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.
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. 
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