FHE

Tonight we had a fun FHE!  Carved jack o'lanterns.  Attached are pictures of them - and some of the group.  The picture of the three girls includes one of Katia - the girl with the long hair in the picture.  She brought two of her friends tonight.  I've also included a picture of the shoes in our front foyer.  In Russia everyone takes off their shoes when they enter a home.  I suspect in winter time they are pretty dirty so probably a good idea.  Sherry made cinnamon rolls and they went through two dozen pretty quickly.  It was a great evening and we had nine YSA in attendance plus six missionaries.  The missionaries are allowed to attend if they bring a non-member who is investigating the church.  I think the cinnamon rolls encourage them!

By the way - Russian pumpkins have way thicker skin than the ones we are used to.

I have a great missionary companion!  She works very hard and is darn nice to live with.

Institute and Super Saturday

It's been a great week!  Tuesday night we enjoyed a fun institute class - the first one held in our apartment.  Great lesson and seven students - but the best part was that they were from three different branches. Sherry had a pot of soup on the stove and after class everyone stayed and ate soup and visited.  Hopefully they will bring a friend next week.  Our Super Saturday - held once a quarter for seminary students - had seven seminary students in attendance, two seminary teachers and two branch presidents.  We asked the institute students to help and five of them showed up, too.  It was a fun day and Chuck got to teach a lesson and play Killer Frog - again.  We enjoyed the company of Elder and Sister Stevens, who volunteered to help with the food.  Everything has to be transported to the church on the bus so we each had a bag full of food and away we went!  Less to carry on the way home.

Tomorrow - Sunday - we are visiting a new branch.  That will be fun and now we know a couple of the kids there.  We look forward to getting to know more.

Home Again, Home Again...

Made it home today - Monday - in the mid-afternoon.  Went to church yesterday in Kazan from 11 until 2...actually we got to the church building much earlier for meetings...and then drove toward Saratov until about 8:00 Sunday evening. We were going to spend two nights in Kazan but the Kosmygins decided to get down the road a little ways.  About 8 p.m. Brother Kosmynin was getting tired so we stopped at what I can only describe as a trucker's motel.  Our room had twin beds and the mattress was like a thin wrestling pad filled with corn husks.  Whatever...we slept okay.  Today we stopped by the town of Balakova and then Marks and then Engels just so we could see the towns and the church buildings.  Those three towns are in the Saratov District so we'll be visiting them again.  We also got to visit the home of the Kosmygins.  Three story home and the daughter and family live on the first floor, the son and family on the second and our hosts on the third floor. Passed by fields of cabbage today - lots and lots of cabbage!  Got home, threw some laundry in and went to the Renok to buy some fruit and veggies.  The little lady running the booth we shop at likes us, I think!  We're making soup for the institute kids tomorrow and mom bought a kilo each of filberts and almonds...lightly salted them and added a little olive oil and baked them.  Great snacks!  Got pomegranates, apples, carrots, persimmons, grapes, beets...lots of deliciousness.  Mom has been hunting for things to make Mexican food from - she found some peppers today that she's going to try.  We also found some tortillas that look pretty good.  If we can make Mexican food life will be complete!

Attached is a picture of the motel we stayed in, a picture of the Balakova church building and a picture from the window of the Balakova building - the building sits right on the Volga River next to a dam. We didn't get a picture but the building in Marks is church owned and built - very nice.  They have two in our didtrict just like it.  The building in Engels is also church owned but is a renovated building.  Also very nice.  we didn't stop there so no pics this time.

There was another unfortunate magpie incident today.  We took a little walk this morning in the motel parking lot and there were magpies and crows sitting in the corner of the parking lot conversing..You know how they get when they're together.  Then two large birds landed next to them - which looked like crows but had white on their wings like magpies.  I think the crows and magpies are breeding.  I'm a little concerned....

