Youth Conference

Here's a few pictures from youth conference.  The first is a picture of me thinking about doing something...the second is Mom actually doing something!  Nothing has changed, has it?!  As they say here - нормальный (normalee)!

There is a picture of the Roller Hall - the skating rink that we used for many of our activities...none of which were skating.  The facility covered the skating floor with carpeting and we held our dances and service projects there.

Another picture is of us with Sister Nechiporova one of the session directors.  She is also the Eastern Europe Area Public Affairs Director and a Phd.  Nice lady.  Her husband is the EEA Welfare Director and was mission president in Rostov Mission until last year.

Final two pictures are of the performers at our variety show and a group picture of all the conference attendees.

We've been home for a few days and are starting to recover...we were pretty exhausted when we got home.  My knee was very sore...I had surgery on it in 1973 and if I do stupid things it hurts and I have to rest it.  The combination of traveling and lugging our suitcases for miles and up and down at least a bazillion stairs in the Moscow Metro and then being a group counselor and then a week at youth conference running around and also throw in some swing dancing...my knee needs a break. It's getting better ever day.

Went grocery shopping today and Sherry is in the kitchen making three batches of brownies for institute tonight and zone conference tomorrow.  Normalee!

YSA Conference Skits in a Bag

Apparently there is no word for skit in Russian so they called this Cabbage Night.  Don't ask me why.  Here's a few pictures from our group skit...the girls were sirens trying to lure the sailors to their doom. There is a picture of me and a member of our group as native sailors rowing to escape the sirens and a group picture taken near the lake as we prepared our skit.  

There is also a picture of our Katya is her skit...she is being inspired as I am sure you can tell.  She announced in her testimony at conference that she is going to serve a Mission.  

The final picture is of Renat from Saratov in his skit - he played a "flower child" trying to lure a lovely maiden from the paths of righteousness.  He was hilarious!

Our YSA group and Conference Participants

Here are pictures of our group in family prayer one night...we invited Elder Marchenko, the Area Authority Seventy presiding over the conference, to have prayer with us as I mentioned in an earlier post.  There is a picture of three of our group...two of which live in Saratov.  Lovely young adults...and they want to get married and raise a family.  Just hasn't happened yet. I don't know what the heck is wrong with the young adult men everywhere...not just in Russia.  I blame social media and texting...too easy not to have face to face conversations.  Sure glad I found the perfect companion!!!

Here's a picture of all the participants attending last week's YSA Conference...about 300 in total. Good lookin' group!

Saratov Pictures

Here are four pictures taken overlooking Saratov.  The young lady is Lena, one of our Saratov YSA. She is a beautiful and so is the lovely view of the city at dusk.

Enjoying Conference

Here's a picture of us relaxing as we enjoyed conference last week.  Youth conference is so different than the young adults...it's bringing back a lot of memories of Young Women's Camp.

Breakfast and an Exciting Discovery

Today for breakfast I had - since I am a Russian Man - a few slices of bread with a slice of ham and a slice of cheese on each one and a delicious bowl of corn meal mush.  It was very good. Sherry, on the other hand, had sliced beets with mayonnaise and hard boiled eggs. I reminded her of the little couplet Lips that taste wine will never touch mine and paraphrased it If you eat that beet our lips will never meet. She went back for seconds.  I'm still figuring out exactly what that means....

The Exciting Discovery...our facility has a locked gate with uniformed guards that control entrance and exit.  We ventured out of that gate today and found a little grocery store - called a magazine in Russia. (There is a big chain of them called Magnets...pronounced Mag Neat).  Inside that magazine we found two wonderful things...a cooler full of Pepsi Light in 1.25 liter bottles and a freezer case full of ice cream bars.

Life is good.

