Can you even remember last week? The days just seem to run together. That is one thing that in and of itself has been different in the mission field for us. We don't keep track of what day or date it is like we did at home. Dad had a good birthday Sunday; well, "Russia" good. He spoke in church which was excellent. He was presented with a candy bar for his birthday from the RS president which they do for all 20 members of the branch on their birthdays:) Then we came home and had a real, bonified roast beast dinner - first one since we've been in Russia. Our district president has a friend in one of the "Reenoks," as they are called, who he trusts to sell quality meat. So President
Zolotov took us there last week and we bought a roast, pork chops, and 4 pounds of ground "farsh," a mixture of pork and beef. We spent $27 which seemed ridiculous, but it won't happen very often. I cooked half of the roast with potatoes and carrots and even made gravy. Dad said it tasted good so that's what was important. Planning ahead, he thought to bring the DVD Jeremiah Johnson strictly for the purpose of watching on his birthday, which he did. I told him that could have been a mistake on two accounts, one of which was seeing our "backyard" throughout the movie. We really do live in a beautiful place!
We will be having a zone conference here in Toliatti next month. There are eight other missionaries who will join the eight we have here. They come from as far as 8 hours away. I guess President and Sister Sartori will stay in a hotel here. We were hoping to be able to go to Samara for a change of scenery but this will be fine too. I wonder if they'll ask us to house some of the other missionaries. They could sleep on what I'm sure is a most-comfortable couch bed:) During our district meeting last week, the zone leader and his companion performed their OC (Old City, the name of the city we live in here) Rap. We took a picture of it and will send it along, but it was so funny. These two
elders are definitely some of our favorites. Elder Hale and Elder Hughes, H2 they call themselves, have fun personalities and get along well with each other. Elder Hale has a beautiful baritone voice; in fact, I accompanied for him to sing "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" in Sacrament meeting yesterday that was extremely good. Anyway, he sings part of the rap while Elder Hughes does a fist and knuckle rhythm on the table while doing the back-up talking part of the rap. The words they wrote are specific to the mission and are very clever...a missionary reunion hit to be sure!
Russians celebrated a holiday last week. The kids were out of school all week to celebrate the leaving of winter and the coming of spring. Evidenced by the horizontal snow storm we had Saturday, I can hardly see spring coming any time soon. But the holiday includes eating pancakes all week. Russian pancakes are called "Blini" and are like what we would call crepes. On Sunday they have a ritual of burning a stuffed doll which signifies killing winter. We can only hope she died! As part of the celebration, our Old City Branch had a picnic in the forest on Saturday. A picnic in the winter, you might ask? Oh, yes, absolutely..."it's normal." And, yes, it's still cold. We dressed for it,
but with the wind blowing it was still cold. But we walked in the forest for a while, some sled down hills on sleds, others on plastic bags, and we ate pancakes and drank herbal tea. One of them noticed dad had a bit of frostbite on his cheeks. We wouldn't have noticed but she said they looked a little white. So we've been putting lotion on them; I'm sure they'll be fine.
We had our first visa trip last week. We are required to leave the country every three months to renew our visas. You can imagine what a logistical feat that is to keep straight for hundreds of missionaries throughout Eastern Europe!! We were travelling with two of the same elders we arrived to Russia with originally. So four limited Russian-speaking Americans trying to maneuver three airports, four airplanes, taxi directions, etc. made for an exciting trip. We were doing pretty good until Elder Peterson made a
quick duck into the bathroom. Having complete faith and trust in him, the other two elders naturally followed in after him…into the women’s bathroom! The two elders quickly noticed their mistake (probably from the cleaning ladies yelling at them), but Elder Peterson was already committed and wasn’t yelled at until he was washing his hands. In their defense, the pictured logos on the doors were unlike any we have ever seen. The other airport bathroom signs were easily distinguishable, but these definitely were not. Makes for a good story anyway.
Our day started with getting up at 4 in the morning to take a taxi to the Samara airport, fly to Moscow, fly to Vilnius Lithuania, back to Moscow, back to Samara, taxi back home, arriving at 1:30 the next morning. We are hoping that some time during our stay here we will have a visa trip to Kiev, Ukraine, so that we can attend the temple there. Some interesting things about the airplane rides were we were offered a hard candy on a large tray a couple of times throughout the flight. It wasn’t a mint; just a fruit-flavored candy. We were fed meals on every flight. Our 7 a.m. flight was a chicken dinner. Another meal included weird looking meat and cheese on a roll. We were excited to have a couple of mustard packets included because mustard isn’t common here. I chose to save mine to take home. Elder Malloy chose to smother his sandwich with it, excitedly took a bite, and was surprised to taste yellow-colored horseradish! It was super nasty!! It was apparent the alcoholic beverages were free, but we passed on those.
While waiting for a connecting flight in one of the airports, we ate in a café and ordered strictly by pointing at pictures. All of the waiters were laughing at us trying to communicate what we wanted. Elder Peterson still ended up with mayonnaise on his sandwich despite his superb efforts to communicate otherwise. Russians do love their mayonnaise!!
No comments:
Post a Comment