HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PAUL

We wished Paul a happy birthday this week. His birthday fell on Friday (June 20) so we were free until 4 in  the afternoon. When asked what he wanted to do for his birthday, his response was to go to Metropolis Mall and have a Wendy's hamburger. Go figure....so much for going out to lunch at a nice restaurant.  

That is Michael who is hard to

see because of the lighting

In the morning, I baked Paul's favorite kinds of cookies - chocolate chip and snicker doodles. I very seldom make them here because there is no access to shortening and I don't like the end results when I make them with butter. Elder Genys, Elder Burton and Michael, who came by for a 10:30 a.m. skype lesson, didn't seem to care. They ate several, both before and after the lesson. When they left, we headed for the mall and lunch at Wendy's. Paul was a happy man with his hamburger and his 15 ruble softie ice cream cone.  He keeps saying he's a simple man.  He sure proved that statement to be true this birthday.

Paul's favorite lunch -

...but on his birthday 

they put onions on his burger 

and didn't have dressing for

 his Baja salad.

 We came home to teach Isaac his seminary lesson and then were off to game night. One of Paul's favorite things to do, since being on this mission, is relaxing by working a puzzle during game night. Those who come to game night play their games in Russian so we are there just as a presence.....hence time to work a puzzle.  We had bought a new puzzle this week....a 1000 piece one of the Christ Savior Cathedral here in Moscow, and that is what we worked on during game night. We came home to calls from all our children to wish their Dad a happy birthday. That's the best part about getting a year older. 

We did decide to go out to dinner on Saturday night to do a little bit better job celebrating Paul's birthday. Before going to dinner though, we met the Piersons up north and walked to a huge food market (Reenok). We wished we could have taken pictures while inside the market's big building but we were told not to even try. We went to the meat department first where we found, on display, stingrays and octopus, skinned whole pigs, turkeys, chickens and rabbits.  The meat butchers were cutting up the beef right out in the open with large sides of beef hanging all around. Most interesting. We wondered about refrigeration as we saw no evidence of ice or refrigeration units.  We passed on buying any meats but did buy some wonderful bread and fruits.

Outside the market where there

were several other vendor

After coming home and studying for a bit, we walked to dinner in the rain. We wanted to try a new Italian restaurant we had noticed a couple of weeks ago, not far from where we live. I thought it was called Pron to Pizza. Paul insisted it was Pronto Pizza. Check the picture of the sign and see what you think. Well, as usually happens, Paul was right. The menus said Pronto Pizza.  It was a beautiful restaurant, especially sitting in the atrium area, and the pizza was very good.  We especially love it when we find a restaurant where the menus are printed in both English and Russian. It makes eating out so much easier. After dinner we watched a movie at home....a wonderful way to end Paul's birthday celebration.


NOW FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK......
Because of travel schedules of some of our elders, district meeting was held on Monday. At district meeting, we celebrated three birthdays...Paul, Elder Hoffman and Elder Beachimen all had birthdays within the week. After lunch, we served a cream cheese type dessert with a fresh strawberry topping. It made a pretty nice cake on which to put candles. The 'transfer of miracles' was discussed at our meeting and many goals were set for our district, in order to successfully do their part in the upcoming three week mission plan.

Blowing out the candles

The note on the bank door

Tuesday, we went out to pay the utilities bill.  There are no checks here in Russia so all bills have to be paid at banks, or at machines, or on line with credit cards. A few months ago Paul had found a bank at which he could pay two of our bills, but when he walked down to that bank on Monday, he found a note on the door and the doors locked. He came home so afraid this bank had been closed by the government. (The bank where we paid our bills when we first got here was closed several months ago and has not reopened.) Paul used Google translate to figure out that the note said the bank was closed for remodeling, but that other branches were still opened.....

Our new bank for paying bills

........Much relieved, we set Tuesday as our day to discover another Sper Bank that had the same services. Paul remembered seeing a Sper Bank on one of our walks so we headed there and luckily found that they offered the same bill paying service.  We took a number and waited.....and waited.......and waited....and finally, after about 45 minutes, the job was done.