We figure that we spent a total of thirty-six and a half hours in the car during the last week.  The drive the last couple of days was very rough - we came back a different route so we could visit the other towns.  We're tired - but home safe and sound.  Tomorrow we have our first institute class in our home and need to make some treats for our zone conference Wednesday. I'm encouraging my companion to make chocolate chip cookies.  The cool thing is there are no chocolate chips here - so we bought big chocolate bars to chop up.  That ought to be fun...

We bought some chocolate candies at the renok in some town we visited - I finally got to sample them.  Really, really good.  I think we better never buy them again.

Kazan to Izhevsk, Around Izhevsk...and Votkinsk, Stuff from the Renoke, Back to Kazan & Institute

Our trip from Kazan to Izhevsk took about six hours today.  We left Kazan - which, incidentally is in Tartarskan, a republic in Russia with a different heritage and language - and drove along the best road we've driven on in Russia - much better than the road from Samara to Saratov.  Half was four lane with interchanges and most of the other half was two lane with pretty smooth roadway.  We passed sugar beet fields and truckloads of cabbages.  Lots of fog which made us feel at home.  Our driver had a radar detector - periodically along the road are little radar boxes with cameras.  The landscape changed to more forested - birch forests and birch/pine forests and plenty of wide open Russia.  Russia is large!  

We stopped for lunch - you guessed it, melon and grapes.  Mom slipped me a pretzel afterwards!  There were two guys by the side of the road with a fire going and cooking meat.  Truck drivers were stopped and buying a chunk of meat and a slice of bread.  

I've attached a picture of a Russian trucker in memory of our Uncle Tim.  Also have some pictures of some typical houses along the road. Our driver said he wouldn't eat the meat because you can't be sure what kind of meat it might be...we've been advised by mission rules to not eat from roadside vendors.  Good advice, I think!

Also attached is a picture of our institute class that evening.

Man, did I find out something cool today!  Izhevsk is the home of many factories that make stuff like tanks and firearms!  The AK-47 was invented and produced here!  We visited the Mikhail Kalashnikov museum - he's the guy who invented that famous rifle - and a whole bunch of others.  Pretty neat museum.

We also visited Votkinsk where Tchaikovsky was born - he composed Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and a bunch of other famous music/ballets/etc.  We visited the home he was born in and after the tour was invited to have tea...which meant we went to the little kitchen/cafe and they fed us tea and homemade blini and pelmini - little crepe-like pancakes with a sweet buttermilk syrup and dumplings filled with meat with a tomato-horseradish dipping sauce.  Both really tasty.  

Got back to town in time to grab a bite in the hotel restaurant - cool table with couches instead on chairs - and then visited a seminary class and a FHE afterwards. Instead of seminary every day they do home study and just meet once a week.  Here there is one student and he has to take a 40 minute bus ride to come to class.  I got to do some games for FHE 'cause I guess I'm the game guy.  We played killer Frog, Screaming Toes and Hunter,Girl,Bear.  They enjoyed the games 'cause I'm such a fun guy. Mom/Sherry says I have to do the games because that's what I'm really good at.  Now I know...

Tomorrow we go back to Kazan where we will spend two nights and attend church Sunday.  Then home to Saratov

It was kind of nice tonight when one of the girls asked if we could stay in Izhevsk instead of going back to Saratov.  Must be the games...

Here's two pictures of the Russian Orthodox temple outside our window of our hotel room.  These beautiful buildings are a common sight where ever we go.   

We visited a renok on our trip.  Here's some pictures of a few items we found there.  Sherry bought the hat she has on. I found some awesome tools - axes and sledgehammers and very cool hatchets - all with homemade handles that I loved!  We saw some shoes made out of sheep hair.  Supposed to keep you very warm. They smelled like sheep hair, though. I also found a neat cultivator that I know I could make.  It would be very handy in the garden!

Today we drove back to Kazan.  Here's some more pictures - one of a typical brick home along the highway.  There is a stop sign - stop spelled in Russian is cton.  There's us at dinner this afternoon - not sure what our hosts had - some sort of fish soup and then spinach soup.  Mom tasted it. There's a picture of a block of apartment - there are miles and miles of them in Kazan - and everywhere else, too.  We the USSR fell the government gave many of the apartments to the occupants...which allowed them to own soemthing.  The apartment we have in Saratov was inherited by the landlord from his parents who received it when the soviet government fell. There's a picture of the mall we shopped in tonight.  It's, unfortunately, just like a US mall.  Then a picture of the Kremlin from our room.

