Christmas 2011

Our little Christmas tree that Sister Hazlewood gave me. The huge glass ornament was given to me by Elder Kyle Berven's mother when she came to pick him up at the end of his mission. She lives in Florida and asked if there was anything I wanted her to bring me and I said, "Yes--sun, sand and surf!" So she brought me this hand-painted ornament of Christmas pink flamingos at the beach. It was great!

Wow. When I was young, I never could have imagined that someday I would be standing in the famous Mariinsky Concert Hall in what used to be Leningrad, USSR, as the orchestra and choir rigorously and beautifully performed the complete oratorio of Handel’s Messiah. A Russian conductor, Russian orchestra, choir and soloists were belting out with great fervor (and pretty good English pronunciation) some of the most incredible music ever written about Jesus Christ. An unfathomable idea under Communism. When Elder McArthur told me during intermission that it blew his mind to think about the miracle we were witnessing at this performance, I had chills run through my whole body and I knew he was right. What a moment to personally witness. To be in Russia with Russians publicly singing about Christ with all their hearts—Amazing.

Conner Clark, Sister and President Clark, Regina, Phil, Sister McArthur and Sister Hazlewood

When the Hallelujah Chorus began, we all stood as is traditional, as did about 25-30 others scattered throughout the audience. I only wished I could have sung along! We were there with President and Sister Clark, Elder Tom and Sister Allison McArthur, Sister Karen Hazlewood, and the President’s son, Connor, who was visiting. (Elder Hazlewood gladly gave up his ticket to Connor. He hates long-haired music as he calls it. He also only watches movies with John Wayne in it—the man is a true New Mexico cowboy.) We probably had the worst, and cheapest, seats in the hall—in the upper balcony behind the choir. We couldn’t really see the choir at all and had to sit forward to see the backs of the soloists’ heads, but the sound was wonderful. And I bet we were a sight all standing together with our missionary tags on behind the choir during the Hallelujah Chorus. It was quite a feeling.

One of the many buildings lit downtown up for Christmas

To get to the concert hall, we rode a bus from the south end to the north end of the city and then walked over to the hall. The bus ride through town was beautiful. The city is all decked out in lights everywhere. It is one of the most decorated cities I think I have ever seen, but I couldn’t take pictures through the dirty bus windows. After the concert, we all got on the wrong bus heading north instead of south. It finally dumped us off on one of the northern islands near a Metro station about 15 minutes before the Metro and the bridges closed for the night. If we hadn’t made it into the Metro before closing, we would have been stuck on the island all night, so we were lucky this time!

With half of the missionaries at the mission home for Christmas Dinner.

This Saturday, January 7^th, is the Russian Orthodox Christmas, but we celebrated Christmas with the missionaries (split into two groups) on December 21 & 22. President and Sister Clark had us all over to the mission home for a special dinner, Café Rio style. Then we went over to the church building (about 2 minutes away) and opened white elephant gifts, which was a lot of fun.

This missionaries all gobbling down Sister Clark's homemade cookies at the office. She had her son bring her a suitcase full of brown sugar so she could make American cookies. Very Good.

Office party dinner

On Friday, December 23 we had an office party (not much work done this week). Russians really know how to throw a feast. We ran out of “seconds” at the mission home with all those hungry missionaries, but we had tons of great food to spare at the office party. They gave Phil a nice mug with a picture of Peter the Great on it since his birthday was a couple of days before. Phil and I played the Russian version of Santa—Grandfather Frost. The two Russian words for him are pronounced similar to “Dead” and “Morose.” So Phil was Dead and I was Morose. Only the President got that joke. The Russians told us that Santa Claus is not real, but Grandfather Frost is. Phil and I handed out little gifts to everyone, some of them were joke gifts and some were candy or popcorn. But it was fun.

Our entertainment was Aleksandr Leostrin doing bad magic tricks, but he still was able to befuddle the Russians. My brother Lyle has spoiled me because he is so good at magic.

This was such a good photo of Phil at the office party I had to put it in

The Estonian fortress. It is about 10:30 in the morning. The sky is just showing some light.

Monday the 26^th we went on our first visa trip to Narva, Estonia, with the President and his wife and four elders. It was dark and rainy the whole way there, but stopped raining just before we arrived. Estonia is separated from Russia by a river. Across the river from each other are two ancient fortresses, one Russian and Estonian. The Estonian fortress was all lit up and looked really neat—the Russian fortress was all dark. There were other castle-type buildings along the river banks. I have heard that Narva is a fun city to stroll around and the Russian fortress is neat to wander through, but it is the middle of winter and dark so that wasn’t something we could do this time. We walked from the Russian check point across the fortified bridge to the Estonian checkpoint. There I handed everyone their second passport (all Americans living and working in Russia have two passports because of visa laws) and turned around and walked back through the Estonian checkpoint with the old passport, but presented our new passports to the Russian checkpoint on the other side of the bridge. Once we had a Russian visa stamp on our new passports, we were good for 90 more days. We all do this shell game every three months.

The ancient fortress at Pskov. The locks on the fence are a wedding tradition. All couples come here and put one on the fence to show that their love is locked forever--it is supposed to be good luck. When too many locks are on the fence, someone comes and cuts them all off and the newlyweds start again.

At the Pskov meeting house with some of the members. Sergei and Lilia are in the back.

A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to visit our congregation in Pskov, one of the oldest cities in Russia—founded around 800-900 AD. There are over 40 churches in town (Stalin must have missed this city). One of them has frescoes from the 12^th Century. We weren’t there to sight see, but we drove past the main old fortress and one of the old churches was right out the front door of our hotel, so I got a couple of pictures. We drove down (5 hour trip) with Sergei and his wife, Lilia, and their little 15-month-old daughter, Lada. Sergei and Lilia both speak excellent English so we just chatted all the way down and back. Lada was a great traveler, so the trip was enjoyable. We were just able to kick back and have fun. Sergei and Lilia told us that it was really fun to be with us, that we were just like we were a regular couple—they sounded a little surprised to say that. We just laughed and said, “Oh, so we really are pretty normal, huh?” We went down on Saturday and came back after church on Sunday, but it was a nice break.

This is the church right outside our hotel's front door. It was really beautiful. Too bad we didn't have time to go in.

We went for a walk one afternoon because the sun was OUT, which is rare. This is the grassy strip between our apartment building, the main road, and the Neva River. The camera is aimed due SOUTH and the sun is just behind the sign. The time is about 4:30 pm.
We don't see much sun here even when it is out.