December is here!!!

It is hard to believe that December is here.  2 more months and our mission is finished.  It has been a fun month of Nov. with alot of fun things happening so I will just explain the month in the pictures.  We were looking at the weather and it looks like it is colder in Utah and Idaho than it is here in Russia.  Our winter is here but we have not had much snow and the temperatures are around 30 degrees most of time.  But we know it is on its way.

We have our plans to come home.  We will leave the mission on the 8th of Feb. and spend a couple of days in Washington D.C. and see our grandson Cody on his mission.  We will have a grandparent, grandson missionary picture.  We think that would be sa great photo.  His mission president has approved us coming.  Then we will leave on Sat.Feb11th and arrive home around 7:20pm.  Hard to believe.  I thought I would never be able to say it went fast.  But it really did.

We started Novemeber with a Zone Conference.  they are always great and we
always learn so much from President Sorenson and the Zone Leaders and
the AP'S.  This was lunch time.  One of the branches prepared it for us. I am
sure it was good, but I did not like it.

Look at the elders.  Obviously it was good.  I am not sure that
Sister Sorenson is as anxious to eat as them.

And who else but our best friend..Elder Lex.  He is from Austria and we have
rreally grown to love him.  And cute little Sister Naegle nest to him.  They
are the newest couple and had only been here about 2 weeks.  They live very
close to us which is so nice.

Sunrise is not my favorite time of the day.  I love Sunsets.  But the sun comes up
so late now that this was the sunrise from our office window.

And Michelle is taking care of us.  She sent us many needed items.

Licorice, frosting that is creamy, pills, dvd, fairy tale book that I am going to give
to one of my friends at English club.  Lots of pictures from the grandchildren.
Eye glasses and cake mixes.  Until you do not have cake mixes or canned frosting
or good powdered sugar to make frosting with you will never know how much
I appreciate these things.

New little treat we buy at the grocery store when we go shopping.  Gene likes the
cherry turnover and like the dry cookie .

We went the elders to their bishops house for dinner and family home evening.
This is salad on bread.

These is the plate full of food they handed me.  I about died. 

This is their youngest boy Maxim.(Maxeem) Very, very active.

This is the 2nd little girl Maria.

This is their oldest girl Melana.  She was reading us a story about how Jesus knows her.

Singing a hymn together.  This is the living room. 

It amazes me how they raise a family in this little apartments.

Getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Our big 9lb turkey that we were so happy to have.

Lots of yummy food.  Not the same as home but it was the best we could
do and we all enjoyed it.

Waiting to get started.  They were all so excited to eat
Thanksgiving Dinner.

Dessert time.  Elder Naegle (the senior) is just one of the kids.  We love him.

Elder Hayes ate and ate and then went for lots of desserts.

Big Russian hats.

It's over and cleaned up and we collapsed.

One fun English Club.  Boris played this guitar we have at the church.
He also sang.  We really have a fun time at English club.  We have made
many friends.  You just hope down the road something touched them
and they will join our church.

All 3 clubs(beginners, intermediate and converstional) all got together
for the last 10 minutes and played hanky panky. We all had fun.

15 Nov 2011

It is so wonderful to be associated with missionaries,  We love them all so much.  They are always so happy and thank you so many times for every kind thing you do, 

Winter is coming quickly.  We have had a couple of small snow storms but nothing big.  And we are at about 32 degrees most of the time.  The worse part is that we are getting so little daylight.  I miss the sunshine and blue skies.  It is dark when we get up  and close to dark about 5pm.  But it will get worse so too bad. 

District meeting at our apartment.  Elder Spoerri, Elder Palmer, Sister Ashby,
Elder Hayes, Elder Ayers, Elder Gronning and Sister Marty.  Love them all.

Yevgenny and Gene.  He is one of our new members.  He is such a cute kid.
We love him too.

Elder Hayes new hat.

Henry and Elenka Kosak.  He is the director over CES.  It was his
birthday and brought in some treats.  Really good German patries.
they are German.

English Club.  Sister Marty and sister Ashby and I
all wore the same color.

This is the biggest bag of flour I can find, then the biggest bag of sugar
next to it and then you buy eggs by the 10's not a dozen.  Very seldom
can we find white eggs.  The dark yellow yokes kind of freek me out.

A fun Senior Council night.  We were all invited to President Lawrences house
for dinner.  So Elder Anderson rented a bus, (We all pitcched in) so that we all
could get to his house.  There was no other way to get there.  Getting places is
such a big hassel and it always takes so long.

This is our big blue bus.

New CES couple Elder and Sister Naegle.  They live about 30 steps
from our apartment.  We had Sunday dinner with them.  Then watched Stake
Conference with them.