Tomorrow we go to church and then drive part of the way home.

Here's a couple of pictures of our class tonight - we watched a video of a talk and then discussed it.  President Kosmynin taught the class and here's a picture of him.  Great guy - served 25 years in the Russian Air Force as a navigator - probably on a bomber.  He used to fly 10 hour missions.  Sure wished he spoke English!  Luckily, his wife does a little so we can communicate.

Kazan

We arrived in Kazan Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a nice lunch at the Mirage Hotel where stayed.  Very nice hotel - luxurious, even!  Directly across the highway is the Kazan Kremlin.  Many cities have a Kremlin which means fortress.  The Kazan Kremlin is muslim and attached are a few pictures of the mosque.  Really beautiful. The pictures do not do justice to the vastness of the space within the Kremlin.  We will spend another day in Kazan later this week.

Voyages of the Volkswagen Kosmygin, Lunch, Old Town, and Morning Walk Along the Volga...All on the way to Kazan

These are the voyages of the Volkswagen Kosmygin - start date 16-10-2012.  Our mission?  To boldly go where no Childers has gone before. Or a Delaney.

We departed Saratov at 09:00 and drove north.  Interesting things we saw along the way...a Kia Sportage just like Hannah and Brandon!  It wasn't them, though.  There were cars and trucks stopped alongside the highway fixing their own flat tires like my Dad used to do in the fifties...pumping them up with a manual tire pump like we used to do with our bikes. 

The soil is just incredible - rich and dark.  I think I have a picture of a recent plowed field. Also lots of sunflowers still unharvested. Shepherds with sheep and goats and cattle moving alongside the road...lots of dachas (country homes/cottages/cabins.  Going to the dacha on the weekend in the summer is a tradition.  Many older ladies sell produce from them alongside the road everywhere you go.  On this trip we came across a mile or two of little stands selling honey - or just a car with a blanket across the hood and jars of honey - or mead as it is called here.  Twenty miles down the road there were mushrooms for sale - jars and jars of them.  They clean them and then layer them in jars with salt and spices and water.  Couldn't get any pictures of that since we were going too fast.

There was a lady along a stretch of empty road with a little stand and a bun on a stick that she waved to cars passing.  The bun is fried with some meat inside.  I didn't get one.

For lunch we stopped alongside the road and our hosts provided persimmons, grapes, pinenuts, sprouted buckwheat and some honeycomb.  The honeycomb is from his brothers place in the Ural Mountains - in a land faraway.  Luckily, Mom slipped me some bread and cheese once we got into the car.

And let's talk about the Night Bus from Harry Potter...I think the driver is Russian.  It is commonplace to have a truck coming one way on a two lane road and to pass a truck going your way - the drives just straddle the center line and the trucks - hopefully - pull over a little to allow room.  Fun!  No picture of that - I had my eyes closed and was deep in prayer....

We arrived at our destination for the evening. We stayed in the Hotel Venets (I think it means Venice) in the town of ul'yanovsk.  About four hours south of Kazan.  Lenin lived here as a boy and we visited "old town" which included a store (magazine in Russia) and a house he lived in.  Lenin is very popular in Russia and every town we have visited has squares and statues of Lenin. 

The Hotel Venets was probably new in the late sixties or early seventies.  It was kind of old but clean - the view from our 19th story room was nice.

As you can see Mom can't even control herself around statutes of men in uniform!  She does like the sailors and soldiers, doesn't she?  (old family joke which has never been as funny as I think it is!)

Took a walk along the Volga this morning. Nice, foggy morning.  Memorial to WWI veterans.  Flower bed - lots of flower beds around everywhere.  Mornings see older ladies with little brooms sweeping up along the streets and in the squares.

 Off to Kazan!