4/19/15 A Walk, Easter, and Indoor Market and a Service Project

      Yesterday late afternoon we walked to the end of one of their walking streets.  It turned out to be less than ten minutes and there is a huge park at the end.  Of what we saw and we didn't see it all, there are ponds, a small carnival, a couple of playgrounds, a small basketball court, three restaurants (nobody at the outside tables yet), large wooden carvings and very old trees.  here is also (first picture below) one of those balancing courses like the one up by Aaron's where you have to be in a harness There were quite a few people out, and the weather was warm enough for medium coats.

            Don't you think my hair looks like one of those little hats you put on the lego people -

                                          Everything, tree also, is of a very weathered wood

 Our grandchildren would enjoy this - it has some of their famous fairy tale characters on top and there are seats inside that have steering wheels.

 These are pictures of the park, trees, water .. we'll get some more when it gets green

 We couldn't tell if this was an old church or just a building .. it is just outside the park fence (you can see the blue fence and people at the edge of one of the small lakes -

                                                    You can see it better without the trees

          More trees and a statue with an owl-- maybe it is a precursor to Harry Potter and the house above joins with Hogwarts.

 This is one of the restaurants - the rock was covered with some green kind of some kind of material that obviously withstands pretty tough weather.

Interesting Easter that one of sister missionaries was telling us about that is kind of fun, thought you'd be interested: "In Russia, for the Easter day everyone says "he is risen!" and then in response you must say "truly risen!", interesting and kind of funny at the same time because sometimes friends do it like 10 times in progressively louder increments and whenever someone walks in to a room or gets on a bus and proclaims that he is risen, the whole bus or room responds.  Pretty great stuff.  And everyone was just in a good mood, it was a nice refresher."
     So, after our nice walk in the relatively nice weather in our medium coats, we came home and moved our heavy coats to the back of the closet.  This morning we woke up to this but it is pretty much gone now.

     Thursday we walked over to pick up the Bibles for the primary (they only stock them 3 at a time so we have to wait a week to get the next ones)   We pass this old building very often (you can see the 1914 and 1915 in the first picture below) which it is a huge indoor market running a full block with lots of individual shops inside: food, clothes - almost anything you can get here you can find there. We have wondered what is originally was for because it is such an impressive building.  We have an investigator couple that comes to a lot of activities so we showed him the pictures.  Big Surprise - the second picture gives you the name - City Renock which means City Market - so clear back then they built a more than very nice covered building for people to sell their wares.  Pretty impressive.  The bottom floor now has the elite stores, lots of what they call "fine" jewelry, considerably more expensive than the individual small shops on the floors above..  The orange DNS signs you see in the bottom picture - DNS is an electronics and supply store.  That is where we got our thumb drive and the ink for the printer.

When the ice melts you see lots of groups cleaning up the parks on the sides of the walking streets, actually seems like everywhere people are cleaning.  The Saratov District which consists of 8 branches, met last Saturday and did our part.  It was fun to get out and work.

 Mike and a couple of our Elders.  

                                     We had a good group - work doesn't have a language barrier.  

As we were walking home last week, we saw a lot of dark grey smoke coming up between two apartment buildings (second picture), then just a quick glimpse of the fire, which was already being contained.  Two fire engines were there already, and at least one, maybe two more came.  Even though, on that August day in 2006 when our home burned, we felt no great fear or anxiety or despair, and since remember most, with gratitude and tenderness, the great outpouring of love and support and help from so many; still smoke and flames and fire engines bring a burst of emotions and a quick pit to our stomachs.   Fortunately it was a tree in between the buildings and there was no damage to buildings and no injuries.  

You can see how close the buildings are, and the one on the left is more wood, so had it spread, it could have been really bad.

When we have our fruits and veggies washed and spread out, we cannot help but think that one of the evidences of God's great love for us in this amazing world of ours is the variety of color and taste and uses of all of these and how sensible and useful the way each is put together, not to mention meats, milks, eggs, spices -  the list is endless and miraculous - certainly you wouldn't want a tomato to peel like banana, or an orange like a coconut, and the very thought that a small teaspoon of soda or baking powder will cause what you are making to rise when it cooks -- pretty wonderful.   D&C 59:18-20 - yea all things which come of the earth in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and gladden the heart, for food or for rainment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul; And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; 

Our days are busy and good.  Mike goes every morning except Sunday to the "office" where we hold institute and all activities and cleans, that is actually part of our assignment.  President Markelov's office (He is the CES director for Samara and also second counselor in the mission presidency) is also in the part of this building that we lease.  When he doesn't have to chip the ice it doesn't take as long, we'll see what their summer brings.   I went at first, but we have found it easier for him to take care of that and I take care of home.  Cooking, washing, ironing, those things are the same wherever we are.  And pretty much everything is from "scratch," they don't have mixes here.  Grocery shopping we go together because we have to carry home what we buy.  

