11/8/2015 Our Week, Indexing, Lemon Greenhouse, Mitt Romney

   Thought we'd start with a boring rundown of a regular week, gratefully always full and busy.  As a note, there isn't an assignment we do not enjoy.  Part of our CES assignment is the cleaning of the Institute building which consists of a wide hallway, a couple of smaller classrooms, President Markelov's office, a large classroom and a computer room.  We went together at first, but there is a lot to do at home with cleaning, laundry and cooking (for us and when we have someone over) and treats for the meetings we have during the week, so I stay.  Every morning Mike goes down to the building for a couple of hours, working inside and out.  One of his goals this year is to stay ahead of the ice - once there is a layer or two, it is hard to get off.
       Mondays the missionaries come here to use the computers to write home and Monday evening is home evening at the building, or we have someone up here - always with a couple of missionaries to translate.  Tuesday evening is English Club which the missionaries teach while we take care of the institute class for single adults over 45.  Wednesday night is Institute for 18-31 age group.  We have an Institute Council that we work with to plan activities, service projects, etc.  Thursday night Mike goes to the District Council meeting, Friday night is game night where the missionaries bring investigators.  Saturday Mike teaches an English gospel study class to some of the young people who speak English.  Sunday we go to both branches because, as we mentioned before we are in one branch and he is the membership clerk in the other.  Sunday afternoon at 6:00 we meet with the mid-single group, ages 31-45.   During the week and something we really enjoy, often the missionaries will bring investigators or new members to our apartment for lessons.  Two girls who are sisters were here and Mike made a goal with them if they would, we also would read a chapter each day.  We finished the Book of Mormon, and now are working on the mission challenge - to read the Book of Mormon in 65 days.  We are on schedule with that.
      Mixed in all of this, Mike is working on a history of Saratov, first a time line showing mission presidents, district presidents, and a line graph showing when each branch started.  He would like to have it ready for the conference coming up next Sunday.   We have gone with Presidents Reshetnikov and Markelov and taken pictures of all of the buildings the church has met in over the years, and Mike has gone through the available historical discs for each branch (with the help of Sister Leavitt's good language skills) and we're trying to take pictures we need from that.  We've been able to go to member's homes and get their stories and pictures - either with missionaries or President Reshetnikov has taken us.  It has been very interesting .. also interesting that when he's through, someone is going to have to translate that back into Russian.
      The truth of and importance of the gospel in people's life is evident every day.
                   Well - enough of our exciting daily routine .. on to this week's blog:
                                                                *             *              *
     Mike and I are included in the email that goes out to the district members on indexing.  Saratov District is almost always at or close to the top.  They are already above 2500 names indexed for November as you can see.  This is the note Tatiana sent this time.  Our email automatically translates emails that are in Russian into English.  This one is a pretty good translation - some are pretty funny.

Дорогие друзья! За 4 ноябрьских дня наша группа сделала 2 500 имён в Марафоне по индексингу!!!  Dear friends! During 4 days of November, our group made a name in the 2500 Marathon on indeksingu !!!
Мы все просто МОЛОДЦЫ! We're all just great!
Присоединяйтесь пожалуйста те, кого пока нет в этом списке! 
Join please those who is not on this list!
                                        *     *        *

We do like this picture!!  There is a good spirit that comes with indexing and family search no matter where you are.

We visited a lemon greenhouse last week - he has 250 plants.  It is about 30 minutes from us - if the traffic is good, which it wasn't on the way over.

They grow very large lemons which is a good thing to do in a lemon greenhouse :) 

 

There have two iguanas - two very large iguanas - not sure if they are there for interest or if they are useful in the greenhouse.  Our grandson, Ben (Taylor Lorum's oldest) has some kind of a similar animal so we'll find out from him and post it next time.

And a closeup - maybe he is there to scare the bad guys.

 We made the awful mistake of thinking we could remember what everything was - enough said.  So we don't know what these are, but you can see that there is a lemon that is grafted into the tree...

More lemons

The sides of the building and the top row of panels that are at the peak of the roof are double pane.  The rest coming down the roof are single pane.  The heat rising up from the building is enough to warm those and keep the snow melted, he said it just slides off the roof,  so even during the winter they don't have ice or snow on the roof.

 Lemon and orange on the same tree, he has someone who does the grafting.  He did it all originally but it takes too much time and he said he had the business to run.

 Not sure what kind of a flower, but really beautiful

 Very hot water runs through these pipes which go all through the greenhouse to keep it warm.

 more pipes, pretty amazing system.

and more lemons - you can see the single pane part of the roof above them.