More Conference Pictures & Blog Translation

Here's a few more pictures from our YSA Conference last week.  The first two are from our Speed Dating game...they really enjoyed that!  There is a picture of Sasha in his uniform...one year of military service is required in Russia.  Sasha is part of the honor guard at the Kremlin...very good assignment.  It was good to see him...his year is up in November and then he will come home to Saratov.  He enjoyed conference - the spirit of conference was very different from his daily experiences and he was sad to leave.  There are also three pictures of our service project.  We were assigned to find some quotes about the various aspects of temple attendance...we found some great ones. They were laminated and the young adults cut them up and made pretty magnets for people to put up.  We told about our first temple experience and how ill-prepared we were.  They were kinda blown away when I said there were only fifteen temples on the earth when we attended our first time!  Now there are over 140! Things are changing!  The object of this project was to provide food for thought for them and for their friends prior to their attendance in the temple.  Hopefully these quotes will assist them in asking the right questions to help them prepare.  The young people really got into making these magnets and were VERY creative.

We were blessed to be group leaders for the YSA Conference.  We didn't find out about that assignment until the day before conference started when someone had to cancel.  The assignment was physically demanding...devotional every morning at 07:30 and another one every night at 20:00.  We had a staff meeting after the youth went to bed at 10:30 (I didn't say they went to SLEEP at 10:30!  They had an assigned hour of personal study each night and stayed up late doing that and discussing it.  We couldn't believe how faithful they were in following that direction) so we were rarely in bed before midnight.  It was such a fantastic and sanctifying experience to be with these great young adults - the future of the world and the future of the church in Russia and in the other four countries represented in our group.  In our Thursday night devotional, Elder Marchenko, the Area Authority Seventy, was hanging around near our group as we knelt in family prayer and we felt prompted to ask him to join us.  He said the prayer and afterwards I hugged him and he said he was hoping we would ask him to join us. Neat.  Even neater was our last devotional Friday night. We had planned to show a short video on Standing In Holy Places and then discussing that idea and had decided to have the final devotional in our room.  As we walked to our room with our twenty-three young adults I felt prompted to change that idea.  We gathered in our room and I told the kids about how we always asked our own children to knock on our bedroom door when they got home at night and come sit on our bed and talk about their day.  It was cool because our laptop had various pictures of our family coming up on the screen as we talked and many of the youth were watching that.  Lots of the kids talked about some neat things they were experiencing and we ended by singing I Am A Child Of God...many of us were in tears and we ended with a kneeling family prayer.  I blessed them in the prayer as a father would and afterwards we both broke the mission rules about hugging members of the opposite sex.  Elder Marchenko told me afterwards that I had no choice but to do so...  It was poignant when I hugged one girl - maybe twenty-eight years old - when she said she never had a Dad and this was the first time she had ever been hugged by a Daddy.  All our group called us Mama and Papa - except for one of the African guys who called my Daddy.  I loved it!

Many of the youth were sad to leave...many of them don't have happy places to return to.

FYI - whenever this blog inappropriately says "I" or "My" or "Me" it really means "We" or "Our" or "Us".  Usually when I write a post I am exhausted or in a hurry and I forget.  I also know how to spell pretty well - my various spelling errors are caused by fat fingers or being in a hurry.  I really never forget my companion.  Really!

I have a fantastic companion...our mission experience has been the best thing we have ever done for our relationship...as we grow closer to our Savior we also grow closer to each other and to the Holy Spirit.  I don't think we will ever be the same.  For me that's good thing.

YSA Conference

Hangin' with my peeps...the girls on the right is Elder Davydov's girlfriend who just got home from her mission and is living in Moscow.  Elder Davydov will receive a vicarious hug upon our return...

Conference could hardly have gone better...one of the best testimony meetings I've ever attended.

More to come. It's time for a nap...

More news - Katya from Saratov announced that she will be serving a mission...Elder St. Clair, third cycle, will now be a trainer and District Leader in Nova-K Branch in Samara and our DL Elder Jaynes will now be a trainer and Sister Upshaw is coming back to our zone - she will be in Balakova her last cycle!  And...Elder Bateman is now a Zone Leader in Samara!!!  Our "kids" are growing up!!

AND - PRESIDENT MARKELOV IS OFFICIALLY HIRED AS CES COORDINATOR!!!  HOORAY!!!

Life is good.