     Days include scripture study and language study (Mike spends more time there than I do.)    

     On Mondays the missionaries come here - companionship at a time and we have two, sometimes three - to write their letters home.  Monday night we have someone here or go visit someone - always with one of the companionships so we have translators.  We take treats, they do the lesson.

       Tuesdays Mike meets with President Markelov on CES and young single matters;  Tuesday night we have Young Adults.  We take some sort of treat to that.  

         Wednesday night is Institute and we always have something fixed for them to eat before Institute because many of the kids come from work and school and don't have time to go home.                                Thursday Mike has District Meeting, treats for that too.

            Friday we have two district meetings and then Game night at the institute.  The missionaries bring investigators.  

Saturday is when they hold baptisms and activities.  Also Mike has started an English "club" for some of those who are studying to pass the pathway exam.  He teaches English using the scriptures and Liahona and other church materials.  Surprise - treats for that too.

Sunday we go to both Branches because Mike is the clerk in the branch we don't belong to so we have to go to that one too.

We're grateful to be here!!

Lots of good sayings over here:

Аво́сь да как-нибу́дь до добра́ не доведу́т.

Draw not your bow till your arrow is fixed.  Literal: Maybe and somehow won't make anything good.

4/12/15 Poetry, Spaceships and Conference

There are advantages to language barrriers.  One of our companionships was teaching a lesson and in their conversation before they started, the man showed them his nice volume of poems and then recited a poem from one of their famous authors.  He then asked the Elders if they had a strong American poem.  Never at a loss, one of the Elders stood up (he's a little taller than Craig) and recited:
We had a little turtle
His name was Tiny Tim
We put him in the bathtub
To see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
And now he's sick in bed
With bubbles in his throat.
Glub...   Glub ...
He sat down and they continued the lesson.

     We walked to the Volga again .. the buildings along the way are pictures in history.  The weather beats them up pretty badly on the outside, plus they are old to begin with, but you can often see the brightness of curtains, and flowers in the windows and occasionally a cat looking out.

The river is fully thawed now, was kind of choppy the day we were there, but it is always good to be down by the Volga.  The sky was especially pretty over the bridge.

 This boat has been frozen in the ice all winter.  In Samara they actually have ice boats or air boats that can go across the frozen river.

Hmmmmm .. that must be a missionary!! 

This is on the right side as we walk back up from the river

 You can see the full facility above, below is looking through the gate, looks like some kind of manufacturing plant.

This building is a bit further up on the left.  It always has smoke coming out and must also be some sort of manufacturing plant.

 And a couple of animal friends - we hadn't seen a pigeon this color before.

 and a cool looking dog so we asked if we could take the picture.  We're very careful to ask unless it is just a loose dog, and there aren't many of those.  We take pictures, but don't every try to pet them.

Kind of random but fun we'll stick this in the middle - a poem that a friend, former student when I taught in Riverside,  emailed us -- and I remembered a take off on it from BYU days in the Daily Universe.  The first two lines there were - Oh ladies be wary of cupid, and list to the lines of this verse ... rest is the same.
     O innocent victims of Cupid
     Remember this terse little verse
     To let a fool kiss you is stupid
     But to let a kiss fool you is worse.
                       Yip Harburg

There are a lot of pigeons now - these were on the roof of a building still kind of close to the river.  It is interesting that, at this point anyway, as many as there are, you don't see the evidence of that on sidewalks or cars as we often do at home.

We thought you would be interested in this because he landed close to where we are: 

 "On this day, fifty-four years ago, a man called Yuri Gagarin became the first person in the world to fly into space.  Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, boarded the Vostok 1 – the first human spaceflight in history—and spent 108 minutes orbiting the Earth.   To commemorate the day, the United Nations General Assembly has declared April 12 as the International Day of Human Space Flight. " 

You can see Saratov and then just below in red the actual landing site, which is across the river close to Engels where we have a branch.  He ejected after the capsule was back in the atmosphere where it was safe for him, so it was the capsule that landed where it shows below.  "Farmers who saw the cosmonaut fall from the sky didn't know what to make of the man in the orange suit and helmet.  A woman and her daughter reportedly reached Gagarin first; when she asked if he came from space, he confidently said that he had before asking to use a phone to call the Soviet Space Agency. "

  Saratov holds a big celebration every year at the site of the landing.  A couple of investigators invited us to go, unfortunately this year it was today which is Sunday.  

