Trip to Moscow and Ukraine

January 9, 2012

We had a great trip to Moscow for our annual Mission Christmas party.  We had a great time visiting with the other senior couple missionaries who serve here in Russia Moscow West Mission (RMWM) or MWM).  We are serving far from each other and see each other only when we all go to Moscow.  However our little district has 2 couples the only city that does.  We have two branches, we prosylete they are working with the youth. 
Our trip to Moscow began at 11:30 in the evening in a sleeper car.  We did manage to sleep some.  Up by 6:20 AM to leave the train by 7AM.  We caught the Metro and went almost as far south as one line went.  We then walked about 1 mile or so to the chapel.  We had good food, lots of visiting, a game for the young missionaries, a movie, and skits.  We left with the office couple and settled in for a short night.  We made it fine to the airport  and after some help we found where to go.  After walking about a mile we found the gate. We made it into Ukraine just fine.  We had a bit of a wait for our return ticket but all was good.  Our plane waited for a connecting flight that had about 20 passengers to join us.  We got to Moscow just fine but about 40 minutes late.  We had some good coaching so we were somewhat prepared from here.  We found the marshrutka to the aeroexpress.  Luckily the marshrutka let us off at the door of the aeroexpress office.  We bought tickets and boarded for about a 30 minute ride to the metro.  We decided to follow the crowd to find the metro. It is a bit daunting for us but we just walked in the only direction we could go and found the escalator going about 3 stories down. 
Right in front of us was the line we needed and it went right to our stop in about 11 minutes.  We found our Sapsan (fast train) station and they were just boarding.  All in all it turned out good and we felt blessed to manage through a lot of new territory in such a smooth way.  
We are back to our routine and are prepared to cook for the missionaries on Wed. We have apartment checks tomorrow (Tue) and some appointments after that.  All is good (AG).  

All of the Russian missionaries are limited to a 3 month visa.  Each 90 days We leave the country, get the visa stamped and come back and start the process over again. To be legal in the country you have to have a passport, a current visa, a commuting paper, and a community paper.  All except the passport are only valid for the period of 3 months.  So we leave and come back all in the same day just to renew the visa.  When we return we see our person who takes our passport with current visa to get us the community paper.  She returns it to us and we are legal.  While she has our things we have a copy of our passport and visa and the flight coupon from our flight into country.  That makes us legal inbetween time. 

 we are the couple who prosylete and the other couple here do CES or in other words working with the youth.  They are a great couple and we really like them.  They are from Joseph, UT.  We had never heard of Joseph before, just a little place not far from I-70 at Cove Fort.