A CHALLENGING WEEK - SAYING GOODBYE TO 3 MISSIONARIES, HAVING 2 DISTRICT MEETINGS AND NURSING 1 SORE FOOT

Looking good!

This week was transfer week and so, at our district meeting on Tuesday, we had to say good bye to our sweet Sister Hunter, and to Elder Knight and Elder Beauchemin. We get so attached to the elders and sisters in our district that it is challenging to see them leave - Elder Knight and Sister Hunter to outlying cities and Elder Beauchemin home to America. Because Elder Beauchemin was going home, he got to chose what he wanted for our district lunch. He chose tacos so we went with both hard and soft tacos.  He also wanted a coconut cream pie for dessert. I did both a coconut cream and a chocolate cream pie. 

Elder Braun

It's a good thing we had lots of food as we ended up feeding two extra elders, Elder Braun and his companion, Elder Howe. Elder Howe was going home, too, so he and Elder Braun came up to Moscow on Tuesday. They came by our home to drop off Elder Howe's suitcases. (We were keeping them at our home overnight for him.)  They arrived just before our district meeting so we invited them to stay for lunch. They were thrilled and ended up staying for the whole district meeting. It was fun having Elder Braun back in our home.

The singing of our 'district song' for the last time all together

Our  wonderful district

Sisters Taylor and Hunter, Elders Hoffman, Beauchemin, Johnson, Jones,

Back row: Elders Welsh and Knight

The second district meeting was held on Friday. The mission decided to change district meetings to Fridays during the week of transfers. The new policy started with this transfer....hence a second district meeting in less than  a week....three days to be exact.  We decided the elders and sisters would  bring meats and cheeses and I would bake homemade bread and supply the condiments for sandwiches. Of course, we also made a fruit salad and a dessert to round out the lunch. It was a good lunch but the meeting was even better. During the meeting three weeks of specific goals were set in place including a study goal, a key indicator goal, and an obedience goal for each week. They set out ways to report progress and to reward success. The best part of the meeting came when our district leader, Elder Hoffman, gave some thoughts on faith. The spirit was so strong as he testified and promised blessings for our district if we would all work with faith, nothing doubting. We had a district prayer to petition the Lord's help in accomplishing the things they have set out to do.  It was a powerful meeting....unlike any district meeting we've attended.  We look for great things to happen in our district and in the mission.

Elder Eliason, the new AP, with Elder Johnson

Brand new to Russia.

 Elder St. Clair (right) with Elder Hoffman 

Beautiful Sister Shepherd  (left) with Sister Taylor

At Friday's district meeting, we met the three missionaries who joined our district. Elder St. Clair is new to the Russian Moscow Mission. He is one of eleven children and the only member of the church in his family. He was baptized just a year ago and was so excited to be coming to Russia on his mission. It was his first choice. The harder the mission, the more growth was the reason for wanting to come here. This is a hard mission so he should experience tremendous growth. Sister Shepherd is a singer and a musician. In fact, she was a member of a Mariachi band before she left on her mission. She will be a wonderful sister trainer. Our third new missionary isn't exactly new to us. He was in our district until just last transfer when he was sent to an outer city to be a zone leader. We were thrilled when we found out Elder Eliason was returning to our district to be an assistant to the president. He will be an incredible assistant along with Elder Johnson.

Ouch!!!

Now for the hurt foot....it is mine. It has been a bit challenging to prepare two lunches and do the other things necessary this week with a sore foot.  It's my old Plantar's Fasciitis acting up. I must have irritated my heel somehow with all the walking we do and now I am paying the price. Lots of taping, icing, and staying off my feet as much as possible (HA, HA!) and hopefully it will heal quickly.


Other happenings of the week include an amazing discussion with John on Monday. He is from Nigeria and has been in Moscow for 10 years.  He left his pregnant wife and a one year old son when he came here to earn money to support his family. He has not been back to Nigeria since, so he has never seen his, now, 10 year old son in person. They skype every night and he hopes to be back in Nigeria by the end of the year. He is one incredible man. He kept saying he was blessed to be in our home listening to the gospel message but we were the ones blessed by his powerful spirit. Never before have we seen a truer Christian. His whole life reflects his love for Jesus Christ. We could even see it in his eyes.  When he left we looked at each other and said, "Do you feel we have just been taught by this man?" Many times, in the almost 2 hours we were together, we found ourselves thinking we needed to be more like him as far as living as Christ would have us live. We will never forget this Christ-like man. Hopefully, we will see him again....he just needs the added fullness of the gospel to complete his life.

Tuesday night we went to the church to give three English Proficiency tests to prospective Pathway students. Just by chance, Paul found out Monday night that BYU Idaho had changed the test from the one we gave a couple of weeks ago. It was a good thing he had time to react as he had to print off the right test booklet and download the audio for the test. We had received no notification that the test had been changed. It is now 100 questions and takes 90 minutes to complete. We feel it is a hard test and will make it much more difficult to get students into the program. We are hoping at least 2 of the 3 passed but we won't know for a couple of weeks as BYU Idaho hasn't even come up with the grading rubric yet. We only have until the end of August to get enough students (10) to start a new cohort. (Update: as of this writing, 2 of the 3 did pass so we now have 4 students waiting to register...only 6 more to go.)

