CHRISTMAS HAS COME TO MOSCOW

The Christmas tree on Red Square

Christmas has come to Moscow. Everywhere we look there are signs of Christmas...huge Christmas trees inside and outside of every mall, store windows adorned with Christmas lights and decorations, children dressed in their snow clothes shopping hand in hand with their mothers, and Russian Santas walking the streets.  One of the Santas we saw was dressed in blue robes and was walking with his snow princess, a Russian tradition. On our walk to Red Square on Wednesday, we noticed Christmas was everywhere there as well. The tree outside GYM department store is the tallest we have ever seen. The ice sculptures that line the sidewalks of the Red Square are wondrous. In the center of the square there are booths selling Christmas items and an ice skating rink where many people love to skate.
There is an excitement in the air just as there is at home. We were in a mall near the Red Square and saw a Russian Santa walking toward the center of the mall.  We followed him to the area where he sits to talk with children. He was taking pictures with anyone who asked so we had our picture taken with him. He was decked out in the typical brocade satin, fur trimmed robe and a flat, fur trimmed hat. Russian Santas also carry a decorated scepter. 

These ice sculptures line the whole street in front of GYM department store.

That must mean it will be cold enough from now on so they won't melt.

Christmas has even come to our little apartment.  Monday we did our weekly shop and found new lights for our tree.  That afternoon we decorated it just in time for family home evening. We had one investigator come, along with our missionaries and a member of ward.  We all played some lively games of UNO. Those playing had some interesting rules for the game which made it really move fast.  The investigator seemed to enjoy himself especially when he won two of the three games. We served root beer floats and cookies for refreshments.  We had to make the root beer as you cannot find it here unless you want to pay 3 to 5 dollars a can.  It was made from extract, water, sugar and yeast. Quite tasty.

This game got livelier once our ward member came.

Tuesday was our district meeting....the last before transfers.  The office elders and the assistants to the President were involved in greeting new elders and sisters at the airport and making all the transfer arrangements so they didn't come to our district lunch. For the first time, since we've been here, we could sit around our table in the kitchen and have lunch. It was a nice change, although we miss the other elders when they are not here for lunch on Tuesdays.  We are losing our Elder Marx, who has been in our district since we arrived.  It will be hard not to see him as often as we are used to, but we will see him on Sundays.  He has been transferred to the ward that meets in the same building as we do. Elder Merrill, from the office, is also leaving us and we are getting a special elder, Elder Genys, to replace him.  We have come to know and enjoy Elder Genys through our English group and now he is in our district as an office elder.  He seems real excited to be in our district.

Our district leader, Elder Marx, was transferred

on Wednesday.  We will miss him very much.

By Wednesday, Paul could breathed a sigh of relief as all our potential Pathway students for next semester made the application deadline.  He has been working tirelessly with each of them to help them apply.  Now there is the registration deadline but that isn't such a hard and fast deadline.  We are grateful that all 12 students applied so now we can for sure have a new cohort in January.  


Wednesday also brought transfers and English group. We had a great discussion with our English group on Leaders and Role Models. We love this time together with our Russian friends.  

At institute this week we had three new students.  They are from Africa and have been going to the International ward.  Their bishop invited them to come to our institute so they did.  They are converts of less than two years.  We loved having them in our class and hope they come next week, too.  We taught Elder Oak's conference talk on "Other Gods."  We had lots of participation in our discussion and showed a perfect video. It helped demonstrate the idea of worldly things becoming our priority and thereby our gods.  We love how we are led to things that will help us in our lessons. We do feel the hand of the Lord with us in our preparations.



Friday was a special morning.  Paul had the opportunity to be a part of a missionary discussion via Skype.  The contact, Andrey, is 'golden' as they say in the mission field. Paul will tell you about this experience.

Andrey is a Russian gentlemen in his 30's who has a wife and child.  He was very gracious in his comments as I talked to him about the Restoration of the Gospel and about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  He is a little unique as both of his parents are terminally ill with cancer.  He was very interested in the Plan of Salvation, especially in our belief about life after death.  I discussed our beliefs with him and it seemed to give him great comfort.  I'm sure the missionaries could have done just as well, if not better, but the fact that I was older seemed to reinforce things with him. I also talked to him about how the Gospel has brought me, a 70 year old grandfather, eternal joy and happiness.  The thing that really made this experience wonderful was that he said he felt a warm and comforting feeling while he listened to my message.  That was pretty amazing because everything I said had to be translated by the Elders.  The great news -- I later learned that he has set a baptism date in January.  It is really neat to be a part of this great work with these great people, even if I can't speak the language.


