Anastacia

Anastacia (pronounced Ah-nuh-stuh-SEE-uh) came to English Club a few months ago. After a few weeks she had some questions about our beliefs, so the missionaries started teaching her. After receiving most of the missionary discussions she expressed an interest in getting baptized, but said she wanted to wait until she "knew everything" because she didn't want any surprises after her baptism. She also had a two-week study abroad trip planned in London which delayed things even more. This process lasted several months and she worked with 3 sets of missionaries, due to the fact that the missionaries in her area kept getting transferred out every 6 weeks.

Because Anastacia speaks such good English, we were invited to sit in on some of the discussions and some of them were in our home. She liked practicing her English and we liked being able to understand. It was wonderful and we got very close to her.

Then came her promised trip to London. Anastacia contacted the missionaries in London and went to church there. She was amazed at how big the congregation was and thought it was great!

Last Wednesday after she got home she met with the missionaries in our apartment and told them she still wanted to get baptized, but she was going to leave on Monday (tomorrow) and would be gone for two weeks to visit her father. She set her baptismal date for Saturday--three days later! We scrambled to make the arrangements and get the word out. Arline was asked to speak on the Holy Ghost. (I forgot to mention that last week Dave gave a talk on baptism for Elena's baptism.)

She is very fun loving, bubbly and outgoing. We're excited to have her enthusiasm in the branch.

We got a few more pictures than usual this time.

Anastacia with the last set of missionaries who taught her--Elder Fitzgerald from Pleasant Grove (left) and Elder Liljenquist from Tennessee (right)Anastacia and Anya

Anastacia with Lena, a recently returned missionary, Lena's niece Nastia (nickname for Anastacia), and Liliya, a long-time investigator.

Anastacia with two of her favorite people :-)

This was the group picture after the baptism was over. A few people had left by the time we managed to get everyone to pose.

I'm going to take a slight detour from my "only in Russia" comments to end my blog.

We knew before turning in our papers for the mission that we would miss out on some things, but it didn't really sink in until last week how hard it would be on me to be so far away and unavailable when the new grandchildren arrive. As the birth of a granddaughter approached, I started to realize I was feeling a little disappointed to be missing out on all the excitement of welcoming a new family member. Even just trying to figure out how to find out when she was born was a little distressing to me--I wanted to know as soon as it happened, not the next day. Yes we have Magic Jack and email, but we're not always at the apartment where we can be contacted. I didn't say anything to anyone about my feelings, not even Dave. Thursday night at English Club the Lord let me know that in spite of feeling distanced from my family, He knows and cares and sent me three people to confirm that.

Before English Club started, I was in the kitchen at the branch, helping Natasha, someone from our English group (3rd level), with a paper she'd written in English and had asked for help in making it better. She's a pharmacist, and recently we've been asking her a little about Russian equivalents to medicines, like cold remedies and a strong non-prescription pain killer in case Dave gets a kidney stone. Before we started working on her paper she pulled out a note she had written with some information about a private clinic near our home. It touched me that she had gone to the trouble to find a place we could go to easily for medical help if we need it--we had no idea of what to do in case of an emergency other than call the zone leaders. She even added her phone number on the bottom of the page in case we need her help. Russians tend to be very private and don't readily give out personal information, so that was generous of her. A few minutes later Zeena, a sister in the branch, came looking for me to give me some fresh fruit--a small pail of raspberries and blackberries and a slightly larger one with cherries from her garden, and some "good Russian garlic." Before she even had a chance to leave the room, Olga, a lady in another English group (1st level) came in. We've visited with her once in a while. She's very friendly, but has said she's not interested in learning any more about the gospel. She gave me two bottles of delicious jam she had made from wild berries she'd gathered, one raspberry and one strawberry. We hadn't asked for any of these things and they weren't thank you gifts in return for something we had done. The three ladies did them just to be nice, all on the same night at a time when I was in need of their kindnesses. I felt that the Lord is indeed mindful of my concerns over missing out on the birth and he sent me three angels to let me know he's aware of my struggles.
For some of you it may seem like a stretch to say that these three women gave me gifts that were from God, but I had the strong impression the rest of the night and again the next day that that is what it was. I firmly believe the saying that "coincidence is when God wants to remain anonymous." Thursday night was too much of a coincidence--three unexpected gifts were just what I needed when I needed them, and then came a repeated warm assurance. He's compensating us for missing out on some life events by sending extra love our way.