The transfer meeting on Wednesday was a wonderful meeting. The outgoing missionaries bore powerful testimonies of the gospel and their missions. We hate to see these missionaries leave as they truly have been the leaders of the mission. Of the 6 leaving, three of them had been Assistants to the President and one worked in the office with the President. We will miss them as 4 of the 6 have been members of our district at some time since we've been here.  At the meeting, we were handed a note from Elder Knight, the young elder leaving our district. He wrote us a letter thanking us for all we had done (food fixed and dishes washed) for him. He said he now has a goal to serve a mission as a senior couple with his wife someday....so thoughtful.

Not a good picture but it was the best the camera would do.

Left to right: Elders Ricks, Howe, Crawford, Friar, and Beauchemin, and Sister Johnson.

On a sad note, as we were leaving the building on Wednesday, we ran into the International Elders, Shepherd and Burton. They told us that one of their investigators died on Monday night. His name was Henry and he had been to our home a couple of times. He had a baptismal date set for the 27th of July. It seems he left his apartment around 10 at night and at 1 in the morning his roommate got a call saying he was dead. No one can say exactly what happened but it is thought that he drowned. A little strange. His father is the ambassador to Moscow from his country, Seirra Leone in Africa.  We were told later that the Bishop and the elders went to the embassy and talked with the father. They got permission to do the temple work for Henry. That brought tears to our eyes when we heard that.

This is how our coffee table looks

before the missionaries drop by...

full candy and nut bowls

Thursday, we had 2 set of elders come to our home to skype another mission meeting with district leaders. We always have candy and nuts out on our coffee table and between the 4 of them they ate almost all of them.....besides the plate of cookies I set out for them after their meeting. Elders love to eat.




We taught our Institute lesson that night.  It was on faith and prayer as exhibited by the Brother of Jared in the Book of Ether. We gave the students a self assessment about how they prayed and it got us all to think a little more about how we can improve our prayers to our Father in Heaven. We got a message from Lada, one of our students, that she was using what we had taught her on Thursday in a family home evening lesson with her mom this week.  She is one who always takes notes on what we teach.  

Misha dressed in his new

sleeping bag.

Friday, our young singles went on an overnight camp out. We met them at the church just as they were getting ready to leave. There were about 30 of them going and, of course, they asked if we were going. We had come to the church to open the Institute room up for game night, and not at all prepared to go camping. We were very glad it was not required of us to go with them as these old bodies would not do well sleeping on the ground. Misha, our coordinator, and his wife, Sveta, went though. He was not real thrilled about the prospect but his wife is a big outdoorsy type person so he reluctantly went along. The day before the camp he bought two sleeping bags. He wanted his wife to see them so he had me take a picture of him zipped up in one of them. He is so tall we guessed he must have had to buy an extra long one.

It was back to Ismylava market on Saturday.....hurt heel and all. We wanted to start buying gifts for family to send back home with Todd and Kailee when they come in three weeks. We were so lucky to find exactly what we wanted for Jon's boys and three of Andrea's girls. We have to go to Evonne's shop this week to get what we want to buy for the other grandchildren. It was a quick but productive trip. When we got home, I immediately iced my foot and stayed off of it the rest of the weekend.  It is feeling much better now. Thank goodness.

Two more things about this week....

1. We got our hot water back finally on Wednesday afternoon. It was so good to take a hot shower again. Oh, how we take things for granted until we are without them. It was a bit challenging but we made it through.

2. We passed our 1 year mark....July 8.  It seems impossible that we could have been on our mission that long but we already have a coming home date. We found out this week that we will be flying home on the 18th of December....at least that is the proposed date of our return flight. Our replacements, the Jensens, will enter the MTC the first week of December as that is the only time there is a CES training for senior couples until late in January. They will be here around the 12th of December giving us 4 or 5 days to train them in what we do. This brings us home three weeks short of 18 months. It is really good timing, though, as we will teach our last institute and conduct our last Pathway gathering the night before we leave.....and we will be home for Christmas!  The Jensens are the people who come to Moscow on a vacation and we talked to them about coming back on a mission to take our place.....if all goes as planned they should be the ones replacing us.

LIVING IN RUSSIA SPOTLIGHT

Doesn't it look like a small pumpkin?

Thursday night, on the way to Institute, we passed a man who was selling melons out of the trunk of his car. We looked at them in passing and saw that one fruit looked like a small pumpkin.  We wondered out loud what kind of fruit it might be. The man selling them must have heard us talking about it because a couple of minute later (and about a half a block away from his car) we heard, "Excuse me."  We turned around at the sound of English being directed at us and saw this man rushing up with one of the melons in his hand. He insisted we take it, free of charge, and had even brought a bag with him to put it in so we could carry it easily. It turned out to be a wonderful white melon inside the orange exterior. I used it in the fruit salad at district meeting and it added a wonderful sweetness to the salad. If we ever see that man there again we will, for sure, buy a melon or two from him.

After going to Ismylava, on Saturday, we went into a nearby mall to grab a bit of lunch. As we entered we noticed this clever way to advertise. The face of each step had the name and location of the different stores in the mall.  It was impossible not to notice and read what was written on the stairs as you climbed them.....great advertising technique.

Every where we go we see trucks cleaning the streets here in Moscow. They drive right down the middle of the street, even in peak traffic times, spraying water everywhere.  We often wonder what the drivers of the cars think as the water does spray the cars that are in its way. (That would be maddening if you had just had your car washed.) Sometimes the spray even hits the pedestrians on the sidewalks. At least it keeps the dust down which is a good thing as Moscow is a very dusty place judging by the number of times in a week we have to dust our apartment.

ONE YEAR DOWN.....BUT WHO'S COUNTING?

NOT US!