These are like large clementines

We looked this up when we got home - This Goliath Birdeater is a spider belonging to the tarantula family, the largest spider in the world. By leg-span, it is second to the giant huntsman spider, but it is the largest by mass.  It is called birdeater because of an 18th century copper engraving showing one eating a hummingbird, but usually eat worms, toads and bugs.  The spider is a delicacy in northeastern South America, prepared by singeing off the hairs and roasting it in banana leaves. The flavor has been described as "shrimplike".  We'll leave that cooking and tasting to someone else.

There were some beautiful red leaves in this area, they flower in the spring.

Pretty pink flowers, not sure what they are either, but at least you all know about the birdeater spider

 Nikolai has us stand at a couple of certain spots and took these pictures.  We were the only ones there so he spent quite a bit of time with us as he took us through, just as we finished a bus of school children showed up.  Nice timing.

Down another of the rows

Ilia is behind Mike

A banana tree

little tiny pomegranate (granate is the Russian word)  - about the size of a golf ball.

Ilia (r) was the translator so Mike was able to talk to Nickolai - pretty amazing man.

He said they do this just to make the pipes look more decorative.

Finally at the end

Natasha's niece, Victoria.  It was a holiday and she was out of school and visiting them.  That is why they decided on the lemon greenhouse trip, and we're glad we were included.

Just kind of interesting as we were walking back out to the street, an old military vehicle of some sort.  The greenhouse is back a bit on the right and out of the picture.  It is tucked way back in so you have to walk in and out and around a few things to get to it.

The entry is through the building behind Mike & Ilia.  

 We came back along a part of the Volga we hadn't seen before, but this is the only picture we could get and you can barely see the river - but the sky is pretty.

Mike has helped some of the youth here get started in the Pathway program.  It is through BYU-I.  They have to pass an English proficiency test first, which is pretty basic, but still hard for many to pass unless they are in a situation where they use English.  We have three in it now.  Two of them come regularly to an English gospel study class Mike does on Saturday - we've posted pictures of them before. 

The other young lady comes on Wednesday because one of their weekly assignments it to speak English for at least 30 minutes and also go over the assignment for the next week.  We have really enjoyed her and she is headed to the temple in Kiev this week with a friend from Pathway.  She is on the left in the top picture with Sister Leavitt and her friend who came in from the Rostov mission, is in the bottom picture

And our story for this week is the conversion of the friend, who is married with two children.  Her train got in about 10:00 a.m. and they didn't leave until 5:00 p.m. so she stayed with us until Olya got off work.  She told us this story:

Her husband was watching TV during the elections when Mitt Romney was running.  He liked what he was saying and thought he seemed like a good guy.

 

 He heard the word Mormon for the first time and looked it up on the internet.  He said there were so many bad things he decided there must be something good for people to work that hard to tear it down.  So he went to the church website and read, then requested a Book of Mormon.  The missionaries from the Vladistock (sp?) mission came on a four hour train trip to bring two Books of Mormon - one for him and one for his wife.  But he didn't say anything to her.  There were three members of the church in their town who met every Sunday and he started going - still didn't say anything to her.  He took the lessons on Skype - and still didn't say anything to her.  

After a couple of months he came to her and said he had found something he thought she would be interested in, a church where the focus was the family.  She started taking the lessons on Skype and on the third lesson, they asked her if she wanted to be baptized when he was on December 8.  She said he kind of looked sheepish and said .. "I forgot to tell you..."  After she finished the 5th lesson, they had her read Moroni 10:4-5 and asked her to pray about it.  Praying was hard because it was something she had never done but she finally decided she wanted to know because her husband knew and was going to join the church.  She went into her bedroom and simply asked - Please, Heavenly Father, tell me if the Book of Mormon is true.  She said that immediately she was enveloped in a warm feeling and she knew.  They were baptized.  Her husband was immediately made the group leader of their group, now five.  That was three years ago and they have 25 members and he is the Branch President. They have been sealed in the temple, their son has been baptized and their daughter will be baptized when she turns eight.  She also said that there is another branch president in an area close to theirs who learned about the church the same way - saw Romney on TV, looked up Mormons, requested a Book of Mormon - the missionaries came and he and his wife and their two children were baptized...

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This scripture fits the story.  We also express thanks to our Father for everything we have and are.. 

Alma 26:37  Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen.

10/1/2015 Pumpkins, VT Report, Elder Bednar, Halloween Party

     Another first.  We did the Halloween pumpkin carving again, this time with the missionaries for game night on Friday.  They have a very short lesson or spiritual thought at first, then the activity. The pumpkins don't look like the ones at home.  Instead of being mostly round and orange, they are tall, different shapes and orangish brown and green, But they work and everyone had fun.  Our "first" is not the pumpkin carving, but because we took our pumpkin home and baked it so we could have pumpkin for pumpkin pie. After it had baked, we were scraping the soft pumpkin off the rind.  It looks good, is smooth and non-stringy, but we had to laugh. Who would ever have thought we'd be in Russia getting pumpkin ready from "scratch" so to speak so we could have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.  Now to find a pie crust recipe that works.  I've tried a couple of times, in fact I think we posted one of the efforts showing you could hold up the pie by the crust without the crust breaking.  