 This link is to a very interesting article that tells about the first cosmonaut, even a short video of him getting into the space ship and taking off.  Copy and paste this into the search bar http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/human-space-flight-day-revisiting-the-historic-flight-gagarin-took-54-years-ago/article1-1336356.aspx
       Also in Engels there used to be a lot of factories that designed and built planes, so around this holiday you see information on other planes too.  These are two models that one of our members brought to the Tuesday night meeting.  They, understandably, have a lot of pride in these air and space accomplishments.   We do like the people here.

       We are busy and grateful to be so, keeps time moving happily along.  When you talk about not knowing the sweet until you know the bitter -- we had no idea how wonderful a dry sidewalk was, potholes, bumps and all until we walked on ice for a couple of months.
     

Although we had already seen conference, we spent 5 or so hours Saturday and Sunday at the branch building watching conference with the young missionaries and the saints here.  They had the conference in Russian in the chapel, in English in the Relief Society Room and the young Angolan sister who only speaks Portuguese watched it in the family history room.  The missionaries had a sort of pot-luck in the very short time between sessions.  The district leaders fixed pizza sandwiches, which consisted of very large rolls (more like small loaves of bread), tomato paste, Kolebasa (sausage) and cheese - heated in the oven.  Good missionary food, they said, and very filling.

  Here is one of those  "thoughtful thoughts" -  Be not angry with others because you cannot make them as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~Thomas à Kempis

        The work here continues to move along, but still there are some pretty strong anti (protif) voices, stirred a couple of weeks ago by a very negative documentary.  One of our missionaries stated this thought the other day - She said that some days it seems crazy as they are out contacting and meeting people who often don't listen, but she was reading Preach My Gospel (which is a good family resource for FHE) and realized -  "We literally have the authority from God to be here and to preach the gospel to the people, tell them why we are here, share this beautiful message and give them an opportunity to accept."

We look at the Volga and remember the scripture in the D&C 121 -  "As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri (Volga) river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints."
.  We also found this by President Kimball in the April 1980 general conference:
  Brothers and sisters, pray for the critics of the Church; love your enemies. Keep the faith and stay on the straight and narrow path. Use wisdom and judgment in what you say and do, so that we do not give cause to others to hold the Church or its people in disrepute. Do not be surprised or dismayed if trials and challenges come upon us. This work, which Satan seeks in vain to tear down, is that which God has placed on earth to lift mankind up!

I have lived for more than half the 150 years the restored Church has been upon the earth in this last dispensation. I have witnessed its marvelous growth until it now is established in the four corners of the earth. As the Prophet Joseph said:  “Our missionaries are going forth to different nations, and in Germany, Palestine, New Holland, Australia, the East Indies, and other places, the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done” (History of the Church, 4:540).

Let us, then, press on confidently in the work of the Lord as we look forward to the glorious years of promise ahead. Through our faithfulness, all that God has promised will be fulfilled. This is the work of the Lord. The gospel is true. Jesus is the Christ and our Redeemer. May the Lord bless us all as we begin this great sesquicentennial conference of his church, I humbly pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.   (President Kimball)

Hope this wasn't too long .. 

   
   

4/5/15 Concerts, Cooking and Prayer

We have Institute youth who take classes at the Saratov Music Conservatory so we attended two concerts last week.  One girl plays the accordion - practices 4-5 hours a day so we don't need to tell you how good she is.  Last Tuesday evening at their performance, there were 9 accordion students who each played one or two numbers.  Then, at the end, all nine played together - very impressive and fun to listen to.  A miracle that day, there were quite a few concerts going on and we "just happened" to get there at the same time as members we knew who were going the same place.  They made sure we had the right tickets and went to the right room.  The Conservatory is huge - four floors with sings and stages and classrooms and practice rooms and practice areas.   We might never have found it until it was too late.

It is an old, stately building,  very historic and the inside is nicely done.

We especially like the doors.

