My, my, a month gone by.  Temperatures have dropped significantly - so the furry gloves and hats are popping up, so we had to buy our own (see full-on Rooskies above).  Nancy doesn't care for her photo - but she truly looks stunning in her fox hat.

Interesting how skills from previous careers and experiences suddenly become useful when word gets around. Because the Russia Moscow stake was organized in June of this year, a lot of firsts are happening. Like the first Stake Christmas Concert/Show.  The stake rented a very nice auditorium/concert hall for Thu. Dec. 15, and because a certain former Showtime member (Eden Jaussi) has parents serving here (Chad and Bethany Packard) - we were invited to be part of the production committee.  After hearing about the professional talent available, a variety show (musical revue) was proposed for the first half, followed by a live Nativity complete with Mary, Joseph, 40-voice choir, primary angel choir, and a big O Holy Night finale - which Sister Packard found and translated to Russian.  I proposed a title from a previous Christmas show at Ricks, so TA-DA:  The Russia Moscow Stake presents "A Magical Christmas"  Briefly, highlights include a non-member professional String Ensemble from St. Petersburg, top soprano, and bass, ballroom dance couple (thanks to Nancy who also suggested I dress up as Rudolf and play a drum solo :) NO GO, and a fully costumed Nativity - luckily the venue has follow-spots and a grand piano. Lots of work but should be a fun night.  Here I go again, working out a nice "tableau" for the manger scene!

Yes this is missionary work - and it took three weeks to get an appointment with the Area Presidency. We finally presented our proposal on Thu. Nov. 3 - meeting with the men in the photo below: (which is on my work computer - frustration) - will post later.  At the meeting with us were - left to right:

David Stapley, Area Director of Temporal Affairs, Dmitry Mikulin, Area Welfare Manager (our supervisor), and the Presidency, Elder Laurence, President Schwitzer and Elder Bennett.   We are now planning trips to interview Mission Presidents in Russia, Baltic States (Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia), and Ukraine.  The legal process for obtaining government approval to launch Addiction Recovery Program Groups is involved - but must be done to insure the charter for the Church to operate here is not compromised.  The last thing we want is to be raided by local police for operating without a licence and have the Church lose its rights to operate here - or in other areas of Eastern Europe.

We had some Saturday trips with other Senior Couples - one to a fine pottery factory where Nancy picked up some fun items - post we will show on the next post.

Moscow Shopping, Proposal Writing and more . . .

Beautiful blue skies and sunny right now, a contrast to the gray, windy, and rainy days preceding it. Golden leaves are falling quickly off the trees, and soon the branches will be bare. Loving it here, a lot!!  After work, we go out every night for a walk, usually to the metro stop, hop a train, and go to a mall at the next stop. Great to get exercise. Takes 12-15 mins from home to metro, then just a couple to the mall. We stop a lot at Citibank's ATMs because we are stockpiling rubles since the dollar is so good right now. We have a safe in the apt where we're stockpiling them and keeping them safe. The apt costs 70,000 rubles ($2,300) a month so it takes a few visits to get as much as needed for rent, food, etc. I haven't figured out the coins yet, maybe I can take time to do that today. Finally over jetlag. It's been a real struggle and something as simple as learning to recognize coins was more than I could handle.

  

 At this point, we spend our office time writing proposals to initiate programs the church hasn't had here before such as addiction recovery meetings, marriage seminars, pre-marriage seminars for singles, etc., and counseling for individuals/couples. The proposals go to the area presidency of the church for approval, especially approval for the legalities of it all. The church has a legal charter that allows us to be operate here, and we can't do anything to jeopardize it, so it's a place to carefully tread. We plan to have everything up and running by the beginning of January, maybe sooner.  We were supposed to meet with the presidency this morning, but it's been moved nearly two weeks away. The wheels turn slowly here, I tell ya. Twiddling my thumbs a lot, and hoping to become much, much busier.  It has been a month since we entered the MTC, and afraid the next 22 will fly by too quickly. There is much to do, but approvals come first. 

