This & That

More bits and pieces this week.

Yuri Gushin drives a BIG van for the Church (if you spent much time in N'sibirsk you'd know how invaluable he is!) All hours of the day and night he picks up new missionaries, drops off departing missionaries, handles luggage, shuttles the missionaries who are going on visa trips between the train or bus station and the airport, provides transportation for the senior couples and the mountains food they'd fixed for a variety of conferences--and that's just what we've seen. There's a lot more behind-the-scenes work we're not ever aware of. He's a great guy. On our visa trip 4 months ago we noticed that he'd shaved his mustache, and asked A) why and B) how long he's had a mustache. He didn't really say why, just that he'd had it for about 25 years. We were told about him before we came to Russia because we have some mutual friends. Yuri's daughter also lives in Utah. We knew he was going to go visit her and be gone for several weeks, but we were still surprised to hear his name at General Conference. Of course, we were pleased to be able to sustain him as a Seventy. We haven't said anything about it until now because we wanted to make sure that Elder Gushin is our Yuri. If you want to see what a Russian Seventy looks like, click here (http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/62265/New-Area-Seventies.html) and scroll down to the third one. Their spelling is a little different, but our spelling is pronounceable. With his mustache he looked like Mario, but now he looks like a Seventy!

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We have a young man in our branch, Kirill, who L.O.V.E.S. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Whenever the missionaries go on visa trips, they know to bring some of them back for him. We've given him Butterfingers and other peanuty-type treats, but he always says he likes Reese's better.

We're always trying to find new and different things to fix for FHE refreshments each week. We can't make some of our favorites because the ingredients are available here. A few weeks ago Dave was looking for some different recipes and found a recipe for no-bake cookies. He checked through the ingredients and saw he could get everything on that particular recipe (it's different than the recipe we usually use) and made them up a few weeks ago. Kirill tried one and promptly named them "Goodbye Reese's" (although he still wants us to bring Reese's back from our next visa trip). He loves it when Dave makes them.

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A few more miscellaneous pictures:

We've told you in the past a little about our visa trips to Helsinki. This is the view out of our hotel room--a very busy (but quiet) bus plaza. We've seen anywhere from 3 to 17 buses there at the same time. Buses are constantly pulling in or out. They enter the plaza on the road at the lower right corner of the picture, circle around the building in the center (there's only foot access on the other side of the building, no road) and exits back at the lower right again. The building on the left is the train station. Usually there are people scurrying around on the plaza.

People always take off their shoes at the door to a home. On Monday evening, our entry way often looks something like this:

or this

Spring is definitely here again. We love the way everything greens up so quickly. It's fun to watch them spruce up the town after a hard winter. Last week we watched them repainting all the crosswalks up and down our street. A couple of days later other workers painted a low fence.

They've also started painting curbs all over town. We have to watch out when we cross the street so we don't step on wet paint.

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We've had another baptism. Pavel (Paul) was baptized a few weeks ago. He was sustained today to team teach Gospel Principles, the Sunday School class for investigators and new members. He and Галя (Galya) will do a great job together.