The infamous bill

paying machine

An interesting side story:  Some bills, like the phone and the internet bills, we pay at machines located in businesses or malls. We haven't had much difficulty paying the phone bill but the internet has been a trial.  Two months ago we found a very convenient machine for paying the internet.  It was close by at a little mall where we sometimes go for a sub sandwich. This last month, Paul went to pay the internet bill and put into the machine what he thought was a 500 ruble bill (about $16). The machine flashed up the number 5000 rubles ($160) as record of payment.  Paul quickly realized he had put in the wrong kind bill and ended up paying enough to keep our internet up and running for the rest of our mission and for 4 months after we leave. He couldn't find a way to cancel the transaction or get change back. To look on the positive side....we don't have to worry about paying that bill for the rest of our mission. 

Wednesdays are always spent putting together our Institute lesson for Thursday. While I was typing up our lesson outline, Paul was calling potential Pathway students for a new cohort in the Fall semester. We were quite encouraged to find several who were interested. Now we just have to motivate them to apply. We need a minimum of 10 to start a new group. Each applicants has to pass an English proficiency exam before he/she can qualify. Wednesday night, Paul administered our first Pathway English test under the new test format. After spending some time in the afternoon helping Vadim get registered, we gave the test to him and to Sasha, a beautiful young woman on our YSA planning council. Sasha did really well as she spent a year studying in the US a few years ago. She speaks like a native English speaker. Vadim struggled a bit more, probably because of the time constraints of the test.  We will have to wait to see if they are both accepted into Pathway.  

Our speaker and his wife

Thursday, after setting up our classroom for Institute, we attended Senior Council. We had a very interesting speaker. He was one of the first members of the church in Russia. He and his wife were the first Russians to be sealed in the Helsinki temple. He told us about life in the Soviet Union in the 1980's where he considered himself a loyal communist and an atheist. His conversion and baptismal stories are surrounded with many miracles. He was drawn to a family because of the behavior of their children. The family was LDS living in Finland, in a small city close to the Russian border. It was through a friendship that developed between this family and him and his wife that they were introduced to the gospel.  We were sad we had to leave this most interesting discussions early to go teach institute.

Our lesson for Institute was on the gifts of the Holy Ghost, of prayer, of the sacrament, and of the gathering of Israel.  We wove all this together with the movie, The Ultimate Gift, comparing it to Heavenly Father's ultimate gift and the things we are required to do before we can gain His gift of eternal life. Every week we are so grateful for the opportunity to study the Book of Mormon, in depth, and to teach our Institute class.  It is such a blessing in our lives.




And then it was Friday....Paul's birthday.  Wow, how the weeks fly by. 

LIVING IN RUSSIA SPOTLIGHT

The flat bread  in the back and the

squished peach type fruit in the front

While at the reenok on Saturday, we noticed many strange fruits and vegetables and we had no idea what they were. Again, I wish we could have taken pictures. We have seen one type of fruit at our local markets and had often wondered what it was. It looks like a squashed peach. One of the fruit vendors was trying to get us to buy his fruits and so he was giving us samples of his apricots and cherries. He then cut into one of the squashed peaches and offered a piece for us to try. It was absolutely delicious....kind of white fleshed peach texture with an incredibly sweet taste. We immediately bought three. He was a good salesman.

Also at the reenok, we watched a man make the flat bread we bought. It is a flat piece of dough pressed up onto the sides of a very hot kiln. He must have put twenty pieces of dough into the kiln and then covered the opening. We are thinking one side of the bread is baked with the heat of the kiln wall and the other side is toasted from the heat of the fire in the kiln. Whatever, it is a delicious, flat bread.  We came home and immediately cut off a couple of pieces to eat.....along with some newly purchased fruit....a great lunch.

At the Metropolis Mall, we noticed a welcomed sign. Shake Shack, the hamburger place we love, is coming to that mall in August. It is being built in the place where a Mexican restaurant used to be.  We are pretty excited as we are up towards that mall more often than where the only Shake Shack is presently located. When Paul has his craving for a Wendy's burger, I can get a Shake Shack burger and we are both happy. The Russians obviously are beginning to love the American hamburger.

.......AND THAT DOES IT FOR PAUL'S BIRTHDAY WEEK