ANOTHER GREAT WEEK

This is a picture I took the week before

when Nastia told her best friend, Nadea, that she was

going to be baptized.   Such joy!

This past Saturday was a special day.  It was the baptism day for Nastia, a beautiful young woman. She announced her decision to be baptized just the week before. We were so excited when the sisters told us.  They have been working with her for several weeks.  She has also been coming to our English group for the past four weeks.  She wanted to limit who came to her baptism because she wanted it to be a more intimate affair. We were thrilled she wanted us there. 

Sister Carver, Nastia, and Sister Hawkins

                                                                 
It was a very special day including two great talks and a beautiful song sung by a few of our missionaries. After the baptism, the sisters and elders set out lots of good food for everyone to eat. Nastia's mother came and, while we were eating, gave a toast to our church. She thanked the church for having such a positive influence in so many countries around the world.

We must record a comment Nastia made to the group right after she was baptized.  She was speaking in Russian about her feelings about her baptism.  Toward the end, she paused and began to speak in English.  She said she needed to speak in English out of respect for Elder and Sister Millar. At that time she said that we had been one of the reasons she had decided to be baptized.  She said she loved watching our relationship as a couple and wanted that someday in her life.  We had no idea we were influencing her other than just loving her and being her friend.


We woke up Sunday morning to some good news.......BYU beat the Texas Longhorns in football.  Paul would have loved to have stayed home and listened to the ending of the game, but we had a commitment to attend an early morning meeting to hear one of our young single adults, Rebecca, give her missionary farewell talk.  Her talk was wonderful. She will make a great missionary.  We were also privileged to hear a talk from President Borders. We love his testimony of missionary work and his own conversion story.  

This picture of Rebecca was taken at the 

Institute Opening and dinner.  

We came back to our ward for our meetings and were privileged to hear from two general authorities.  Elder Evans is in the 1st quorum of seventies and is the director of the missionary department.  He was here for a meeting with all the mission presidents from Eastern Europe.  We also heard from our area president, President Lawrence, of the 2nd quorum of seventies.  President Lawrence gave his talk in Russian.

Rebecca set up a get together for some of the YSA's for Sunday night.  We stayed after church long enough visit with Rebecca and some of the other young singles. When they got out Apples to Apples to play, we excused ourselves to go home after a very long day.

Paul talking to a couple of young singles that night.

  He is so good at making everyone feel loved.

Our sister dropped in to say their good byes to Rebecca, too.

It was a good day...............and BYU won too.

I had to enlist Paul's help on this dinner to get everything

done before one o'clock.

We spent our typical Monday preparing for district meeting......shopping, baking bread, making mud pie, and cooking rice. Tuesday brought district meeting and a Japanese themed lunch of teriyaki chicken, fried rice, a vegetable medley, and Outback bread with honey and raspberry butter.  The elders and sisters loved it and ate every bit of what had been prepared.

A few of our district members dishing up their plates. 

Our Elders and Sisters loved dessert.  We were excited when we found

a type of an Oreo cookie here so I could make this mud pie

About halfway through the meeting, everyone was getting quite sleepy so they all stood up at the request of our district leader.  It was suggested everyone get a partner and do a chant taught to the office elders by President Borders.  They held hands while facing each other, jumped up and down, swinging their arms in and out while saying several times...."If you feel enthusiastic then you'll be enthusiastic."  We chuckled as we pictured little President Borders teaching this to our much taller office elders. About two minutes after our elders and sisters finished jumping and chanting, our doorbell rang. We all immediately thought it would be our downstairs neighbor complaining about the jumping.  It wasn't.....it was another set of elders needing something.  Thank goodness...wouldn't want the police coming to our door again.

Lada and her mother at

Lada's baptism

We were told, at district meeting, that the mother of the sister who was baptized two weeks ago, Lada, was going to be baptized in October.  After Lada's baptism, her mother agreed to have the missionaries visit with her in her hometown of Rizzan.   At the end of their visit, they asked if she would commit to baptism.  She said, "I've been waiting for two years for someone to ask me to be baptized." Apparently, both she and Lada had had some contact with the missionaries a couple of years ago.  The seeds had obviously been planted by them two years prior and the result now is that two beautiful people have accepted the gospel.

Wednesday, we had no meetings until English group in the evening so we decided to go to the Metropolis Mall to look for some plastic inserts for Paul's shoes.  He is having a terrible time with heel pain caused by plantar fasciitis.  We were unsuccessful finding inserts (we found one plastic one but in a size 13) but we did stop in at Stockman's and found garlic powder, paprika and penna pasta.  I had to look up the Russian words for the spices and then search the shelves until I found them.  I was almost out of garlic powder so I was thrilled to find it.  

English group was another fun evening.  We talked about opposites.  There was good discussion and we introduced a lot of new vocabulary words to them.  It's fun when the people come with paper and pencil ready to write down any word they don't know.  They especially like the idioms we give to them at the end of each discussion.  Sayings like 'kick the bucket', 'tie the knot', 'have a chip on your shoulder', 'loaded for bear', 'lend me your ear,' and 'pipe down' brought lots of laughs as we explained what they meant.