Our second concert was choirs - starting with young children, some really fun songs. They are quite animated as they sing and very good.  Many of the older groups sang a Capella (looks funny to me too, but I looked up the spelling.)  Our young friend from the Institute was in one of those older groups.  We have pictures of other groups but they are closer and you can see faces, so we can't post them.  You can watch and listen to the videos when we get home.  We didn't see an organ, but there are pipes at the back of the stage so they may just bring it in when they need it.  You can see part of their very beautiful grand piano, quite an amazing sound.

We had another humanitarian project we were able to go on.  This one was the Engels Perinatal Hospital where between 4500 and 5000 babies are born each year.  It is a good hospital, three buildings and well staffed and the mothers and babies are well cared for. They do not have the most modern equipment as we do, but they have lost no mothers in the last few years.  We were even able to see four babies between two and three weeks, one of them born prematurely and just getting to 4 pounds. They all had full heads of hair, and when we asked, the nurse said that pretty much all of the babies are born with hair.  One of these had actually been born with two teeth, but she lost them within the first week.

My best pictures are in gowns and masks.

Mike has to do the initial visit report which covers the project, the facility and those who work there.  The girls at Valley-Leavitt will be glad to know that he gets every single bit of information, we have never had to go back.  

cute booties.... 

The Volga - this is before the current pushed the ice back against the bank and the river took over the middle

Tatiana's handiwork:

Mine -- Get your orders in early before the rush ..  I'm sailing right along .. Wish I could say it looked better in real life.  I think this is going to be like the chevron single crochet afghan I made years ago for my sister Trudy - my first and last. 

Mike has been keeping a list of cooking projects the last 6 months.  There also, little tender mercies along the way that are very much appreciated.  Saturday I tried a new chicken receipt for Mike and I - Waikiki Beach Chicken from the Samara Mission cookbook, but decided to cook all the package (gratefully they do have the boneless, skinless) so we could have some for Sunday.  Turned out our little Angolan sister came early for her appointment with the sisters so we had plenty to feed her and then we found out late Saturday night that the Steele's, a Senior Couple that are on an audit mission covering Eastern Europe, were staying for our church Sunday so it was great to be able to invite them without having to do some extra preparing.  That may not seem like much of a tender mercy to some, but it certainly was to me.  That would add one more dinner to the list below.  

Cooking Projects at 6 month

• sit-down dinners - 14 
• batches of cookies - 13
• pans of various kinds of brownies - 19
• batches of cupcakes - 7
• muffins (apple & bran) - 8
• evenings or mornings with pancakes - 20
• large crockpots of soup - 18

     Now, a very tender story from yesterday in Relief Society.   Dixie & Anne Leavitt's granddaughter, Hannah, David's daughter, has served in the Samara Mission, starting at the MTC July 1, and is now in Saratov.  She came into Relief Society yesterday to translate for Sister Steele and I.  (This is a picture of Sister Leavitt by her birthday greeting to her younger brother.  She is a fun, talented young lady and a great missionary.

 When testimony meeting started, Olga stood and told how last week she had fallen asleep without taking her seizure medicine and was dreaming that one of her friends, Tamara, put her hand on Olga's head and insistently told her she needed to get up and take her medicine.  This was about 3:00 in the morning.  Olga said her body felt heavy and it was hard to get out of bed, but Tamara was insistent and realizing that an episode was coming on, Olga prayed hard and finally had the strength to get out of bed and take the medicine.  She expressed her gratitude to our Heavenly Father and to her friend Tamara for taking care of her.  

        The second she sat down,  her friend, Tamara, who is the District Relief Society President and a fun, kind lady, jumped up out of her seat, very excited.  Then she told Paul Harvey's "the rest of the story."   Tamara had awakened about 3:00 a.m. that same morning because she was dreaming that she had a extremely painful toothache.  She went - dreaming still - to the doctor but when she walked into the room nobody was there to help her and the very real, increasing pain woke her up.  She had no toothache, but a driving feeling that something was very wrong with one of her friends, she had no idea who.  So she knelt by her bed and fervently prayed to our Father and asked that whoever this friend was that needed help, would He please help her.  Now she knew it was her friend Olga, and knew that our Father had helped.   It was pretty touching to watch them after the meeting as they embraced and talked and laughed.   And we were grateful Sister Leavitt was there because we haven't had a missionary in to translate in Relief Society very often.

      To close - this on prayer from the Bible Dictionary:  Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.

and from Tennyson - 

“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”  

We are grateful in our lives for the blessing of prayer.  Hope this finds you all well!!