Monday because he was going home; two left on Tuesday/Wednesday; a brand new missionary (we've been asked not to call them greenies anymore) and his trainer arrived on Thursday, another arrived sometime in there, and one elder stayed a couple of extra days since his new companion was on a visa trip--he would have gotten to his new city and not had a companion and we were short an elder, so he stayed; and a new elder who had been delayed because of a minor health issue arrived the next week. All the missionaries and some of the people from the branch go see the departing missionary(s) off. Of course, as many missionaries as possible greet the incoming ones. It seemed like we were at the bus station every day all week for that transfer, either seeing missionaries off or greeting the new ones. Oh, that must be because we almost were! We also have a farewell dinner before they leave and try to make sure the new ones have food in their apartment so they've got something to eat until they can get to the store (often they arrive at bedtime). Not only is it time consuming and the cost adds up to make all those trips, and a hassle because departures are often early in the morning, it's very disruptive to missionary work, but it's fun to meet new missionaries.

Whenever we've gone to the bus station to see the missionaries off, we've felt sorry for them having to pack everything up and have secretly been gleeful that we won't have to do that until we head home. Shh--don't tell them. They think it's an adventure!

We find out about transfers on the Friday night before they actually take place. Usually they leave on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on where they're going. With the distance the missionaries have to travel, sometimes it takes a couple of days to get from a city on one side of the mission to a city on the other side. Now that the two easternmost cities have been moved to the Vladivostok mission, transfers will be a little easier.

There was a bit of an usual twist to this round of transfers, and we found out about part of it earlier than the Friday before. We've decided that one thing the Lord must be trying to teach us is that comfort zones are for wimps. Just as we were starting to feel a little bit acclimated and that we were able to get around in Barnaul (the clerks in our neighborhood stores recognize us and don't expect us to answer them in Russian, we've made friends with many of the bus conductors, and we just found a great hardware store and mall on the other side of town and know how to get there now), we got transferred, something VERY rare for senior couples. A few weeks ago President Gibbons called and asked us if we would consider a "slight" change of assignment. He wants Dave to be the branch president in Novokuznetsk. Since the town is several hours away from Barnaul, that means a transfer, something we weren't expecting to have on our mission. Oh well, at least we weren't asked to change companions! We will still be doing the same things as a senior couple that we did in Barnaul, but Dave will have the added responsibilities of running the branch and he has the option of having Arline fill in with another leadership role as needed.

Novokuznetsk is a little colder and wetter and a higher elevation (1300 ft. vs. 400 ft.) than Barnaul. The city is about 1/2 the size and the branch is about 1/3 as big. There are two sets of young missionaries. At this point, that's about all we know. One nice thing about having a 2-week notice was that we had a chance to be able to learn how to say Новокузнецк before we got there, so we won't make fools of ourselves by stumbling over trying to pronounce it. We do that enough with other Russian words. It's said No-vuh-kooz-nyetsk, almost like it looks, but it's a little difficult for our old Amerikanski tongues to pronounce without a little stuttering over the strange sounds.

One big problem we faced was that we couldn't talk about it to anyone for a week. We had SO many questions, but President Gibbons left for a conference in Lithuania right after he talked with us, so we spent the next week and a half worrying. However, the zone leader in Novokuznetsk found us a nice apartment and everything worked out. We're here and getting settled and have internet again! So we've moved, but our addresses stay the same since everything goes through the mission office.

Now we have a much better understanding of why they keep transfer information so secret until the weekend before. After President Gibbons talked to us about the change, we struggled to keep our focus on Barnaul up until the last minute, rather than to try to wrap things up early and start thinking about what was ahead in Novokuznetsk. In addition, in some ways we felt a little like lame ducks once it was announced in church.

Last Sunday was an emotional day when we said goodbye at church. We were surprised by how close we'd gotten in such a short time to people we mostly couldn't understand. They were so friendly and jabbered away whether or not we could figure out what they were saying to us. We're grateful we didn't know we were going to leave after such a short time--we would have been more reluctant to put down roots and we would have missed out on some wonderful friendships.

They wanted to throw a farewell party for us on Monday night for FHE. These pictures are all from that night, but we're having problems with the captions. Lots of people showed up. There was the usual short spiritual thought as part of FHE, we had a chance to bear our testimonies, and then the festivities began. We played a group game (picture #1), they sang several songs, sometimes to us (performing) and sometimes specifically for us (about friends saying goodbye--picture #2: Vera, Tatiana, Larisa, Oksana, Anya and Liliya). A couple who has done some exhibition dancing performed for us (picture #3) and then they had everyone get up and dance. One older sister kept trying to get the missionaries to dance with her instead of with each other. It was so funny to watch because she didn't want to take no for an answer, but they were all so good about sticking to missionary rules. The Russians just wanted everyone to dance, and male/female couples weren't a requirement (picture #4, Liliya and Anya). The beat of their music was different, kind of between a waltz and a polka. They dance to it just fine--a waltz step with a quick hop in the middle--but it wasn't what we're

used to and we didn't last too long on the dance floor. At the end they gave us a book they had all signed. It is about this general area, with lots of pictures of the Altai mountains. Fortunately, it's in both Russian and English. Lots of fun and hugs and tears. We will miss the people here.

There are people and things that are hard for us to leave behind. Liliya (last picture) has been a long-time investigator and was baptized the day after we left. There were two more baptisms scheduled for this month and two more in October, and of course we got quite attached to the members we've talked about in past blogs. We have seen so much growth in the branch recently. The last two weeks have been a balancing act to keep nurturing while gently pulling up the roots we had just put down. Before Anya's baptism we told her we'd be here for more than a year from now--she was a particularly hard one to say goodbye to. A few people were clearly disappointed--more than once we heard the comment, "but you said you'd be here for a year and a half" from people at church and in English Club.

We had a few ideas "stockpiled" for future blogs, so if you continue to see things about Barnaul, don't get confused. We really will be in Novokuznetsk, but from time to time we may use pictures and stories that happened before we moved, especially in the middle of winter when we don't plan to venture out any more than absolutely necessary. It will also be interesting for us to see if some of the things we've seen are unique to Barnaul or are true in other places in Russia as well.

This week's Russianism:

They don't put notices in our mailboxes, except for bills. Instead they tape notices to the door of the building. That is fine for those who easily read Russian without needing a dictionary to translate. If the missionaries are around, we ask them to translate it. If not, we'll laboriously write down the letters and then go to the apartment and do our best to figure out what it says. Usually the notices are posted the day the water/electricity gets shut off. One afternoon we saw such a note. We recognized the word water and assumed it meant the hot water was turned off, since we hadn't had any hot water that day. The missionaries in our sector later told us they didn't have hot water either, and it was turned off for another 8 days. No one knows why. A few days after that there was no cold water. No notice. Arline realized it in the shower after she'd used up the cool water in the pipes. The morning we left Barnaul Dave saw a notice that we figured out said that the electricity would be turned off, so we hurried and moved all the heavy items down before the elevator stopped working. However, it was still running when we left 4 hours later.

We've been told that Novokuznetsk is a smaller city and things are cheaper there. Not only are they cheaper, they don't have as many amenities, including people to service hot water tanks, so no tanks are available. That means we'll have to deal with having the hot water turned off the same way the Elders do. I guess we'll get a better idea of what life in Russia is really like!