STREET SCENSE

On Friday we had an early institute class, because many who attended were out of town and those who remained wanted to come early. Following the class Sister Hoagland went home with the young women and Elder Hoagland went with Elders Anisiforov and Stegeby to what was supposed to be a branch leadership meeting at the Rushanyan's. Sergies is counselor and Aida is Relief Society president. We took a taxi to their home and arrived about 8:00 pm. They just got home from their farm and prepared dinner for everyone. The Elders gave a spiritual thought after dinner and we didn't get home until 10:00 pm. So much for our meeting.
The Rushanyan's kitchen after dinner.

Anastasia Smetanina at the key board in the relief society room.
Our apartment complex.
The rest of the building. We are on the fourth floor so just count up to the fourth window up in the corner and the first three windows (l to R) are ours. This is a north face and we have a south face in our bed room. That is Sister Hoagland walking up to the entrance door. There are six separate entrances. Ours accesses 50 apartments via an elevator that holds 4, sort of comfortably. We do get more in on occasion.
The bottom floor is our branch building. It has a chapel, 5 class rooms, branch office, and storage room. It has a heating problem, but other than that it meets our needs. Each Saturday we have a game night and the members come and clean the building for Sunday following the activity.
I took the following pictures as we walked to the church Wednesday evening. As you may see in this and other pictures below, we have had a rather extensive thaw here for several days. In some places it means some pretty wet walking but these south faced buildings are really cleared up. Here is a babushka walking to the grocery store. It is a constant stream of people carrying their grocery bags to the store, including us.
A Russian family. You will not see people smiling on the street. The legend is that they have been taught that to smile is a sign of childishness. I think it is a sign of concern for those with bad teeth.
A local bus. The snow and what they spread on the roads makes for dirty streets and vehicles.
A local bus stop. When giving distances here they don't say so many blocks that way, they say so many bus stops. There are four kinds of buses used here. This is a traditional bus. You can see the electric lines for our trolley buses, the bus pictured above, and then they have the smallest, which are large vans with the extended roof. We were in one of those in Veronezh that they had crammed 30 people into. I could just see us leaving Sister Hoagland in that bus because she couldn't get off. What would we have done to get her back?
This is our closest grocery store. It is the worst one in town, with limited stock and tiny isles. Common courtesy is not practiced or expected here, so you have to be careful not to get run over in there. They do have some modern features in these stores with self service scales that print coded prices to put on your plastic vegetable bags. Sister Hoagland hesitated in front of one of those scales and a person reached over and place their item on the scale. You snooze you lose.
Little Shops across the street and another bus stop. There are nice little specialty stores all over. The one with the green front is where we pay for our internet service each month and put more money on our phone as needed. You can also use kiosks similar to ATM machines to do the same thing.
We were surprised one day this last week to find them fixing up our stair wells and entrances. They were preparing to paint we think. We couldn't talk with them because of the language problem, but all the crew were women. Our door is the black one. It is built some what like a door of a safe. It is very substantial and has three large pins steel pins that move into place when the key is turned. You have to turn the key three full revolutions to move the pins all the way in.
Anastasia and Rita at institute. Anastasia is our instructor. She does a good job. We asked her how she came to join the church and she said she came to the English club and was converted from that program. About 10% of convert baptisms come from those clubs. We only have three non members coming now so a lot of work needs to be done here. When the weather is better we will go out on the university campus and the parks with the Elders and hand out invitations to the meeting. Yesterday winter hit hard again and is continuing again today, Monday.
Elder Kvasnitsky and Elder Harris writing home on our computers. Elder Kvasnitisky was made our district leader a couple of weeks ago. Sister Hoagland had a banana bread treat for them. Wednesday at Family Home Evening, Elder Harris came with a fever. The next day Elder Kvasnitsky had one too. Elder Stegeby's companion was in Kazakhstan so he was with them too, and by the weekend he was sick. Elder Anisiforov returned Thursday and was the only one at church Sunday and Elder Hoagland was his companion. These two Elders had to come to our place Friday evening while still sick so we could meet with our landlord and have them interpret. They had been in bed all day and had not eaten since breakfast. Sister Hoagland had just cooked a whole chicken in our newly acquired crock pot so we were able to take good care of them with chicken soup and sandwich, fruit and juice. They wanted to come to church but Elder Anisiforov wisely made them stay home as they were still coughing, etc.