Up until last week, no one had given us anything except the occasional hug. Since then we've also been given a bottle of dried herbs and flowers for tea, more fruit, and today a promise of some raspberry jam. The people here have been so generous now, just when I need it.

By the way, sweet Hadley Jane was born at 11:06 pm on July 26. Mother, daughter and doctor dad (who got to deliver her) are all doing fine. We got to "meet" Hadley through Skype Thursday night and loved feeling like we were a part of things. She is adorable and so sweet. We're looking forward to meeting her in person after we get home. I've taken this picture of her from their blog. That's not plagiarism, that's a proud grandma!





PS I have sent a wish list of "luxury items" to Niki. If you're sending a package and have some extra room in the box, check with her for suggestions (elshortone@gmail.com). She'll coordinate things so we don't get multiples of something we only need one of. She also has our address and mailing instructions.

Elena

Happy Pioneer Day!

At church today there was no mention of Pioneer Day or the early days of the Church and the pioneers crossing the plains. There was one brief comment in Relief Society that the Russian members of the church today are modern-day pioneers, but no reference to the early pioneers at all.

Elena

The Elders have been working with Elena for a little while now. We got to sit in on a few meetings with her. At first she seemed really ready to receive the gospel and even set a baptismal date. Then, within a week or so of the scheduled baptism, she backed off and said she needed more time. The next week she suddenly asked when she could be baptized. She realized she knew it was true and that she wasn't being pressured (hmm, does "free agency" sound familiar?), so she shocked the missionaries by asking if she could get baptized the following Saturday.

As many of you know, before someone gets baptized they need to be interviewed by someone other than the missionaries who have done the teaching to make sure they've been taught and understand everything correctly. Usually that's the District Leader, or if the person has been taught by the District Leader, the Zone Leader. Here, because of the distance between cities, the District Leaders are the Zone Leaders. That means Dave gets to do the interview (it's the only time we're considered to be a step above the Zone Leaders--the rest of the time we answer to them). He does his best, but he doesn't have enough Russian, so an Elder from another companionship sits in on the interview and translates. So far, everyone he's interviewed has passed. That means he's two for two.

Elena was baptized yesterday. She was so excited and so ready. She has a strong testimony and will be a great asset to the branch. She's had a rough life and has a sense of maturity about her.

Elder Hansen baptized her. He's performed the last four baptisms here in Barnaul.

She asked Dave to speak at her baptism. He did a great job, in spite of having to pause often so a missionary could translate his comments into Russian. It's hard for us to give talks or teach lessons because we say a phrase and wait for the translator, give another phrase and so on, but that's easier than trying to speak in Russian ourselves!

Here are some pictures from her baptism. In addition to the missionaries and members of the branch who attended there were 5 investigators--that's a lot! This time we had two women who wanted to be photographers more than they wanted to be in the picture, so there were actually two more people attending than are in the picture.

We're excited for Elena, but we're also excited because this is what we're here for!


This week's "only in Russia" tidbit--at least I hope no one else has had to put up with this:
We have a new bed! To understand our excitement, you'd need to have spent time on our old mattress. It was misshapen and more than worn out. To say it sagged is a gross understatement. It would be interesting to take it apart and see inside because it felt like the springs were small and mostly horizontal--like sleeping on a bunch of ridges. We flipped it a couple of times and it would feel a little better for part of a night. We found a mattress that looked like what we wanted and had the Zone Leader talk to the landlady about it. She hemmed and hawed and finally agreed to pick one out herself. Our new mattress was delivered yesterday and is WONDERFUL! It's almost twice as deep and there are no ridges. And much to my delight, it has a daisy print! Last night we felt like we were back in the hotel in Helsinki--it was SO comfortable! (Can you tell how excited I am by all the !?)

These pictures don't do justice to how bad it was:














The Elders carried it down and put it by the dumpsters. It was there when we left this morning but gone when we got home from church. We're guessing someone took it to use at their dacha. They may decide sleeping on the floor is more comfortable than using this mattress!

Moscow!

Warning: This is a long post, but then we had a long day!

Apparently there are only two flights a day from Helsinki to Moscow (or at least only two the Church uses)--one at 9:00 am and one at 6:30 pm, and there is only one flight from Moscow to Barnaul and it leaves at 10:50 pm, which makes for about a layover of either 4 hours or nearly 12 hours, but that's better than flying to Novosibirsk and then making the 4 1/2 hour trip on a train or bus.