Saturday, we went with the Piersons to a store close to where they live.  We were looking for a ham and they had purchased one at this particular store for Thanksgiving.  We found what we wanted but then decided to do something else for Christmas dinner because a week later the mission would be serving a ham dinner to all the missionaries.  We can now, though, tell Sister Borders where she can go to find ham.  She has not been successful in finding hams where she shops. We all help each other when it comes to finding food items that we need.  We enjoyed lunch at the store and then took a walk through a mall right next door.  The mall caters to very wealthy people and has a reflection pool, a running creek, and atriums throughout the mall.  There was a string quartet playing classical music at one end of the mall and a pianist playing a grand piano at the other end.  We've never seen anything quite like this....except maybe Caesar's Palace shopping mall in Las Vegas.

We don't know how the shops in this mall stay in business as we saw, maybe,

ten people shopping in the whole mall.  It is an amazing place though.

Just after taking this picture a security guard started following us so

I didn't dare take any more pictures.  They must not like photographs

being taken of their exclusive shops here.

We raced home so we could open up the institute room for a YSA activity that started at 5. They were assembling special Christmas packets to take to the less actives in the stake as a combined missionary/YSA activity for January. (The official religious date for Christmas here is January 7)

Just a note: We bring cookies to all of the YSA events and they love eating them.  We were told that a survey was taken on  Facebook among our YSA.  The purpose was to find out what kind of cookies they liked the best (ie: wafers, chocolate, shortbread, etc).  Two different people told us about the survey because they said the number one kind of cookie reported on the survey was 'Sister Millar's cookies.'   

It seems like this is the week for missionary discussions.  Saturday night, after the YSA activity, the sisters brought an investigator to our home for a discussion.  We watched the Restoration video (in Russian, of course).  This was only their second discussion with her and she seemed to accept all that was said.  I made gingerbread with whipped cream to serve for a dessert.  It was a good evening.  Later that night the AP's called and wanted to know if they could hold a discussion in our home Sunday just before church.  It would be with Andrey. He lives about 3 hours outside of Moscow but was coming in to attend church with the elders.  The discussion, on Sunday, was on the word of wisdom. Andrey had already given up drinking alcohol but giving up tea seemed to be a little hard to which to commit.  By the end of the discussion, though, he said he would break the tea drinking habit and promised to do it by the new year. (This is a big issue with lots of investigators as drinking tea is a very popular past time.)  The spirit was so strong during the discussion. Both Paul and I were able, through a translator, to add a little to the discussion.  It is so wonderful to see the light of the gospel touch these people's lives. Andre said he can already see and feel the difference in his life since he has been studying the Book of Mormon and learning more about he gospel.  What a special way to start off the Sabbath. Coming in contact with such wonderful people to teach is like Christmas for our elders and sisters.....the best kind of gift they could receive.

LIVING IN RUSSIA SPOTLIGHT

The weather has become cold enough to freeze the river and force Paul into wearing a hat.  Pretty cold.

Fur coats are a popular item here in Moscow.  Since it has turned rather cold, we see women everywhere wearing their fur coats and hats.  They come in all sorts of styles and many shades of browns and blacks and whites.  They are beautiful and look like they would keep you very warm. 

We thought this was a very interesting way to remove the snow from off the roof. We hear there is a real problem of snow sliding off the roofs.  Many of the roofs are made of tin and so the snow will slide off in big, heavy sheets of snow and ice. People have been injured from the snow landing on them from a roof.  

Children are so cute in their snow clothes.  Their mothers deck them out in hats, boots, mittens and snow suits.  We got a kick out of this grandmother (babooshka) showing a shopping catalog to her grandson in anticipation of what Santa (or Father Frost in Russia) might bring him. Children are the same everywhere.

WE ARE FEELING THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT HERE IN MOSCOW

AND LOVING IT.