Zone conference

Monday the 20th was our first zone conference. It was held in Veronezh, a couple of hours south of Lipetzk. Here the AP's are leading a discussion on "English Club." English club has been a very successful way to bring people to the church and eventually have them take the missionary lessons. We are not allowed to "teach English" but it is a chance for people to come and increase their vocabulary by talking to native speakers. They come with the understanding that there will be a spiritual thought at the end. We have three people attending ours each week. After this discussion, we should have a greater effort to bring more.
Elder & Sister Frost live in Veronezh, are dearly loved by the missionaries, and prepared a wonderful meal for us at the zone conference. They are humanitarian missionaries and also support the branch there. L to R Elder Stegeby (Sweden), Sister Williams, Sister Francom, Sister Glasacheva (Russia), Sister Frost, and Elder Urmston.
Some of the Veronezh missionaries preparing a song for conference. Really the first time we have heard a hymn beautifully song in Russian. Our little band of members in Lipetzk have pitch problems but do sing with gusto.
Veronezh has the only church owned building in our mission. It was originally a theater. This is the foyer. The rooms are all very large. They have the only gym where they play volleyball and basketball.
This is a multipurpose room off the foyer.
L to R Elder Eliason (ZL) Elder Harris, Sister Woolley, Elder Frost, President Woolley, Elder Hansen, and Elder Turner (AP). Elder Turner worked with us in Lipetzk until his call as Asistant to the President. We really miss him.
One of the suggestions for attracting people to talk to was doing magic tricks. Here Elder Stegeby performs a trick on Sister Williams.
Sister Hoagland, Elder Bressler (AP), ?, Elder Kvasnitsky (Ukraine), Elder Hoagland. The Elder I don't know temporarily replaced Elder Anisiforov (our branch president) who is on an assignment in Kazakhstan. They are really having trouble with Visa's in that country. President is working hard not to have to shut down the work there.
This picture is of the Lipetsk sky resort. It was taken from our apartment. There are no mountains between here and Wales in Great Britain. This was taken last week and today it is almost clear of snow. We have finally started to thaw out here. It is a real mess but soon we can walk on dry ground instead of ice. Right now we have a challenge to walk around large puddles of water.
Last week Sister Hoagland ventured into baking for the first time. It was difficult to find baking soda and we still haven't found baking powder. She had to make butter milk using a lemon when she made banana bread.
We have family home evening on Wednesday evenings. Here we are playing a game called evolution.
A street scene during a lull in traffic.
Sister Hoagland's banana bread. We had to look at a few stores to find bread pans. The price of the bread pans were not marked so we were really surprised that they cost us about $10.00 a piece. Not typical of prices here.
On Saturday we looked out and saw funeral activity outside our building. That was interesting to us.
Here is our wonderful Anastatia (Nastia). She helped us shop on a couple of occasions. We had her stay for Lasagna. She was so excited and it turned out wonderfully. Nastia is a student at the university and will graduate in a few months. She also is the branch pianist and teaches our institute class on Thursday evenings. We have a wonderful group of young ladies in the institute class. Wish we had some young men available for them too.

Sunday evening President and Sister Woolley came and gave a fireside on the Book of Mormon. President Woolley has a first addition 1830 Book of Mormon which he freely shares with the people in our mission. He lets them hold it and open it. It should be in a museum, but it was he loves to share it with the people. He told the story of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and because he has such a love of the book he has studied the subject extensively. As a result he gave information that I had never heard before. Very interesting.

