February 15, 2012

   We have had some fun experiences this week.  I have mentioned before about Elder Peterson’s dislike of lifts (elevators).  Well, for you Disney World fans, we rode the “Tower of Terror” lift!  Normally, we would choose to climb stairs in apartment buildings to find the desired apartment, but in this particular building the stairs are outside and in subzero temperatures, that didn’t seem to be the best option.  So we dared to take the lift.  Fortunately, it was double the size of the typical lifts so four of us could fit comfortably.  Just don’t look down because you can see ALL the way down to the bottom level in between the floor and the entrance of the lift.  Once the door closes, the dim light within flickers and the elevator noisily creaks from level to level.  You know you’d arrived at the level you chose when the internal light flashes and you hear some electrical “ZAP.”  I was waiting for the free fall from 9 stories high…maybe next time!
   We have been meeting with a woman in our city for a few weeks now.  She has a strong religious background and enjoys discussing different religious topics.  She has started to pray differently than she had before.  Instead of reading prayers, she now says her own personal prayers and has found much strength in this more personal way of talking with God.  This week we showed her the DVD, “The Restoration,” which describes the story of a 14-year old boy, Joseph Smith, who prays to ask God which church he should join in his community back in 1820.  His answer came as a personal visitation from God and His Son in a grove of trees telling him to not join any of the churches and that God would prepare Joseph to restore His true church again on the earth.  After viewing the film, Ludmila described the feeling she had when she watched the part of God appearing to Joseph as “a tingling…like ants crawling up and down her arms.”   That was a cool way of describing how she was being told what she had seen was true.  We have that same feeling EVERY time we hear this true story!
   We had our first experience of being lost in Russia this week, too.  We were traveling to one of the neighboring cities to help the sister missionaries teach a family we have met with several times.  So we were even going somewhere we had been before only this time it was dark, snowy, and the inside of the bus windows were frozen so you’d have to scrape a little circle of ice in order to peer out the window to try and see where you were.  The sisters told us which bus stop to get off on.  In his superb Russian language, Elder Peterson asked a family to tell us when to get off which they did, but it didn’t look familiar.  Before we got off, we asked the bus driver and he agreed that it was the correct stop; but we didn’t see the sisters who would be there waiting for us.  We were already late because the traffic had caused several delays so we knew they were waiting.  Well, if we didn’t get off there, we wouldn’t know where else to get off because the bus driver said that was it.  So we got off and called the sisters…which didn’t help matters a whole lot because neither of them speak English.  We couldn’t describe where we were – duh – there weren’t any stores or landmarks within sight.  So we tried to talk someone into talking to the sisters on our cell phone so they could help determine where we were and where we needed to go to find them.  Well, the first couple of people wouldn’t have anything to do with us.  Finally, Ken was able to talk a man into talking on the phone.  After speaking with the sisters, he tried to explain to us where to go but we weren’t getting it.  So in frustration, he motioned for us to walk with him, and he took us to the next bus stop which was so kind of him.  But it wasn’t the right one either.  To make a long story even longer, he called the sisters again but it didn’t sound like they understood each other.  We made the executive decision to go back to the original bus stop, cross the street, get on a bus, and return home.  Needless to say, that night we spent three hours on a bus getting nowhere!  And the sisters weren’t happy with us!  Elder Peterson’s next language session focused on “getting lost tactics” and learning how to say, “I’m lost; please talk to my friend!” in a stern, convincing way.
   We had a fun Valentine’s Family Home Evening with the Young Single Adults on Valentine’s evening.  This is the group ages 17-30 who we meet with every other Tuesday night.  We wanted things to look festive so we had been looking throughout the week at different stores for things we could use to decorate our apartment.  Without any luck, we had to resort to the “big mall.”  We did find the Russian version of Michael’s craft store, but there wasn’t a “valentine’s aisle.”  We managed to find a package of heart-shaped balloons, a red accordion-style thingy to hang, and pink tinsel on clearance from Christmas.  We made it work.  We also bought some paper and heart-shaped confetti for them to make valentines with.  We had 13 youth come which included three investigators so that was awesome!  We’re going to need a bigger apartment!  We shared a short message on Christ’s love, made valentines, played “mafia,” repaired hymnbooks, and ate heart-shaped sugar cookies that I even managed to frost with pink frosting colored with some strawberry-looking powdered drink (no such thing as food coloring that I could find) and the only sprinkles I could find were multi-colored.  But, hey, they were sprinkles!  We didn’t know what the youth would think about making valentines, but we were pleasantly surprised!  They were really getting into it.  What we thought would be a 5-minute activity at best turned out to be hard to get them to stop after 30 minutes.  A couple of them were getting help from the other missionaries on how to write in English and then presented us with their valentines.  We took pictures, developed them the next day and made posters to hang in each of the three church buildings to encourage them and others to keep coming.  We will be going with them this weekend to Samara for an all-day activity with other youth in surrounding cities.  Working with these quality people is definitely a highlight of our experience!
   Along with valentine decorations, Elder Peterson bought his early birthday present at the mall.  It will be a shock to many of you that we have been here two months without quality speakers!!  I know—hard to imagine!!  After all, we might as well be listening to MoTab and Especially For Youth soundtracks in high def!  Life is good again!  We have also found real doughnuts, lasagna noodles and worcestershire sauce.  I guess we’re good to stay a couple more months!!

The District

David and Elder M

Valentine FHE

Susha and Julia

Valentine FHE