By the time they booked the tickets for our visa trip, there were only seats available on the morning flight out of Helsinki. Rather than sit in the Moscow airport all day, we decided to make use of that time and go to Red Square. We figured that since we haven't found the one in four Russians in Barnaul who speak English like we were promised, they must all be living in Moscow and we would be able to find someone to help us if needed. We tried booking a tour guide for the Kremlin and Red Square, but the one English-speaking guide we knew about wasn't available. We talked with others in the mission and someone told us to go to Red Square, find the lady with the bullhorn and ask for an English tour guide. We were assured that we could easily get there on our own. We were a little worried, but with those promises ringing in our ears, we decided to go experience Moscow!

The Moscow airport is large, with 6 terminals. Three, including the international one, are connected, and the other three are accessible by a shuttle. After wandering around through three terminals and asking several people, we finally found a place to check our carry ons, and followed the signs to the express train into Moscow. Thirty minutes later we joined the rest of the crowd and exited the train. However, the crowd wasn't going to the Metro and we still weren't finding that elusive 25% who speak some English. After wandering around for a VERY long time, often going in circles and going through and around construction, we discovered the entrance to the Metro, one building past where we'd stopped several times before. Yes! At the ticket counter we asked if anyone spoke English. There was a manager at the back of the room who told us in broken English "three stops" and jabbered off something in Russian that we guessed was the name of the stop. We asked for a copy of the Metro map. They seemed surprised. Their attitude seemed to say, "we have them hanging on the wall--why would you want one to carry with you?"

We bought our tickets and took the escalator down. And it went down. And down. And down. It is the longest single escalator we've been on. We asked the Metro lady at the bottom about which train to go on. She didn't speak English but when I said something about Kremlin, she pointed to the right. We went to the right and got on the next train. At the third stop the name started the same as the long word the lady had repeatedly jabbered, so we got off. We tried to figure out which of the MANY exits to use. Finally we started to go out one but stopped and asked the guard "Kremlin?" and he pointed us in the other direction, scooped his arm down and back up and then around to indicate we needed to go under the street and go a little bit more, and smiled. We followed his directions and came out by Red Square!

We walked around a little bit, wandering by some of the many souvenir stands, watching the people, looking at the buildings, and then asked the lady with the bullhorn about English. She sent us to someone else who said there were no English-speaking guides available.

We saw a crowd and went over to see what it was for and got there just in time to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier! It was at a weird time, like 12:25. It was interesting to watch their high kicks and facial expressions.



After that we walked around and took pictures. There are lots of buildings around Red Square and the Kremlin--churches, stores, and other buildings we couldn't figure out what they were. One building went on and on and on and it even looked like it could have been a painted movie set in the distance. Later we discovered it was like a painted movie set. Apparently they were doing some construction or something and put a painted canvas across the front.

We wondered about the onion dome building that we've always seen as part of Red Square. It is St. Basil's Cathedral, not a government building at all. There were lots of people there, and we asked several to take our picture. Russians take pictures of people, not landmarks, so we had several different people take our picture until we got one with all the spires in it! We tried to explain we wanted the whole building, but we still weren't finding people who speak English.

Doing better

It's missing the top of the cross, but as good as we're going to get!
This is the back side of the cathedral.

Although it looks like Dave's sporting a new head of hair in these pictures, that's his neat new hat that keeps his head safe from sunburn.

Then we decided to walk all the way around the Kremlin. We started at the back corner, because that was where we'd gotten to in our wanderings. Did you know the Kremlin is big, as in BIG? We didn't know it until we got halfway around the first side. It's a good thing we had such a long layover! It was a nice day, cool but sunny. The grounds were beautiful. All in all, we enjoyed out time strolling around. We talked about going inside, but decided that without a tour guide we wouldn't know what we were seeing since everything is in Russian (imagine that--all in their language!).

There were several brides and grooms. We found out that they can walk past the ropes at the Tomb--when it isn't time for the changing of the guards of course--and the bride puts her bouquet down in front of the flame, they get their picture taken, and then leave the flowers behind.

After that we were hungry and very thirsty, so we decided to get something to eat. Our biggest problem with eating out in Russia is finding food that we know is safe for us to eat. We decided Sbarros was a good option--it's hard to go wrong with cooked pizza and bottled water. While we were eating it started to rain, so we just took our time and waited out the storm before heading back to the Metro.