The Woolley's drove us down to Veronezh for the conference in the morning. We stayed with Elder & Sister Frost. As we got in late, we only had a short visit, but it was fun to finally meet them as we had been emailing each other ever since we received our call to the mission.

Our little Lipetsk group had to leave before the end of conference to catch a bus home. It was a rush, and then it was so warm in that bus it became very uncomfortable. It has warmed up but the heater was still going full blast. We like to take pictures as we ride down the highway, but the windows are so dirty we couldn't do that.

Loving it in Lipetsk!

This week we went and visited a sister named Vera. We went with Elders Harris from Wyoming and Kvasnitsky from Ukraine. Vera is an invalid (Elderly) who moved here from Taskent. She joined the church a few years ago and we came to give her the sacrament. We had a spiritual thought for her as well.

Since we were new to each other we spent some time getting to know her. She does not know when she was born, where or who her parents were. She has a son who has visited her. She lives in one room with a kitchen table, cabinets, a fold out sofa bed, coffee table and of all things a piano which is beautifully finished but needs a lot of work inside. She shares a kitchen, utility and bath rooms with 4 other rooms.
Here we are with Elder Kvasnitsky in front of the small elevators used in these 10 story apartment buildings. There is room for about 4 people. Our elevator is not unlike this one for size, but this one was particularly scary. The door would shut before we could all enter, like all elevators if you put pressure on it it will reopen. This one opened and then slammed shut causing it to open again and we could not get it closed. We walked the six floors down. It was a very dirty and gross facility.
Sister Hoagland finally had courage to try her oven this week. We had to sit down and translate on the computer what the controls were. She did a mighty fine job with these oatmeal cookies.
Thursday of this week was "Women's Day here in Russia. It is a full blown holiday. We took the bus downtown to the mall to have Sister Hoagland's glasses repaired (a screw fell out) and wanted to buy some groceries but it was so packed we passed on that. Above is a branch party in honor of Women's day. L to R Elder Kvisnitsky, Ani, Vika, Ayda, Ararad, Artiome, Sergies, Radic, Rema, Valentina, Reta, Elder & Sister Hoagland.
Here are the Sistes we honored. They each received a card and a Tulip. Sis. Hoagland, Ani, Valentina, Rema, Ayda, Vika and Rita. Ayda is Ani and Rema's mother. Artiome is having fun at his mothers expense. We have three active YSA who are wonderful. They have all served mini missions (6 months) as teens.
We tried a store not unlike Costco when the lines were so long at the mall. We took a taxi as we didn't know what bus to take. This good man spoke English and called a taxi for us and waited to give the driver instructions. He was from Albania and has a son living in New York. About an hour after we were home I discovered that my wallet was missing. After looking all through the apartment I went down to the front of the building to see if it had fallen on the ground after getting out of the taxi. Could not find it. About forty minutes later we left for the church and there was our taxi. There were two men in it and they would not give me the wallet until I forked over 400 rubles. I had all the cash with me, but it was worth the peace of mind to have the credit & debit cards back.
We took an exploratory walk west of our apartment and about four blocks away was this war memorial.

We do not know the reason for the honor guard and wreaths, but the guards were gone when we returned.
Elder Harris was gone on his visa trip, and this was Elder Turners last week with us as he was being made Ap. Elder Anisiforov, center, fixed a traditional pork and rice meal in his honor. Elder Anisiforov will remain here as branch president. We will miss Elder Turner, as you can imagine he was an outstanding young man who was faithful in his duties, and spoke the Russian language extremely well.
Elder Harris, Rema, Margarite (sweet investagator), and Elder Kvisnitsky.
Same meal as before.
The pork and rice dish with tomato and mayonnaise on the side. Russians love Mayo! They have it in many flavors.
Elder Turner and Grandma Rema.
The branch on the day Armond, Vika and their son Ararod were confirmed the Sunday before we arrived.

