MISSION FOCUS WEEK - 200 MEMBER PRESENT LESSONS!

The crest in the center is the crest

 of the Russian Federation.  On top

 of the crest it says Russia Moscow Mission.

Surrounding the lower half of the crest 

are the words Courage, Faith, Action.

 This was designed to be our mission crest

and will appear on a t-shirt and sweatshirt

available when the missionaries finish 

their two language memorization plans.

This week has been a focus week for our missionaries.  The mission set a goal for 200 member present lessons to take place from Monday to Sunday of this week.  We were grateful we could be a small part of this by opening our home to several discussions with investigators and missionaries. Little miracles started happening on Monday to make the goal a possibility. The International Ward elders wanted to come by and use our computers to email home.  On the way to our home they happened to run into an investigator with whom they had been working. He had a few minutes to come to our home for a discussion. His name was David.....Miracle number one.



At our district meeting, Tuesday, we learned of another miracle.  The office elders were leaving the office and  two men from Pakistan just happened to be walking by. They recognized the elders name tags and asked if they had an extra Book of Mormon. The elders invited them up to the office to get a book and they ended up having a discussion with them.  The two men were open to meeting several times this week. It seems that one of the men had read the Book of Mormon and wanted one for his friend.  We will be excited to have a report as to how those other visits went.

We were a part of two more wonderful discussions...One on Wednesday and the other on Thursday.  On Wednesday, Elders Weinheimer and Anderson came by with Sasha. They have been teaching him, but he wasn't convinced that reading the Book of Mormon was important. They taught him about the importance of reading scriptures because they are God's words for us. They read with him Lehi's vision of the tree of life and the iron rod leading to the tree. When it was mentioned that the iron rod represented the word of God, Paul gave a beautiful objective lesson. He brought out an old broom handle to demonstrate the iron rod and then preceded to demonstrate how important it was to hold on tightly....in fact, to be a 'white knuckler'. He went on to explain that when we read and study and follow the counsel in the scriptures, we are holding on tight to the rod of iron.



During the lesson, a little miracle happened to me. I had a sudden thought to go to the office to get a picture of Lehi's dream from our gospel art book. I brought the picture in and gave it to Elder Anderson. He thanked me and said he had been trying to pull it up on his iPod but couldn't get it to come up. The picture gave Sasha a visual of the dream and the discussion centered around the picture for quite a while. We hope he will begin to read the scriptures now.
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Sister Miller, Gissel, and Sister King

On Thursday, we agreed to let the International Ward sisters bring Gissell by for a lesson before her baptism on Sunday. We had not met her yet, but were so glad we spent the hour with her and the sisters. She is such a doll. She is from Cuba and has been looking for the true religion. She is so ready to be baptized and will be an instant missionary. We gave her a Book of Mormon in English which she promised to give away during the week to someone.  She and Paul even did a role play as to how she would do it. She was a natural at starting up a conversation and presenting a Book of Mormon to her contact, Paul.  We came to love her immediately and could feel of her dynamite spirit. The miracle about this meeting was that Paul and I were even available. Usually on Thursday, we are knee deep in last minute lesson preparations for the Institute class we teach each Thursday evening.  On this Thursday, our lesson came together very quickly so we had the time to meet with Gissell. So grateful for little miracles like that.  We would have hated to have missed out on meeting Gissell.

Paul and Gissel in a role play - giving away a Book of Mormon

We found out on Monday that the mission met their goal....in fact, they exceeded it by 4, for a total of 204 lessons taught with members present. This means that the relationship between missionaries and members is getting stronger. This, in turn, will increase member confidence in the missionaries.  It is a proven fact that when confidence in the missionaries is increased, members are more likely to refer friends and family to them to be taught. This leads to an increase in baptisms. Increased baptisms means more Russians enjoying the blessings of the gospel and feeling the great happiness that comes into their lives. A really good thing.

Garrett and Paul

Another highlight of the week was Garrett McClintock coming to visit us. He is a student at BYU and is over here doing an internship while studying Russian at a university. He served his mission in Russian speaking Ukraine. Garrett is best friends with my nephew, Brandon, and so he knows Don and Dana, my brother and sister-in-law. He grew up in Bakersfield so he knows my dad and sister, Deon. When my sister found out he was coming to Moscow, she and Dana arranged for him to bring us some much needed cooking supplies - brown sugar, chocolate chips, cumin, etc. He called us on Monday and we invited him to our home that evening. We had a wonderful visit and found even more connections. It seems that he was in the MTC with two of our Pathway students, Vlad and Alexey, as well as Anna, our former YSA secretary.  He knows the Hays, a senior couple serving here in Moscow and he also had met Luba, a favorite young single adult in our ward.  She had spent a few months in Provo this past fall where they had met.  Such a small, small world.  

