LONGER AND WARMER DAYS....YEAH!

How wonderful it is to wake up to sunlight coming into our window instead of darkness until 10 in the morning.....so much easier to start our days with light. We are beginning to put our winter coats in the back of our closets and pulling out our spring clothes.  The snow of last week only lasted a day or two and was melted by the third day. It is amazing how light and warmth make the days so much nicer. The missionaries are loving these days...no coats or scarves or gloves. We're grateful that Spring is just around the corner.


This week we did nothing out of the ordinary, but it was still a great week.  Monday we bought a hand blender at the store.  I have wanted one since we've arrived so we finally bought one. It was wonderful for mashing refried beans for our district meeting. At the store, the clerk noticed that I was looking at several brands of hand blenders.  He came up and pointed out one blender that was more powerful and had two attachments. It was only a few rubles more than the one I had put in our cart.  I was so grateful for his help in making a decision.....it works wonderfully well and I'll use the attachments often.  



Monday evening, we had the privilege of sitting in on a discussion with the International elders and a French African young man.  He only spoke French so the elders brought a French speaking member with them to interpret.  It was a good discussion and the Restoration video was well received.  The investigator said the closing prayer. Though we couldn't understand what he was saying we could feel the spirit very strongly.  We found out today that he has met with the elders 4 more times this week and has a baptismal date of April 6.  He is definitely golden. Sunday afternoon the elders brought him back to our home so Paul could explain the Pathway program to him.  He will have to learn more English before he will qualify, but he can set that as a goal to work on after his baptism.  Our friend, Raymond came with the elders to interpret what Paul was saying.  His darling wife and boys came, too.  While Paul was talking, the older boy and the elders ate most of the nuts and caramels we had sitting on the coffee table. It was so wonderful to have little children in our home.  Oh, how we miss our grandchildren.

We had both hard and soft shells so

of our missionaries combined them

into one taco.....our Todd's favorite.

Tuesday was district meeting. We served soft tacos, hence the need for refried beans. The lunch was a huge success as was the dessert of brownie sundaes. While shopping last week, we found a package of a chocolate ice cream mix so I made chocolate ice cream (beating cream plus the contents of the package together and freezing it). The missionaries assembled their own sundaes of brownies, vanilla and chocolate ice cream, chocolate and marshmallow sauces, and whipped cream.  It was yummy.  We welcomed two new elders to our district. It will be fun to spoil them a bit.

Assembling their own brownie sundaes. 

The first two in line are our new elders,

 Elder Eliason and Elder Knight

After district meeting, Elders Jewkes and Friar brought Evonne by for a lesson.  All the other elders and sisters had not left yet so Paul met with them in the office for a lesson.  After the lesson Evonne presented Paul with a gift....a watch with lots of fancy features on it. Evonne is really a sweet young man.  We found out today that he has a baptismal date of April 13th. We are excited for him.

Evonne, showing Paul and Elder Jewkes all the bells

and whistles on the watch he gave Paul.

Wednesday, we prepped our lesson for Institute and waited for the elders to bring an investigator over for a lesson. When they were an hour late we called and found out their appointment had canceled and they had forgotten to call us.  We immediately left the apartment to go over to the institute room to clean out our office.  We are hardly ever in the office as we do most of our work at home, but our coordinator asked if we would clean things up a bit and throw away what was not being used. We went through files and drawers, finding papers dating back to 2009.  We hauled out a full garbage bag of unnecessary items. It feels good when we enter the office to see things organized and cleaned.  The young singles use the office often so we don't know how long it will stay that way, but at least the files are more up to date.

Our organized office

Thursday was our Institute class and Pathway gathering.  We always spend most of the day doing final lesson preparations. Our lesson compared three groups of people who were delivered out of bondage....Limhi's people, Alma's people, and his son Alma and the sons of Mosiah.  The first two groups were being held captive by their enemies, the Lamanites. Alma and the sons of Mosiah were in the bondage of sin. It was a fun lesson to teach. Afterwards Victoria and her brother Vald came up to me to thank us for our work in preparing our lessons each week.  They said they always go away having learned something new and feeling the spirit.  That's all the thanks we need. 