Zone Conference

Our zone held conference yesterday...they got to meet the new mission president and his companion.  It's cool to hear the very clear vision President Schwab has for the mission - he told of four points to focus on - Faith in Jesus Christ, Perfect Love, Working with Unweariness and Exact Obedience.

 

Off tomorrow to Moscow for two weeks to attend YSA and Youth Conferences.  Will spend today packing and cleaning and then attend a fireside tonight, church tomorrow morning and we catch the train to Moscow at 17:10.

 

Borscht & The Markelovs

So, a few weeks ago I posted that I was doing crazy stuff here in Russia - like eating vegetables and not liking meat...weird, unusual things. My daughter (in-law, but as far as I am concerned they are all my daughters...since we are sealed together and I love them AT LEAST as much as I love my sons but that is another story for another time...thanx, girls for marrying them) Denee suggested that maybe it was the prayers of her children asking Heavenly Father to help Grandpa be safe and healthy on his mission.  Denee is sweet, isn't she?

 

Anyhow - the other day Lena - Sister Markelov - suggested that they come over and she would make borscht for me...since I had asked her for her recipe.  Every Russian has their own borscht recipe.  Now the deal is - I asked her for her recipe...not for her to come and make it.  If we made it and I didn't like it no big deal.  If she makes it and I don't like it then I have to pretend to like it and she will know I'm pretending.  Cornered as I was I agreed.  Tonight she came over - with her husband and daughter, of course - and we ate borscht.

I have three pictures - one showing my first bite...I love the look on her face as I find out that her borscht is absolutely delicious.  Who would have thought that anything with beets and cabbage in it would be so good?  Crazy.

There is also a close up of the borscht...don't know why but it looked cool so I'm including it.  

We had a wonderful evening.  Next week we should find out for sure if Zhenya is officially hired as CES Coordinator.  Moscow has already bought him a ticket to fly there for training in September so it looks pretty good...but it ain't a done deal until it's a done deal.  He said tonight that after he gets back we are going to have to drive to every city in the mission to meet teachers and train them and give them their materials.  There is a new Book of Mormon curriculum this year that I can't wait to see!

I think we are going to be very busy this fall.  Life is good.

 

 

Institute Lesson

Wow...the teacher didn't show up for institute tonight and I taught the lesson.  You realize the students speak Russian and I speak English, right?

 

The lesson was on the importance of the Holy Ghost in teaching as a missionary (or any other time, of course!).  The lesson only lasted twenty minutes but it went very well...we had one students who translated a bit.

It was very fun.  We ate watermelon and some other kind of melon and some other fruit and went home.

New Mission President

Thursday we said goodbye to President and Sister Sartori and welcomed President and Sister Schwab.  When leadership changes it is natural for everyone to be excited - which is no reflection on prior leadership...just a normal enthusiasm to see what the new leader will do.  Couple that with the recent worldwide broadcast from Salt Lake City on changes in the missionary program and we have a pumped up missionary force excited to meet the new leaders and see what exciting changes they bring.

The flight from the US to Saratov is exhausting and it takes a day or two to recover.  Today we were interviewed by President Schwab and invited them to dinner which they readily accepted...they've been unpacking all day and haven't gone grocery shopping yet.  We really enjoyed getting to know each other.  Also in the attached picture are Elder and Sister Olsen - from Camas, WA - our new office couple who will replace the Connells in a few weeks.  The Schwabs are one the left of the picture and the Olsens in the center.  

It is a great blessing to "happen" to be here when they arrived and to get the privilege of meeting them.  It is apparent that they are the right leaders for the Russia, Samara mission...we're excited to see what the future brings!

Mom and Valia

I'm trying not to be jealous but Mom sat next to Valia instead of me at the activity last night.  It's okay, I love them both...

Institute Summer Activity

We held our first institute activity tonight - we had forty show up throughout the night...including six missionaries and ten who are not members of the church.  We had "American" food - hot dogs, mac salad, chips, chocolate cake and ice cream.  It was an awesome night!

Here's various pictures - charades, ping pong, our soon-to-be coordinator and family...wonderful night!