This Friday we go back to Ashan (the big grocery store) and Ikea. (see mall in video below). We need a lot more groceries and will freeze certain things that are much, much cheaper at Ashan's than at the smaller local stores nearby. I am happy to get to go to Ashan when I'm awake :) Being a foodie, I am so curious about the food here. At a local store I was able to find a tomato, red pepper, onion mixture in a glass bottle.  We add cayenne and tabasco to for a reasonably good salsa - something we like and use a lot. Hey, just occurred to me to add cumin to it as well. That should make it taste even more like home.  I was more than worried that we wouldn't find cilantro here, a food staple as far as I'm concerned, but we found a local fruit/veggie stand that sells it by weight; it's beautiful, so we're good to go.  Did buy a bottle made by Heinz that says salsa, but tastes like sweet, sweet ketchup with peppers and onion. Yuck! Glad to have stumbled on something better.  Will look for it at Ashan tomorrow as it will be cheaper there. Some things are really cheap, for example, have you had Magnum bars? (Ice cream bars with chocolate/nuts/caramel). They are yummy, yummy ice cream on a stick that have just started to be sold in the US (Walmart carries them among other stores) and we have loved them on other trips to Europe. They are only 55 cents here. What a deal! (Chris and Babs, if you are reading this, I'm talking about the ice cream bars we brought at a convenience store in Victor, remember?)  

And in case anyone cares about chocolate, really good stuff is available here, like Lindt and Milka, for less than a dollar. Red peppers must be a national obsession because they are everywhere--humongous, beautiful and cheap.  Other fruits and vegetables can be found for good prices but almost everything is sky high. We will end up spending a fortune on food, I'm afraid, unless we stick with pasta and rice. I feel the pounds adding on already. And did I mention the chooclate? Boy howdy!!  Outside the metro stops, babushkas (older women) sell fruits and veggies too, such as huge mushrooms that look as though they were just plucked from a forest floor, little baskets of red currants, and other such goodies. I bought some prune plums from one of them a few evenings a go and ate four before going to bed. Well, let me tell you, that was a mistake. Don't think I'll be buying off the street like that again as the after effect was disastrous.

Sorry to spend so much time writing about food. When we're actually working and have less time for such frivolous matters, our posts will be more about marriage seminars and addiction recovery meetings, but until then........  

Speaking of eating sugar, Russ is on the phone right now calling around to find a dentist to do a root canal. He had trouble with this tooth at home and the dentist was hesitant to do a root canal if it wasn't absolutely necessary--it was just giving him a few twinges now and then. Dentist did put a crown on with "temporary" cement, but then he couldn't get it off at the last office visit, so it was left in place with no root canal.Hmmmm. A BIG MISTAKE! Stupid dentist!! Stupid us!!  Coulda, shoulda, woulda had it done before we left. Now it is acting up in a big way and it's got to be taken care of ASAP. There is a good dentist here, as a matter of fact, our friend Bethany who is a missionary here with her husband used to work for him years ago in Texas. Small world, isn't it. That's who Russ is trying to get an appt with, but he's out of town, so don't know what to do next. Rats!! Hate it that the brand new crown will have to be drilled through, which will weaken it and make it last a shorter period of time, although at our age maybe that doesn't matter. Gee, I hate saying that.  

We're getting to know some of the Russian people who work in our office, Fun people. If only we could learn Russian simply by rubbing shoulders with them. It still sounds like gibberish, and I rarely pick out a word I know. One of the couples here has a private tutor once a week for $70 an hour. Pricey. Guess we'll pass on that one.

We LOVE it here, even with the expensive food and streets flooded with water because there isn't a sewer system, crowded metro, shivery and cold. Moscow is wonderful!

