Helsinki and Christmas Eve

The Christmas season is Arline's favorite time of year. That may be why we're enjoying being able to stretch the holidays out!

First, our visa trip.

Visa trips are wonderfully refreshing, and going to Helsinki at Christmas is something we've been looking forward to for a while. We were a little surprised that we didn't see a lot of Christmas decorations at first, and especially no big decorated trees in the park, and none of the Christmas kiosks we'd been told about. Many of the bare tree branches in the park were wrapped in little lights, but there were no big evergreens. However, the longer we were there, the more we saw. The day we left we went into a couple of malls (there are LOTS of malls in downtown Helsinki), and those were well decorated. Of course, many homes had the little European window Christmas trees--the inverted V with 7 lights. And we saw one lady in the traditional green robe with candles on her head. Even the fact that she was on a billboard didn't detract from the Christmasy feel!

We kept forgetting to take the camera when we went out so we didn't get pictures of the Christmas decorations. Guess we're not really in the tourist mode.

The weather in Helsinki was great. There was a little rain/snow one day. We really enjoyed how warm 35 F is. Before we left we checked the forecast and it said it was going to be 20-50 degrees warmer in Helsinki than in Novokuznetsk, depending on the time of day. We took our Utah winter coats and gloves and left the long johns home.

The shortest day of the year hit while we were in Helsinki. The official sunrise was at 9:23, although it didn't really get light for more than an hour after that, kind of like in Novokuznetsk. Sunset was at 3:12 and it was fully dark before 4:00 pm. Daylight in Novokuznetsk was a little longer, but not much. This picture was taken from our apartment window at 10:00 am a few days before we left. Yay--the darkest days of our mission are behind us now!As usual, going to the temple was wonderful. Because there are no LDS temples* in Russia, sometimes we forget just how much it means to us. It is the highlight of our visa trips.
*They call their Russian churches with the gold onion domes "temples" so we can't really say there are no temples in Russia.

Now on to other holiday stuff.

We got back from our visa trip on Christmas Eve day. The branch members had planned a nice Christmas party, and they decorated the church while we were gone. There was a program with scriptures, stories, lots of music, and of course food.

Vladimir did a nice job of the scripture readings

They had invited lots of people and we ended up with more at the party than we usually have for church. Most of these people are members or investigators, but some of them we'd never seen before and we haven't seen them since, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. This is most of the people who were there. We have a couple of camera-shy people and a couple of photographers.

They had as much fun undecorating as they did at the party!

Yulia and Kirill playing with the props

Elder Terry was like this for about as long as it took the shutter to
click; Elders Kelly, Marcy and White nearly dropped him.

Elder Terry

I don't know if Elder White was disappointed we took the decorations
down or if he was being The Grinch

Then on Christmas Day the elders came to our home to eat and open their gifts.

Elder White (top left), Elder Marcy (top right)
Elder Terry (bottom left) and Elder Kelly (bottom right)

Elder Kelly's birthday was the next week and he got to open more gifts!

In Novokuznetsk they have lots of little Christmas lights up. Year 'round. They're really decoration lights. Whatever, we like them and will continue to enjoy them.

The Russians celebrate another holiday this time of year--the Old New Year. It falls on January 13 or 14, depending on the year. At first we thought this was saying goodbye to last year, but we found out that they celebrate two new years--one for the Gregorian calendar and one for the Julian calendar that they used to use in Russia. We heard LOTS of popping throughout the evening but didn't see any fireworks. Midnight was quiet. A few people talked about going to parties, but it's a minor celebration. Many government workers have been off for the last two weeks for the holiday season, but will have to go back to work tomorrow.


This week in Russia:
It's really more than just this week, but it is a recent development. Because of the baptism we had last month of a 16-year-old girl, we now need to have a Young Women's program. Guess who gets to head it up. Yup, Arline. She was released as 2nd counselor in Relief Society after just two weeks so she could be called as the YW President (and Counselor, and Adviser, and Secretary, and Personal Progress Leader, and Camp Director, basically everything except to be the young woman--she's a little too old for that). There are two 20-year-olds who are joining in, so that makes things a little easier--the more the merrier, and lessons don't sound so much like a lecture. Unfortunately one of them is moving to Moscow in 3 weeks. Anyway, it's a big change from her usual calling at home--nursery leader. She's learning about the program right along with the Young Women.

3/4 of our "Young Women"