Patriarch Rogers

The last week Sister Stevens and Sherry have been assisting Patriarch Rogers as he gives blessings to the saints here in Saratov.  For those of you who don't know in each of our stakes there is a patriarch called who gives blessings to members.  I received my blessing on November 18, 1973 - which, incidentally, "happened" to be Sherry's 18th birthday.  I hadn't met her yet.  The blessing indicates the possibilities the Lord has in store for you if you keep His commandments.  They are sacred experiences to us. We treasure our blessings and consider them the voice of the Lord to us.

Only stakes have patriarchs and since the church in Saratov does not have enough members yet to be a stake a patriarch travels here once a year.  Patriarch Rogers was mission president in St. Petersburg 18 years ago and was a professor of Russian at BYU.  He lives in Bountiful, Utah. He's an awesome guy...in his late seventies.  His stamina is amazing.  To try to protect his strength the local leaders scheduled him to give about six blessings a day which meant that many who wanted blessings were not able to have them.  When he got here he said he would do as many as necessary so everyone who wanted a blessing could have one.  Consequently he is spending an extra day here and giving ten belssings a day.  Each blessing takes about 30 minutes total.  As you can imiagine the process is taxing.

Sister Stevens has the priviledge of being in the room as he blesses each sister.  Even though she doesn't understand all the Russian words the spirit is awesome.  Sherry has kept everyone waiting organized.  The patriarch has two digital records which both record each blessing and Sherry has made sure they get downloaded to Dropbox and sent to Moscow for transcription.

It's been a wonderful experience for them...of course, in order to get to the church building by 8:30 Sister Setvens has to leave her apartment at 6:30 and Sherry at 7:30.  Long days.

Off to Kiev tomorrow for our last visa trip.  With the change in the law we now will only have to travel every six months instead of every three months and we no longer renew our visas - just our immigration cards which is much less expensive and much less paperwork.  We leave our apartment at 4:30 tomorrow morning and get back about 23:00 after flying to Moscow and then Kiev and back again.  Exhausting...