We weren't worried about getting back to the express train because we had the name of our stop written down. However, the first lady we went to couldn't read our note. We don't know if she had vision problems, or--more likely--is illiterate, so we got back in line for another ticket booth. After we bought our tickets, someone from behind told us in English how to get tickets. Thanks. When we went to ask him how to know which train to get on, he was gone. We checked maps on the wall and figured out which train going which way was the one we thought we wanted and climbed on board. At least we hoped we'd figured it right. When it stopped at the end of the line and we saw what looked kind of familiar, we were relieved. When we got to the escalator that went up and up and up, we knew we were in the right place. We got to the express train station just as one was pulling away. Fortunately they run every half hour, and we still had plenty of time.

We got back to the airport, picked up our luggage and checked in. We are SO glad the airlines manage to find the English speakers we can't and they have people who speak English at all the ticket counters. We checked in and waited for a couple of hours. After the long days, we were glad to get back home.

Note from Dave: This sounds SO much better than what we felt that day, wandering around lost and with no people who could speak a language we could understand. Arline was confident but I thought we may need to take a taxi back to the airport. Yes we survived, but just barely! It was an experience I won't forget or ever choose to repeat!

This week's Russianism:
Can you tell what this is? We've heard this one by Red Square is the busiest one in the world. Russian is very phonetic, and it's pronounced the same as in English, just with Russian letters! We ate at the Sbarros next to this. The McDonald's line never died down the whole time we were eating, even when it started to rain. We decided not to eat there because we heard about one elder who got food poisoning at McDonald's (it doesn't take much Russian food for an American to get food poisoning) and we didn't want to chance it. Then as we were heading back to the subway we also saw this sign:

There is no W sound in Russian, so they call it Vyendy's. American free enterprise is alive and well all over !

Helsinki

First--We have hot water! It was off for about 3 1/2 weeks. When they first turned it on again on Thursday it was very dirty and rusty, and only slightly warm. Every day it has gotten a little hotter. And someone came and fixed the window air conditioning unit in our bedroom, just in time for the weather to cool down again and we haven't needed it. But it works. Yes Tyler, we know we are lucky.

We LOVED Helsinki! Finland is beautiful and clean. We found it was very easy to get around. We were amazed at how helpful the Finns were. And almost everyone speaks English to some degree! Often when we asked if someone spoke English, the answer was "a little," but they understood everything we asked and were always able to answer very clearly.

Dave snapped this picture of a bus. He thought the wrap was cute. The bird is real and on the sign, not the fence on the bus!

We were disappointed in our trip to the American store because the selection was poor and very pricey (example: a vending-machine size package of Twizzlers--4 pieces--was around $2.50. However, the Finnish grocery stores stock a lot of the food we've missed and their prices are much more reasonable. Often we didn't know the Finnish word for something, like cloves, but we stopped other shoppers whenever we had a question and they were ALL willing and able to help.

We were delighted to find some of the things we haven't been able to find in Russia: a small tin of baking powder, one of vanilla (powder again, not liquid), ground cloves, garlic powder, cinnamon, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, and taco seasoning. A few of those we can get in Russia, but in very small packets. Finland had them in bigger quantities, like a 250 gram tin of vanilla powder instead of the 1 gram packet we get in Russia. Alas, the only place we saw Twizzlers was in the American store.

Our purpose for going to Helsinki was to pick up our new visas. They hold them in a safe in the Temple President's office. We arrived a little early and walked around on the temple grounds. And of course we did a couple of sessions while we were there. It was WONDERFUL! We hadn't realized how much we missed being in the Temple. We saw a familiar face shortly after we arrived-- Kent Michie from our stake at home! We knew the Michies were serving a mission, but we didn't remember where. We visited for a few minutes and then saw Barbara Michie at the end of the session. Their shift was ending when we were leaving, so we talked with them some more. They showed us the housing, which is nice apartments for the temple missionaries and dorms for the visiting missionaries. Then they offered to take us to the train that would take us back to our hotel (they have a car). However, when we got near the train Kent said he'd like to take us into town. He took the scenic route and told us all about things we might like to see on another visa trip. Kent served his first mission in Finland and is able to read signs and get around, and thus was an excellent tour guide and knew lots of things to show us. We now know what to look forward to on future visa trips. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. We later said we wished we would have thought to get a picture with them. Oh well, we've got another visa trip coming up a few weeks before they finish up their mission and hope to see them again.

One night around 10:00 I heard some popping noises and looked out the window. It wasn't dark, but that didn't stop them from putting on a fireworks display. It was very pretty.

Normally we would have had another day in Helsinki (they let the senior couples stay two nights, probably because all the nighttime travel is very hard on older bodies), but the Saturday evening flight was full, so we flew out Saturday morning and spent the next day in Moscow. More about that next week.