There was a new girl who came to class.  She spoke English wonderfully well as she had spent her junior year of high school in Idaho as an exchange student.  She said she had been to the temple grounds in Salt Lake at Christmas time to see the lights and heard the tabernacle choir.  At the end of the evening she came up and said the evening was just what she had wanted when she came.....a chance to speak and listen to English.  She then said, "I am so happy. Can I have a hug."  Such a darling girl. During the story time and spiritual thought she sat with one of the sister missionaries from our zone and again expressed her happiness.  She told the sister she gets such a warm and happy feeling every time she comes into a church building. Sure hope she comes back next week.

Gohar cutting Paul's hair in our entry way.

Can you believe our hair dresser comes to our home.  Getting our hair cut here was one of those concerns.  How do you express what you want done and how you want it done when you don't speak the language.  We had taken pictures of how we would want our hair to look after the haircut, but we knew there would still be a language barrier.  Then how do you know where to even go for a good cut.  Luckily, the sister in the office had this sweet girl cut her hair the whole time she was here in Russia (She left just last week).  The sister told us her hairdresser was good and would come to our home.  She gave me Gohar's name and contact information so we asked her to come to our apartment and cut our hair.  So convenient and her hair cuts were really good.  One stress eliminated.


Friday was a wonderful day. It started out at 8 a.m. in the Central Building for a full mission meeting.  Elder and Sister Evans and President and Sister Lawrence came to speak to the whole mission.  What a privilege for the mission to hear from a couple of general authorities and their wives.  President Borders held an hour long meeting to discuss some mission business and then around 9:30 our guests arrived.  They all gave wonderful talks to motivate us here in the mission field.  Elder Evans told us all that now is the time the Lord would have us serving here in Russia.  He also said that Moscow is the center of strength for all of Eastern Europe, so we must be actively engaged in inviting others to come unto Christ.  Such an inspiring meeting. 

Afterwards we decided to try another big mall to see if we could find some arch supports and tape for Paul's foot.  Another senior missionary has had this same problem. He told Paul that once he started taping his foot a certain way it finally got better.  Now we are on the look out for plastic inserts and tape.  We looked everywhere in the mall and around the mall but with no success.

Our first formal sit down dinner with guests

Friday evening, before game night and more Pathway interviews at the central building, we had two of our elders and one of their investigators over for dinner.  The elders want to have Marina get to know some other people in the church.  We have had her to our home one other time just to get to know her, but this time we suggested she come for dinner. We just served spaghetti and a salad but it was appreciated.  The elders were then able to read a few scriptures with her before we all had to leave.  

Elder Bass, Marina, and Elder Marks

We were back at the church Saturday morning to set up the video equipment for another ward's missionary activity.  (Paul has become the video go to man.)  We had also committed to helping the Piersons with the lunch they were serving for the same activity.  All were pleasantly surprised to have about 20 ward members show up to learn how to be more effective in doing missionary work.  Lunch was delicious.

Afterwards we took off to, once again, look for things for Paul's foot.  We had asked Marina, last night, where we might find what we were looking for and she gave us directions to an orthopedic store.  She wrote down the name of the store and the address and told us which train to take and where to get off.  We were encouraged that such a store even existed in Moscow.  Many tender mercies from the Lord, led to our success in finding what we needed that day.  We got off the metro and followed Marina's directions but couldn't find the store. We went into an Apteka (a drugstore) to ask for more directions and the clerk pointed us down the street from which we had just come.  Knowing the store must be in the area, we walked down the street for several more blocks (in the rain, of course) but couldn't find it.  On the way back to the metro station, we stopped into a sports equipment store we had passed and were so excited to find athletic tape and an ice bag.  We bought those things plus a heel pad.  Thinking that would be the best we could do, we headed back to the metro.  On a whim or out of sheer determination, we passed by the metro and went down a different street looking for the orthopedic store.  There it was.....in plain sight of where we got off the metro.  We found a plastic arch but they did not sell tape.  Had we seen this store first, we would have never walked farther down the other street and found the tape we especially needed.  We went home with everything we had set out to get.  Now we are praying it will work to lessen the pain Paul is experiencing.

This is Paul icing his taped foot with the

 new ice pack while watching a replay of the

 BYU vs Texas Longhorn game from

last week.

One happy man here.

Saturday night and BYU football...

all be it, one week delayed

A

GOOD ENDING TO THE WEEK!

WEEKLY SPOTLIGHT OF LIFE IN MOSCOW

This must be a big city tourist thing.....big, red, double decker buses
These are seen quite often around the city.  We just may have to take
a tour on one to see all the sights we can't see on the metro.

When we went to the Metropolis mall this week we noticed this beautiful grass as a decorative motif along the walkways.  It was so green and lush and weed free.  We don't have a picture of this, but the way they will cut this grass is with a weed wacker type instrument.......not a lawn mower, one of which we have yet to see.

THINKING THIS IS A GREAT PLACE TO BE ON A MISSION.  

WE LOVE THE CITY AND WE LOVE THE WORK.