In Russia they don't worry about taxes. When employers offer to pay someone a certain wage, that's what they get. The employers then pay taxes, but nothing is taken out of a person's paycheck. People don't file or get refunds or have to pay extra. In stores and restaurants there's no additional tax added onto a bill. It's all included in prices. Simple. But no one really has any idea of how much money goes to the government.
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Yesterday and today we got to watch General Conference. The Church sends DVDs with the various sessions in Russian and English and it takes this long to get them to us. The Russians watched Conference in the main room and those wanting to watch in English went into the smaller room. Two Russians who speak pretty good English joined the two American Elders and us. The Russian and Latvian Elders watched with everyone else. Several investigators came. We had a total of 23 different people watching Conference. It's been a nice couple of days.
Kirill and a friend made this flag a while ago. We thought it fit in perfectly with some of the talks--the corners represent the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms, the center is the Celestial Kingdom.
Two weeks ago we stayed up to watch the two morning sessions live (11 pm-1 am in Russia), but didn't get to see the other sessions. We could have watched them later online, but got busy with other mission things and didn't worry about it since we knew we'd be watching them this weekend.
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Since winter is over, we thought this week we'd clear out all our old snowy pictures.
Instead of using strollers on the snow, parents pull their kids around on sleds in the winter. This picture was taken after it started to warm up so this child isn't dressed quite as warmly as some we've seen. The missionaries call these kids "starfish babies" because often they're dressed so snugly that their arms and legs stick straight out and they resemble a starfish and can't really move around much.
No matter how cold it gets, when someone leaves (a missionary getting transferred or someone moves away), we gather at the train station to say goodbye. The best connections for a train from here to Novosibirsk leaves at night around 9-10.
The Томь (Tome) River running by the city freezes over. We've seen tire tracks in the snow, so it freezes pretty thick. Ice fishing on the rivers is very popular in Russia.
There's a small river running through town that doesn't freeze. When we asked why, we were told, "it's magic."
The snow here is gone. It melted just as quickly this year as it did last year. The walkway we could see from our window was a big lake and we wondered how long it would be like that. Every day it got smaller and within about 4 days it was all gone. There are some muddy paths that will take a little longer to dry out, but for the most part, things have melted and dried up.
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