OUR FABULOUS MOSCOW APARTMENT (entrance and elevator are a story for another day)

NANCY'S BLOW BY BLOW REVIEW OF THE BIG ARRIVAL IN MOSCOW: It's about 4 am here and I finally don't feel drugged. We arrived at 10:30 am in Moscow. Waited about 30 min for a wheelchair to get to the plane for Russ. (He twisted his knee pretty bad on the flight from SLC to NYC.)  While waiting at the Moscow airport, the flight attendants constantly apologized for Russian slowness, rolled their eyes, said how bad the old terminal was, etc. Then luggage took forever. We paid $30 for three men to lift and move our eight suitcases from baggage claim through customs and into the reception area of the six month old beautiful new terminal. Waiting for us were Dima (our supervisor, 37 years old, handsome, charming, kind, attentive) and the Pattersons (senior missionary couple from Springville, UT - ready to leave for home in two weeks). We arrived with the Souths, the couple from Georgia with whom we went through the MTC. There were two drivers waiting for us and we piled all the luggage and people inside a larage van and small car and went  directly to the American Embassy to apply for our second passport that will be used when we leave the country every 3 months to fill visa requirements. That was an interesting event in itself. The Embassy building looks like something out of movie, very Eastern Europe and heavily guarded.Next lunch.  Then to the Marriott where Russ and I are spending the night. The Souths went to a currently vacant apartment (it will be used permanently by another couple when the arrive next month). Souths will move into the Pattersons place when they depart. Today we will move to a hotel closer to our office and also start looking at apartments that have been lined up for us to see. We will live within walking distance of the office, on the green metro line, the Sokol stop. This city is ginormous!! We were told yesterday that while the official count is 16 million, the actual population is more like 30 million. It is  much like NYC, only on a larger scale. Architecture is fascinating. yesterday we drove past two of the "seven sisters," seven buildings Stalin had built that look exactly alike and atop each of the seven hills of Moscow. This looks like many European cities, but bigger and shabbier in some instances than places like Berlin, Vienna, etc. Of course, we have only seen an extremely small sample of the city. Can tell you that traffic crawls, but we will mostly be on foot so how fast cars travel will matter little to us. Looking at the way women were dressed, it is again like NYC....lots of high fashion and very high heels. We had lunch in a Chinese restaurant across the street from the Marriott. Prices were about what they would be in NYC, perhaps a tad higher. I had lamb with onions; delish and the rice was just what you'd expect at a place in Salt Lake City--not real Chinese rice, but the non-sticky stuff with a few veggies thrown in.  Speaking of being on foot, dad's knee seemed a little better when we awoke at 8 pm last night from our nap and before we went back down at 10:30 pm. For now he is taking only ibuprofen, and hopefully it will improve enough today that we won't have to go to the SOS American Clinic, although we've been told that the care there is quite decent. I have visions, of course, of having to turn around to the States for him to have his knee scoped. Let us hope it doesn't come to that. I am so anxious to get going and walk everywhere.' As soon as dad wakes up I will get out the water purifying bottle from a suitcase so I can brush my teeth. The hotel gave us one bottle and we drank it last night. Just the beginning of our Russian water routine.  Well,nice to be awake and not feel drugged. Surely, we'll be out of it later today, but for now jet lag is taking a back seat. Our driver will be here at 8:15 to schlepp all of our bags from here to the hotel we'll stay until we find our apartment. Not sure why they put us in the Marriott for only one night, but probably because a room wasn't available yet at the other place. Of course, I'm not complaining because this is very nice.  There are 14 other senior missionary couples in Moscow. We'll have dinner with them this coming Thur. Today the Packards (Eden Jaussi's parents) will have lunch with us and take us out to see potential apartments.  We haven't seen them - Bethany and Chad - since Eden's (former Showtime student of Russ's) wedding reception and that's been a few years. They are fun loving people, so it's bound to be a great time, although Russ will no doubt stay at the office while I go with them. Dang it! This is no time for a bum knee. We sure thought we'd left health problems behind us once we got on the plane, but you know what it's like to be rushed onboard and have to stow luggage immediately, etc. Dad reached up to get a small suitcase back out to get - what else - food that he had packed inside it, and it fell on his knee as he turned or some such thing. Whatever happened, the end result was a lot of pain and at first he could put no weight on it at all. Imagine dad not getting up and going to the restroom every 1/2 hour....that's how bad it was and he couldn't put any weight on it at all. Don't know how he managed to get any sleep on the flight. As for me, I used an eye mask and ear plugs and slept deeply for a couple of hours. He has been doing much better throughout the night, so I hope healing is on the way.  A knee brace wouldn't be such a bad idea. We'll see. ------------------------------- A FEW DAYS LATER -------------------------------