The wonderful things he brought us.  He ran out of room

so he opted not to bring the powdered sugar thinking

it might look too much like cocaine to custom officials.

Corina showing us her

black belts.  She has  many

national honors in karate.

After district meeting on Tuesday, we did something we had never done. We went to the apartment of Corina for an authentic Russian dinner. Corina was baptized a few months ago and has been wanting us to come to her apartment for dinner. We finally arranged it for Tuesday. Elders Jordan and Folkman, of the Sokolniki district, accompanied us. It was a good thing they were with us. We had to take the metro and then a bus as she lives on the outskirts of Moscow. We totally enjoyed our visit and even the food. She is a special friend.

Corina in her bright orange kitchen. 

She is so proud of her little apartment

 which she decorated herself.  Before this, she 

was living with her x-husband and son

because it was cost effective to continue those 

living arrangements even after the divorce. 

 This apartment was given to her by the government.

In the background the girls are holding up

the Ukrainian flag with a message

of love written on it.

After dinner, we had to hurry back to the Central Building for a YSA council meeting which began after the Russian Institute class at 9 p.m.  A couple of our girls had been to Ukraine on a special 'friendship' mission and brought back a Ukrainian flag and a box of chocolates.  They had taken a video with them which the council had made to give to the Ukrainian young singles. It took many miracles and several prayers for them to get into Ukraine after being detained at the border for over 4 hours and even sent back across the border. But, they finally made it and were so glad to share feelings of friendship and love with many Ukrainian young singles.

Waiting at a playground for the

rangers to come walk us

to the park.

Saturday was another first for us....we went to Elk Island with our young singles for a service project and a barbecue. Elk Island is a national nature park and home to over 200 different species of animals including deer, elk, and wild boar. It was, at one time, a favorite place of Ivan, the Terrible, to enjoy falconry and bear hunting. There is no more hunting allowed but people can arrange tours to see the animals. We went there to clean up a specific area of the park (not actually an island).  It was a mess and needed our help. We spent over an hour picking up the garbage, filling many large bags with trash.  After our hard work, we walked deeper into the preserve for a barbecue. This turned into an all day affair as we left our home at 9:15 in the morning. We finally left the park around 2:30 to make it home for Isaac's seminary lesson at 4. We were grateful to meet 6 more students on internships from BYU who came and participated with us.  It was a good day but we were both sore the next day from all the walking we did to get there and back as well as all the bending over to pick up garbage. 

Four of the six BYU students - Mitch, Cody, Brian, and Jeff

Masha and Christina stopped to pick dandy lions along the way.

They then fashioned a  hair wreath from them....an old

Russian and Ukrainian tradition.

The helping hands bibs we

put on to let people know

where we were from.

This girl literally sang as she worked.

The whole time we were working 

we could  hear her singing 

Russian songs.

The whole group and the results of our labors.

Our chefs - Corell and Dennis (pictured to the right)

And that brings us to Sunday. After our sacrament meeting, we again headed down to the South building (4 weeks in a row now) for two baptisms - Gissell's and Pierro's. These were baptisms in the International Ward. It truly is an international ward as the one baptism was done in English for Gissell and the other in French, Pierro's native language. One of the confirmations was done in Spanish, Gissell's native language, and the other in French, again for Pierro. It sure would be hard to be the bishop of that ward.

Gissell was just beaming after her baptism

Pierro with Elders Howard and Merrill waiting for

his confirmation.  The confirmations were performed

following the baptism as next Sunday is a special

stake conference featuring Elder Bednar.

LIVING IN RUSSIA SPOTLIGHT

When we were waiting for Garrett at our metro station, this multi-talented musician was playing and singing. He played the guitar and the harmonica, as well as sang. Of course, there were people helping him collect money for his efforts.  It was one of the few times we have contributed a few rubles to an artist on the street.

It was also rush hour while we were at the metro waiting for Garret. This picture is of the people trying to enter one of the four doors into the metro building. There was a steady stream of people for the whole 15 minutes we were waiting. All these people have to go through toll gates and then file onto one escalator, hence the hang up at the entrance door. Riding the metro is not a fun place to be at this time of the day

While walking to the nature park on Saturday, we noticed this unique yard decoration.....a metal bird in a large nest.  Quite interesting.

THUS ENDS ANOTHER GREAT WEEK!