      

 Alex is the one who often posts pictures to our facebook, he is sampling the raw pumpkin.  Neither of us remembered anyone at home eating pumpkin like that, but we tried it, and it isn't that bad ..

Alex carving his pumpkin .. 

 Another one of the youth sampling one of the eyes he has just carved out of the pumpkin:

 The finished product.  

 This couple you've seen before .. long time investigators who always come to English Club and Game Night.  They are always very good to the young missionaries and the ones who took us to the Russian music concert several weeks ago.  He is very creative and always does a great pumpkin, also speaks some English.

His from last year

We visited Marina, a long time member, last week.  She was baptized the same day as our District President and his wife - the Reshetnikovs - in 1993, the church came in 1992.  She also was in the first group to make the trip to the Stockholm temple in the spring of 1995.  Her husband joined in 2007 and remained active for only about a year, but she has held on.   She has served in the Relief Society and had this paper showing the visiting teaching report for 2009-10.  It is interesting to see the church is the same wherever we are, regardless of country or language. Her son is a counselor in our branch presidency. 

 Her mother, baptized not long after she was, often is the pianist in Sacrament meeting.  She reminds us of Ethel Leavitt in size and spunk when she gets to an enthusiastic song; at some time in her life, she must have played in a dance band.  She's great.  Also, she must be a kindred spirit to Lynn Anderson because she is always adding extra notes and chords and runs here and there that make everything sound better.

This is the apartment building Marina and her husband live in .. very old and very ornate, but well taken care of inside.  You can barely see the carvings at the top.  They live on the top floor and there is no "lift" (elevator.)  We were surprised to learn that she sells Mary Kay, which we didn't expect to see over here.  But, the Volga swimmer in our branch sells Nature's Sunshine and both seem to sell quite well, especially Mary Kay.

Sister Howe, Sister Waite, Sister Leavitt.  As you've probably noticed before, there are almost always businesses on the ground floor of the apartment buildings.

Another thing Marina still had was this announcement of Elder Bednar's visit to Saratov on November 13, 2007; 6:30 p.m.  She said early that morning an unexpected storm rolled in quickly and furiously and continued throughout the day until the snow was 3-4 feet deep and still coming.  (President Reshetnikov told us later that the next day, the sun was shining and the snow completely melted.) The storm was so bad that no flights were allowed in or out of Saratov.  The members here were fervently praying and they feel they were answered with a miracle.  Elder Bednar's plane made it in safely, the only one that came in that day.  Ground transportation was at a standstill, not even buses or trams running, so many faithful saints who were at all able, old, mid and young, walked, some as much as 2-3 hours in the snow with snow still falling, to be at the meeting to hear from an apostle of the church.  And many came without even being sure he would be able to be there.  It is tender and testimony building to hear their stories which they tell with humility and gratitude.

The Institute had their Halloween party Saturday.  There were mostly youth but a few adults who have just as much fun as the kids.  They always have plenty of food, colorful and well arranged.  Their parties are always fun with games here and there scattered through the dancing; and although it was mostly disco we found a few we could dance to.  We stayed after with the Institute Council presidency to clean up, which always seems to be a friendship building time.  We have really come to love these young adults and the other saints we are privileged to associate with here.

This is one of the games .. they have one toliet paper here that doesn't easily pull apart, so they break into groups of two, each group has a couple of rolls of toliet paper and one wraps the other to make a mummy -- the results::::

Another game - they are given step by step instructions as they draw on a paper on the back of the person in front of them, then check to see who is closest to what it is supposed to be.

Posting this picture,  although it goes better with last weeks, but we could see another crane out our window and you can better see the cubicle the guy that is directing is in, he is up about 14 stories.

Have we said before what an amazing experience this is.  It is hard sometimes to be so far away from home and family especially after being used to seeing them all much and often, and for that too we are grateful.  But it is right, it is good and we and they have been greatly blessed.  We remember President Hinckley's father's reply to him .. 

"Forget yourself and go to work."  And that is what we have tried to do.

Our Father has taken good care of our family and of us and we are grateful beyond words.  Also we are grateful to all of you for your love, friendship and support and hope all is going well in your lives.

Good Scripture:   D&C 58:1 - Hearken, O ye elders (and sisters) of the church, and give ear to my word, and learn of me what I will concerning you 

and also concerning this land unto which I have sent you.