We received the new Book of Mormon translation and the first triple combination this week. This is very exciting news, especially for the Elders who teach from it. The old translation was o k, but did not explain things as clearly as our English translation and in some cases investigators found it confusing. It has taken ten years to put it all together so now they have a triple combination for the first time. We are not sure how the members will get there's. We think they will have to order them on line and I am concerned about their ability to afford them. We will see.

Because of the new translation, the sacrament prayers have also been changed. I copied the prayers from D & C 20 and am now trying to learn to read them. It looks to be a few hundred repetitions before I can do it for sacrament meeting.

Our first working week

It has been a marvelous week featuring spiritual, inspirational, scary, and interesting experiences.
First let us show a couple of products that we purchase here. Above, eggs are sold in 10's (Desyatok) instead of a dozen. If you enlarge the picture you may see better that eggs are not thoroughly cleaned.

Milk comes in small packages, mainly because they have to carry it home and because I don't think they use it as a beverage. Their juices are wonderful.
This picture was taken from the home of President and Sister Woolley. We had to fly back to Moscow to meet the Woolley's and get our second passport. It is used to obtain our new visa that is required each 90 days. We leave on the old and return on the new.
The plane we flew to Moscow and back. It held about 40 and it took under an hour. It took nearly two hours to get to the Wooley's from the airport. It was the other side of the huge city by freeway. The church driver picked us up, thank goodness. We would have no idea how to get anywhere.

Unfortunately we were not able to get a picture of the Woolley's because by the time we left their home they were never together. President got a call and they had to leave for the mission office in a hurry. They have been wonderful to us and have had our comfort as a big priority.
Some pictures on the way back to the Airport, Tuesday evening.
A billboard to hide an eyesore.
A shopping center.
Elder Hoagland, Samvell, who will be baptized soon with his wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters and Elder Turner from Atlanta, Georgia. He will leave us this week to be AP (assistant to president). He served 8 months in Kazakhstan where he opened its largest city to missionary work. He had 30 baptisms and so many miracles. One baptist minister came to them intending to show them the light. He was given the Book of Mormon, and he saw the light, and is a real strength to the young branch. They found a man praying in a park, came up to him and proclaimed that they had been sent to answer his prayer. He listened to them and indeed they were. He was baptized. Julie just informed us that Eric had given a Book of Mormon to a friend in his school band a year ago. The Sister Missionaries told Julie that the girl said it had changed her life. She is now 18 and will be baptized this month.
Another freeway picture in Moscow.
The Lipetsk missionary district. Front, Elder Anisaforov from Ukraine, Elder Turner, Elder Harris from Wyoming, Elder & Sister Hoagland, Elder Kasnitsky (not sure where he is from) somewhere in the old soviet Union.

Our washing machine. Thoroughly modern but tiny. Sis. Hoagland is standing there just to give you an idea of its height and depth. Notice the orange and black tile in our bathroom.
Sis. Hoagland's new Russian friend, Nastia, (Anastasia). She went with us Thursday afternoon to shop for boots and to a large grocery store for food. The grocery store was located in this beautiful mall. We had trouble using our debit and credit card at the shoe store so we had to find an ATM to get cash. Turns out our credit card had not been activated. We could not get through on the number given on the back of the card so the next day we tried to skype the number and that did not work either. We called another mission couple on skype and they used their computer phone to call the number and then put that phone next to their speakers and we could talk to the lady and get things corrected. We now have an active credit card that is authorized for Europe.
Our tiny shower.
Family home evening at the church.
Sergeis is first counselor to Elder Anisaforov who is branch president. His family have been members for 7 years and joined in their native Armenia. His mother, grandma Rema, lives with his Sister Margaret, who's family will join the church early next month. She has taken to Sister Hoagland and would not let go all evening.
Elder Turner has his arms around Samvell and his wife Margaret, who's family will be baptized next month. As AP Elder Turner will be able to come back for the baptism. Their youngest daughter Arpine 13 is in front. I was priviledged to sit in on a lesson with them this week. They are fantastic. Elder Harris on the right, with his companion, has 3 people scheduled for baptism soon.