Notice the hamburger. 

It's become  Paul's favorite

 39 ruble (about a dollar) hamburger.

On Friday we are getting in the habit of going to the Metropolis mall for lunch at Wendy's. By then, we are so ready to get out of the house after three days of studying that we find ourselves six metro stops north at Wendy's....loving their Baja salads.  Before leaving this Friday, I baked cookies for Isaac, our seminary student. When he comes each Friday we try to have something sweet and homemade for him. He has lost 12 pounds since returning to Moscow from his Christmas break. Not good. He really appreciates a little taste of home.

What we set out for Isaac every week -

A treat and  the lesson for his next week's study

Game night turned out to be a night for the missionaries.  Because of trips to Riga for immigration purposes and companionship splits, we ended up having as many as four sisters and two elders up in the institute room waiting for their trains or companions.
They helped us finish the puzzle we had been working on for three weeks. It was great to be with our missionaries but we missed not having any YSA's in attendance.

We had to photograph this upside down because of the glare of the lights.

It was a fun puzzle to do of St. Basil and the Kremlin.

Sister Borders and her

interpreter

Saturday was a Stake Relief Society conference which was very well attended. There were several speakers, including sister Borders and our new Stake President.  After a short break, the Stake President and his wife put on a seminar about marriage and family. It was the best part of the day. I spent the late afternoon baking brownies and congo bars to send to a baptism on Sunday. The bishop asked if I would make some treats for the baptism. Of course I agreed even though we wouldn't be able to be there due to a YSA council meeting at the same time. 

It was so gratifying to see so many faithful Russian women 

sitting in the audience and being spiritually fed.

After our YSA Council meeting on Sunday, we set up for the CES broadcast.  Sister Burton, General Relief Society President, was the speaker. We had only one YSA come up to watch it in English with us. Everyone else watched the broadcast downstairs in Russian. Late that night we helped Katie, our daughter-in-law, teach her 4 year old primary class in Medford, Oregon. She facetimed us about 11:15 pm, our time, so we could tell the children what real live missionaries do and why we serve missions, even far away in Russia. It was really cute to see the children with their missionary tags pinned on their shirts and dresses.  They even introduced themselves as Elder and Sister along with their last names. Our granddaughter, Grace, was in the class which made it even more special for us. What a clever way to teach a class about being missionaries.

Katie's primary class seen through facetime.

LIVING IN RUSSIA SPOTLIGHT

Our friend, Evonne, made an interesting comment in one of the discussions we had with him.  He said, "In America you are always happy and smiling. In Russia we like to suffer." We thought that was an interesting outlook on life. When he is baptized and fully embraces the gospel of Jesus Christ in his life, he will find that happiness.

That letter in the middle is an L so

milk is pronounced MALAKO.

Most times O sounds like Ah.

This past week we found a food item we thought was none existent in Russia, condensed milk.  We were looking for sweetened condensed milk and pick up what we thought it might be. When we opened it, we found out it was evaporated or condensed milk.  I have avoided making a couple of recipes because they called for condensed milk and I didn't think we could get it here.  A fun find.

We also found cottage cheese.  We had known they had a similar product but we didn't know what to look for.  Wanting to make lasange, we went on the hunt for TVORG (the Russian word for cottage cheese. In the Russian language, a B sounds like V, a P sounds like R and an r sounds like G.). We found it in all sorts of varieties, but were lucky with the one we selected. It was perfect for our lasagne.

Speaking of lasagne, we found these no cook noodles. They work wonderfully well and make assembling lasagne so easy.  I may have to bring some back to the states.

WARM AND SUNSHINY WEATHER.....

MAKING IT ANOTHER WONDERFUL WEEK