Home Alone and Halloween

This week was rather unnerving when we realized we would be the only missionaries in our city for a few days. Elder Harrison was transferred to the mission office and his companion, Elder Terry, went with him to pick up a brand new missionary. They stayed at the mission home for a few days for training. Elder Capps went on visa, so his companion, Elder Marcy, stayed in Novosibirsk with another missionary whose companion was also on visa. That left us to run things. Alone. Just the two of us. With no Russian skills. For the most part that meant we didn't do much since we can't carry on too many conversations, but we still had English Club on Thursday night. We had asked the people in the advanced class to help us run things. We came up with the bright idea of doing "stump the experts" with them as the panel (we didn't use those words because we didn't want to scare them). We were there as back up. We started the way we usually start our class, with homophones and idioms, and then turned the time over to the group to ask our panel questions. Things went well, but it was a relief to have it over.

At least we thought it was over. Sunday night we had a fireside at our home. The first person to show up was an investigator and her 7-year-old grandson who speak no English. None. And they were 40 minutes early. And the missionaries were 10 minutes late. Although it was a little awkward at first, we muddled through with our usual survival skill--smiles. We ended up with more people in our home for the fireside than we had at church today! Dave gave a good talk on the First Vision with some great insights. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and especially the visiting and food after.

HALLOWEEN

Several people have asked if Russians celebrate Halloween. In short, the answer is no. However, as if often the case in Russia, American influence is felt everywhere.

One young man in the branch, Kirill, LOVES Halloween, at least the yucky, gory part. He decided that FHE should be a Halloween party. He has been planning it out for weeks. He had several people make posters, big and small.

And our favorite one

He wove a spider web out of blue yarn (the small lights aren't anything for Halloween--they're part of the regular lighting in the church).

A few people had costumes, including Elder Holbrook (as a pirate)

Kirill as a Frankenstein/vampire

Sad Sasha and her litter of kittens. We've never seen them before. We think they're strays (who know Sasha).Although they don't celebrate it here, many people have heard about Halloween and wanted to learn more about what we do. We told them about the way kids dress up at school and parade through all the classrooms, as well as going trick or treating at night. Then Kirill got things going with his version of Halloween, Russian style.

There was a little bit of mock trick-or-treating, lots of laughs and candy and fun.

Kirill had a game to see who could turn the missionaries into mummies the fastest.

Elder Capps

Elder Harrison and Elder Terry

Elder Marcy

This week's Russianism:
We thought their bike frames were strangely bulky. That is until we saw one boy take his bike into the apartment building, pop a button on it and fold it in half to fit in the elevator (most of the elevators are too small for a regular bike). Brilliant!