Hey Family,
Greetings from Chelyabinsk. You may already know this but if you take “Chely” and “abins”, they mean “War” and “Peace” the “K” at the end just makes it a place-noun instead of two separate words. We got back from our visa excursion late Sunday night, had half of p-day in Yekat and then rode back to Chely last night. It’s great to be back, but it was such a good trip. Everything went right that was supposed to and everything that went wrong ended up being a bonus. So we land in St. Pete’s and the plan is to drive over to Finland and get into the temple guest houses at early evening, but in Yekat a snow storm came out of nowhere and delayed us so we sat inside the plane as it was covered in snow several times and then sprayed off with special liquid, possibly warm water, several times. I had a hard time sitting there because it was hot and uncomfortable but that’s fairly common on these domestic flights, but we sat there for several hours and by the time we were ready to go, I thought, “How can this be? I’ve already put in my travel time, used up my travel stamina and we haven’t even gone anywhere, I should be instantly transported there.” It strangely didn’t work out that way.
So we got to the temple late, the nice temple president, who was the former president of this mission, took me and one of the senior couples who was with us to get some nice groceries. I tell you, it's so nice to have non-whatever-they-do-to-Russian-milk milk. You can actually drink the cereal dregs. It’s fantastic.
It was an honor to sleep in the same rooms that all the Russian saints who make it to the temple use. We had a Finnish guy in ours. He was funny cause he kept speaking Finnish to us, and we kept not understanding, then he tried to switch into limited Russian and we had a fun time communicating small talk. What wasn’t funny was that after our long drive there and that it was 3 in the morning our time, this guy snores like a banshee chainsaw! It was ridiculous! I was lying there with bloodshot eyes shaking my temporarily insane head for hours. I haven’t the time to tell about how grand of a shower I had there, but if you have a half hour I may tell you sometime. And Cocoa Puffs for breakfast.
The Temple was sacred and very special to me. I was amazed by it, and by how much I had forgotten or not realized. It was also special to see the Finnish saints fill a session and overhear their language as we listened on headsets in English. I’m grateful for missionaries like Brother Froerer who served decades ago so that the saints of Russia would have a place to work out their salvation. Finland is a beautiful country. I kept asking around to the workers if they knew my grandparents but I never found the ones that work there I guess. We got to spend a few hours in Helsinki and it was amazing. I forgot how pretty and clean Europe can be, especially those Scandinavian nations who haven’t many world issues to worry about so they just keep their yards and streets immaculate. Good on ‘em.
So when we got to the border we noticed that our visa’s technically started on the next day, but it was almost 10 at night and our old visa’s gave us a few days of clearance anyway, but the Russian border patrol felt differently, and their bright solution was to have us pull over to the side of the road and wait over 2 hours until the clock changed to midnight/Sunday. They weren’t even convinced when my companion argued the point that it had already been Sunday in Vladivostok for several hours. So we sat in a car in the no-man's land between Finland and Russia for three hours and missed our flight. Which was OK; because it gave us the opportunity to see St. Pete’s for even longer than our first trip a year and a half ago. We even found an internet café and looked up where a branch met and attended it and saw missionaries that were in our zone in the MTC. St. Petersburg is a nice city, and we were there way early in the morning so we got to walk around and see it all with no crowds at all.
We had a nice flight back, I sat next to a guy who was reading Eragon-one of those dragon books and so near the end of the flight said to him in Russian, “ You probably speak English pretty well if you read that type of book” and he responded, “I am English” in English with a British accent. Funny moment of processing for me, because Russians usually speak English with a British accent, and it's to possible make a grammar mistake to mean, they study English or something. So it was funny when I looked puzzled at him for a moment. Turns out he runs a casino in Yekat.
So now we’re back and renewed from our temple/visa journey and are ready to burn on out.
See you soon, and probably talk to you this weekend,
-Rob
The Temple was sacred and very special to me. I was amazed by it, and by how much I had forgotten or not realized. It was also special to see the Finnish saints fill a session and overhear their language as we listened on headsets in English. I’m grateful for missionaries like Brother Froerer who served decades ago so that the saints of Russia would have a place to work out their salvation. Finland is a beautiful country. I kept asking around to the workers if they knew my grandparents but I never found the ones that work there I guess. We got to spend a few hours in Helsinki and it was amazing. I forgot how pretty and clean Europe can be, especially those Scandinavian nations who haven’t many world issues to worry about so they just keep their yards and streets immaculate. Good on ‘em.
So when we got to the border we noticed that our visa’s technically started on the next day, but it was almost 10 at night and our old visa’s gave us a few days of clearance anyway, but the Russian border patrol felt differently, and their bright solution was to have us pull over to the side of the road and wait over 2 hours until the clock changed to midnight/Sunday. They weren’t even convinced when my companion argued the point that it had already been Sunday in Vladivostok for several hours. So we sat in a car in the no-man's land between Finland and Russia for three hours and missed our flight. Which was OK; because it gave us the opportunity to see St. Pete’s for even longer than our first trip a year and a half ago. We even found an internet café and looked up where a branch met and attended it and saw missionaries that were in our zone in the MTC. St. Petersburg is a nice city, and we were there way early in the morning so we got to walk around and see it all with no crowds at all.
We had a nice flight back, I sat next to a guy who was reading Eragon-one of those dragon books and so near the end of the flight said to him in Russian, “ You probably speak English pretty well if you read that type of book” and he responded, “I am English” in English with a British accent. Funny moment of processing for me, because Russians usually speak English with a British accent, and it's to possible make a grammar mistake to mean, they study English or something. So it was funny when I looked puzzled at him for a moment. Turns out he runs a casino in Yekat.
So now we’re back and renewed from our temple/visa journey and are ready to burn on out.
See you soon, and probably talk to you this weekend,
-Rob
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