This was the first stake conference conducted by the Russia
Stake Presidency.  We do not have any buildings large enough to
have the whole stake in.  And this conference had some satelite broadcat
with it from SLC.  so they asked the seniors to stay home and watch it
on the internet so the members could have the room, plus there would
not be much English translation.  We thought that was a great idea.

This is our newest member Valeria.  He was Baptized Sat. Nov. 12th.  His mother
is next to him and Brother Narbotnokov and His mother are on the other side.
They are related..I think like 2nd counsins,

Elders Everett, Ayers and Hayes who all helped teach him.

All the Narbotnokov family and the Elders with Valeria.

Sister Ashby with cute little Olla.  Her mama made
her skirt and shirt.  And she had purple shoes to match.

Just us with Sister Ashby and 2 precious little Babushkas. (grandmas)

21 Oct 2011

The last days of fall have arrived.  And we did enjoy them.  So many beautiful trees all around us. I do not know if we were just still in survival mode last fall or if the leaves were not as pretty.  But we do not remember the colors being so pretty last fall.
We all had flu shots again.  I am going to choose to not post any pictures this time. 
We have busy helping a new couple get settled.  They are a new CES couple (The Naegles) who will work in the CES office which is in the same hall as our office.  So the office elders found them an apt. about 20 steps away from ours.  It is in a building just across the corner from us.  So we have spent the week trying to show them around.  How to use ATM'S, how to grocery shop, get metro passes and bus passes and help try to find furnishing's for their apt.  But it was nice to get another couple and I am just gald it is not me.  Every time we bring in a new couple, I just go, thank you that is not me.  Those first few weeks are so hard and such a culture shock.
We enjoyed another visa trip to Riga Lativa and enjoyed the beautiful fall colors there.  We will take one more visa trip since our release date is 12 Feb.
The other event was watching General Conference a week later on a small t.v. in black and white with the missionaries and a few members who watched it in English.  Of course we can watch it on the internet in color.  But for the missionaries that is there only way to see conference.  so we enjoy it with them.
Another big event..Mitch shot an elk and was so happy.
Our Cody is doing great.  He will leave for the Washington D.C. mission Wed.  He is so excited to get on his way to his mission.
                                              Now a few pictures:

The next few pictures are of our visa trip to Riga.
We took a train to Segulda Park.

Try and read those signs and decide which
way you want to go????

Train we rode to Segulda Park

Pretty little church at the park

Maybe if we cannot read the signs we
can try reading the map.  No such luck!!

Walking into the park

Castle they are re-building

Leaving the park

I ran into this handsome man at the park.

Beautiful fall views from the hotel window

The colors were so pretty

Beautiful tree looking out our kitchen window.

More pretty trees looking out the kitchen window.

Pretty fall evenning down at the lake in our forest.

Fall was just so pretty this year.  All the trees around us were
beautiful colors.  This little lake is about a 15 min. walk
through the forest behind us.

Pretty berries with the pretty red and yellow leaves.

Elder Walker (works for the legal dept of the church) plays
the saw.  It is really pretty.

He played it for us at Senior Night,

We said good by to our dear friends the Patterson's.
They were a humanitarian couple.

A fun package from Michelle.  Love to get packages.

Look at all the fun stuff.  Michelle really knows how
to pack a box.  Not a corner  is left empty.  She takes
great advantage of the ships if it fits.

She puts cake mixes in zip locks so she can get
more in.  She flattens all the boxes and lays them
on the bottom.

None of these in Russia.

In between sessions at confernce.  We took some sandwhich
things and banana bread and shared with the missionaries.
We just had 1 hr. in-between the morning and afternoon session.

Few of the cute kids in the ward wandered up when
they heard we had food.  They are so cute.

West Office Elders.  We love them both.  Elder
Beck and Elder Kavas.

Thanks to Michelle for her orange frosting I made halloween
cookies for senior night.  Lots of work.  But they were so good.

Office elders, Elder Bruv and Elder Ablett with our new member
friend Yevgenny came over for dinner.

Two Mission Presidents.  Figuring out their i-phones.

O.K. Elder Gronning and Elder Ayers took on
Elder Palmer and Elder Elder Hayes.  They lost.
This was after English club.  They have a ping pong
table at the back of the chapel.

President and Sister Sorenson's daughter and her family
came to visit for a week.  Aren't they so cute.

I loved on the baby and it was just so good to hold a little baby.

Way to go Mitch.  Nice elk.  Karlee did not like it,
but Morgan did.

Look at WShellie's new pretty teeth.  No more braces.
And she got her first letter from her brother in the MTC.