I keep telling people that we are not hypochondriacs or sickly people, but we sure act like we are. Hopeflly, health issues are now behind us. My doctor who suspected cancer while we were in the MTC was surprised but pleased to learn, after the biopsy was analyzed by four experts, that it was benign. I believe in miracles!! We found an apartment the very first day after our arrival. It is a two minute walk from the office - just across the street - and it is better than I ever expected: a huge bedroom with king bed, big living room, very big dining room, typical size kitchen and bath. Everything has been remodeled and is clean and bright. There are huge windows on three sides of the apt and two terraces with celing to floor glass doors. Sixth floor, and we hear flies and mosquitoes stop at the fourth floor, so that's great too. Really, it's a lovely place and we move in today. yesterday it took 2.5 hours for the landlady to negotiate all terms of the lease with the real estate specialist in our office. Actually, it was her real estate broker that made the process so long. I couldn't believe it, especially since they had already met for 1.5 hours the day before. We are starting to learn the Russian way of doing business. Wow! Do Russians speak rapidly, or what??? We're in for a real learning curve. A few missioanry couples here take private tutoring twice a week at $70 a lesson. Whooo, we won't be doing that, but will try learning the old fashioned way by simply learning as much as possible as we talk with Russians.  Jet lag has been a killer, but we got a pretty good rest last night. Waking at 5 am is a whole lot better than at 1:30. We're on our way!!  Photos of our luxury apartment will be posted as soon as Russ learns how to do it!

By the numbers - prior to Moscow lift-off - July 26, 2011
8  - months between receiving our mission call and the time entering the MTC
2  - delays, 1st medical, 2nd office typo requiring 2nd visa application
25 - approximate number of Russian Tutoring Sessions with Tyson Ekersly
2  -  days in the MTC, ending with the outline of events of Sept. 13, 2011 - evening (below)
1 -  hearing aid lost, submitted claim for replacement to Costco
15 - number of pounds Russ wished he had lost before entering the MTC

Russ joined the 480 voice MTC choir after last training class. His friend/colleague Doug Brenchley, who has directed this choir for 24 years, introduced Russ to the choir as friend from CES Touring Committee, Director at Ricks/BYU Idaho, and his colleague at Heritage Festivals.  Russ reviewed his and Nancy's mission assignment to the Europe East Area Office setting up LDS Family Services and the Addiction Recovery Program.

Russ sat in the Tenor section next to 6 ft. 8 in. Elder from Orem going to LA Spanish speaking.  In front of him were 3 Elders going to Ukraine who sang all hymns in Russian. Rehearsed "Jesus Once of Humble Birth".  Then the speaker arrived (no one knows in advance who it will be until they arrive)
Elder Russell Ballard and his wife walked in and the audience of 2,500 missionaries stood.  Opening song, of course, was Called to Serve.  A wonderful message about how to be more effective teachers of the Gospel - a wonderful, spirit=-filled day and night.

Next - a report on the amazing Sunday (Sept. 11) prior to entering the MTC -

Happy Birthday!

Dear Mom,

Happy Birthday! For your 68th, as you depart on a grand adventure, I have created this blog so you will keep us posted on everything happening with you and dad in the Mother Land. Is it the Mother Land?

It is simple to use. I will train you in the ways of the blogging world.

I love you much and excited to see how you will learn and grow and make new friends on this next phase of your life. It is so exciting and I am so proud to call you my mother.

From your favorite child,

Miss Molly Dolly