February1- 10, 2012 Lenae's BD 02/03-1963

  Well here we are on the first day of February and soon it will be my sister Lenae's 49th birthday!!  Can't hardly believe that.  We all get older and that is better than the alternative, for most of us anyway. 
  We are into a cold spell and I guess that is expected to happen here.  We had a fairly blustery day today making the temperature seem colder.  Everyone is cold and we have turned on some space heaters in the apartment to keep the temperature up.  It stays very nice inside.  We had a bit more snow and have seen more and more of the ice chipped off the sidewalks so the walking path to church is getting more and more clear.
   The sisters apartment in the Lower Nizhniy is being vacated tomorrow.  We need to drive down there and pack them up and probably drive them to our apartment.  They are homeless for a few days anyway.  We have an apartment picked out but the owners are nervous about the church connection and will let us know sometime today if they will rent to us.  We have wanted to get them out of the apartment they are in because they commute over an hour to visit many of their appointments.  In a different location the travel could be cut to a third or more.  Housing  is one of our many responsibilities, along with checking the apartments to make sure they are clean and orderly.(We have since moved them into our apartment as the landlord declined their moving into this above mentioned apartment.)
  Last Friday we taught a young lady in our apartment.  She is a fine person and we are hoping that she will
be persuaded to see things in the light that we teach.  She seems to be very well grounded and has many friends and loves to dance and perform in Salsa, Contemporary, Latino, Ballet, and probably others too.
She has very good English and we are hoping that she will read, study, and pray.  Isn't that every missionary's wish for their investigators.  We love the people here and find them intelligent, informed, friendly, and the young kids are so kind to us.  They love to have us be included in their games at the family home evening and are very competitive, but fair.  They love to play hockey with the young missionaries, but we stay away from that.  Too many lost teeth, gouged eyes, bruised shins, etc. Although, I must say , that in the last 4 months I am not aware of any injuries.  I have a hard enough time staying on my feet as it is and do not desire to put my well being to that big a test.
    Here it is Feb 10 and we have not had much time to finish this post and will hurry to do so.  We have had considerable more cold and wind.  It has been down as low as -30C at night and the other night on the Sapsan (fast train) we saw on the digital thermometer -28 C.  We have been warm enough and if the wind whips up we will put a scarf over our faces.  We saw on the train a digital readout of the speed of the train, which we had not noticed before, that the maximum speed it arrived to was 130 km/ hr.  The maximum speed it can arrive to is 250 km/hr.  We didn't get that fast.  I think that they slow down when they come to little villages and so we could see that the train was slowing and then speeding up again all during the journey.  We had another overnight journey too.  The rooms,called coupe,were dark enough but quite warm.  At least we can lay down and stretch out. 
    We had great meetings in Moscow and felt quite motivated and ready to go to work again.  We met Elder Bennett from the 2nd quorum of 70 who is a very good motivator and speaker.  He loves the Lord and over and over again assured us of his and the prophets love.  We felt that too.  Dad and I had the unique opportunity to go for a tour of Nizhniy with our driver and Elder and Sister Bennett.  We saw the kremlin, a good overview of the two rivesr and the lower city, and saw the older part of the upper part of Nizhniy.  We stayed in the upper part on the tour because it is more colorful and the lower part is industrial with not so many sites to look at.
   We have recently had the good fortune to meet a kind couple who are adopting two special needs kids from here and one other city nearby.  This couple are very special to reach out to a select part of the children waiting to be adopted who have health disabilities.  Their two year old is needing almost immediate surgery for heart issues and will soon be in the USA to receive this treatment.  The five year old also has heart defects and will need some supervision but as he has had surgery his need is not nearly so critical.   They have all the clearances to adopt but have to endure a 30 day wait.  So, as they have 3 children in Florida, they have returned home and will come back in March to finish the paperwork, visas, and passports and then take formal custody and return to the states.
   We are teaching again tonight, have a missionary planning meeting this afternoon, have a meeting with the landlord of the new apartment for the sister missionaries later.  So will need to finish this and get going.  I'll try to affix some photos at the end of this.

Babushka Ina who just broke her arm.  Sweet small lady
who loves the Gospel and her missionaries. 

Babushka Ina's living room, really her bedroom too.  She has only the one room
to herself and shares the bathroom and kitchen with a 2nd and maybe 3rd
apartment.

A famous Russian scene in the art museum in Moscow.  Features
the 3 bogatera.  They are heros in Russian folk tales.

Christmas day 2011 with Johnson, Kenneth, and Joseph.  We really
had a great time.

This is the Sapsan train.  The letters you see on the side say it in Russian.

Here we are in our winter gear in front of our Apartment building.  Don't we
look like natives?

   A thought; when all is said and done, at the end of our lives, the most important thing for us to report to the Savior of the world is the relationship with our spouse, the relationship with our family, our endurance in doing good, and our personal repentance and desire to do the Lord's will.  Will we be perfect, of course not, but we can move that direction, more each day we hope.  The Lord is not so concerned as to where in the journey to perfection we are, but the direction we are heading.  Are we on the Lord's errand or are we sidtracked somewhere or turned around and heading somewhere else.  The Lord bless you all, know that we as grandparents love you grandchildren, and as parents we love you children (including the in-laws) , and as brothers, sisters, friends and family we love you all too.  We love you and miss you and pray the Lord be with you all.