We just returned from our trip to Moscow and the first conference of the new Russia Moscow Mission.  Let me talk about the trip.  We left Monday evening at 11:05 pm on a night train.  We took a 45 minute taxi ride to the Voxhall (train station), in a small town west of Lipetsk.  Our beds were a bench not as wide as  a typical sofa by quite a bit and a very hard cushion.  We took this particular train because it arrived in Moscow an hour earlier than the train from Lipetsk, around 7:30 am.  For some reason all these night trains have a suspension that make a horrible bang periodically.  This one on many occasions sounded like a machine gun.  The road bed on this line also felt like we were riding on cobble stones a good deal of the time.  Needless to say it was not one of your best nights sleep.

Below the Voxhall in Moscow is the metro line (subway).  The church is only one stop away via metro.  When I came up from the metro on the way to the church I found that my pocket had been picked.  I immediately canceled our debit and credit cards.  I also had two church cards, one to pay our rent with, (we pay our rent to the church back home in the ward) and another to fund our branch with.  Fortunately we had left all the cash we had just withdrawn at home and I only had $15.00 in cash in the wallet.  We now had no means of getting cash for at least 3 or 4 weeks.  Fortunately we have some wonderful senior couples who advanced us cash to cover that period.  

Our return trip was that same night via over night train at 9:42 pm.  The return was much better as we went directly to Lipetsk on a line with a much smoother road bed.  Just a little banging occasionally.  I was so tired that I did sleep much better.  We are still pretty tired.

We have anticipated the change in the mission since before we left home.  There are nine units in the Moscow stake and I think 11 branches in other cities outside Moscow.  With the new stake the Moscow mission president had no ecclesiastical responsibility and only 50 missionaries so it made sense to combine the missions.  Now he has over a hundred  missionaries and 11 units he has direct responsibility for.  There is no district president to help.

Our meeting began at 9:30 am and concluded at 3:35 pm.  We discussed mission policy so that any differences between the two mission were cleared up.  President Sorenson has decided to use the I touch that the west mission has used under President Woolley.  It provides scriptures, church manuals, Russian  /English dictionary,  church videos and music, city and transportation maps.  (you plug in where you are and where you want to go and it tells you the buses that go there listing the quickest first).  Senior couples don't get them so I am sure there are other features I am not aware of, but they use them all day long and if President had taken them away I don't know how long it would have taken for these young men to recover!   

 Here is the Lipetsk branch primary.  Sister Hoagland works with them.  Elder Harris is the pied piper of all children.  Artiome on the right will be baptized soon and join his family as converts this year.

 Arpine is our only young woman.  It seems that model posing is the thing all over Europe for young women. The Elders and Armine also had to get in the act.

 Just pulled this picture of Jeff and his boys off of facebook.  Quinn and Elliot are going to be very tall men.  Jeff and Fawn have scheduled sealing for August and will also be sealed to the boys.  One of the sacrifices of a Senior missionary is to miss these wonderful family events.  We love them and are proud to be called Grandma and Grandpa.

 Jenni also had some pictures recently on facebook.  We miss them all but thanks to modern communication we can follow all that is going in the family.  They are so funny to see on skype.  Show offs.

 Speaking of show offs, Jenni has been working out.  We are looking forward to Jenni & Rob touring with us at the end of our mission.

 Judy is standing in front of a pleasant little spot not far from our apartment.  We pass it on the way to the bank atm.

This is a cafe about equal distance between the two apartments of the Elders and us.  The third letter in the first word and the first letter of the second word is F.  In Russian the letter p is the r sound.  The Elders have been wanting to try this cafe out for a long time and on P Day we went in.  It lived up to its name immediately  and we never sat down.

 We decided to try this place out about a mile away.  It is the closest thing we have found to a fast food place in Lipetsk.  There are no McDonalds, Burger King or even a Subway.  We know of one other baskin & Robbins in the downtown mall.

 At the main counter you can order fast food, on the left is the bar.  You can't go a block here without finding a place that sells alcohol.  

 Here we are all waiting for our food.

 A hamburger, fries, and a small coke for under $3.00.  The french fries were generous and wonderful.  The burger not so much.

 A "country" voxhall at 10:30 pm.  

 We all went outside to eat our pizza during our lunch break during mission conference.

 President Sorenson is showing the maps of our new zones on this paper.  One map shows the three zones around Moscow and the other shows the Veronezh zone which remained the same.  One change, there will now be two zone leaders in each zone which I think is pretty universal around the world.  Our zone leaders will be in Lipetsk.  Elder Harris has been our zone leader and will continue with a new zone leader companion whom I don't know the name yet.  Elder Bishop will transfer to a ward in Moscow.  We will surely miss him.  His companion has only three months on him so that should be a challenge for both of them to learn the language.

The remnants of 65 pizza's delivered for lunch.  Some of us even had it for dinner.  Until Sister Hoagland put her hands on the stack it was above her shoulders.

On Thursday of last week Elder and Sister Huefner from the area auditors department came to train our branch presidency and clerks concerning money handling policy.  Sister Hoagland and I had a wonderful time at dinner with them.  They are from Bountiful, Utah.  In eight months they have so far traveled over 40,000 miles throughout Eastern Europe fulfilling their calling.  They came via bus from Moscow.