It never ceases to amaze us all that we experience on our mission.  We love the opportunities that our Heavenly Father is providing for us to serve his children here in Russia.  Here is a picture of a Family Home Evening game: Ooga Booga.  It has been a family fun game that we had to share.  The youth love to get together and feel of each others love and strength.  In this game you bring one person in at a time...we have about 12 others in our kitchen.  This week we had 18 to FHE!  

Tuesday, May 1st was a holiday here...they call it "Peace, Labor and May Day".  We went out of our apartment to catch a bus to attend the celebration at the church and found that our street was closed off due to a marching parade.  We walked to a distant bus stop and snapped pictures of the parade along the way.

Even this bus got into the festivities.

The color of the balloon depicted a particular group that was marching for some cause.  Young and old were marching together.

We finally made it to the church and just in time for a wonderful BBQ.  Here you see Artium, the branch cook.  He takes this calling very seriously and does an amazing job.  He is roasting large sausage links on a charcoal fire.  It was a very cold and rainy day, but that didn't stop the party. He had to put a table to protect the fire from the strong wind.  The sausage was sooooo good!  They made grilled sausage wraps.

Inside the missionaries and members were going strong with a competitive hockey game!  Before hockey, we all watched a wonderful movie on the life of President Thomas S. Monson.

Here are some of the girls, cheering the teams on.  The event served as a great activity to bring less actives and non-members.

Outside of our kitchen window we see into the playground of a neighboring apartment complex.  They have hired the most attentive maintenance man.  This spring he has worked so hard painting the curbing and cleaning up the children's playground area.  I watch him sweep over and over the walkway with his
handmade broom of straw and sticks.  In America, we would have gotten out our blower and been done in a tenth of the time!

We have found a grocery store that is much less expensive.  It is a bit of a walk to the downtown area, but on this day we enjoyed some sun and we were thrilled to see that some of the areas are planting flowers. Along the edge of the grass, they have planted rows and rows of pansies.  AHHHH, Spring at last!!!

Each week we have a Zone class where all the missionaries meet at our apartment.  This week we had the two AP's from Ekat with us.  They are the two missionaries on the right. The young man closest to the camera played football for USU in Logan.   It was fun to have them all gather around our kitchen table for lunch.  Elder O'Neill cooked up a dish that he was so proud of.  Here you can see him serving it.  These missionaries are getting to be such great cooks.  I made them peach cobbler with a lemon sauce for dessert.  They love desserts!!!  We are blessed with incredibly dedicated missionaries.

In this area, some of the youth are called to serve mini-missions.  This is to help fill in when we are short on missionaries and then it gives the youth here the opportunity to experience a mission.  This is Anna and her son, Eli.  She has a daughter, Vera, that is 6 and was at school.  Anna, was one of the young people that experienced a mini-mission.  You can just feel of her great spirit when you enter her humble home.  She married out of the church and now her husband wouldn't allow her to attend church. (The really sad and scary thing is that there aren't a lot of members for our youth to marry!) She loves having us come and we have developed a very close relationship with she and her children.  Behind Elder Pocock are fold away bunk beds that the children sleep on.  She and her husband sleep in the couch that is kind of like a hide-a-bed.  They have a small kitchen and a tiny bath.  She lives about an hour from us.  Elder Pocock played tickle monster with Eli...it was fun for Eli and filled Elder Pocock's need to play with his grandkids.  We always go with missionaries and they translate for us.  We leave a message every time and pray that Anna and the children can feel added strength.  We love her so much.  She is good through and through!

On the way to Anna's home, we pass this arsenal of new and old war equipment.  It is like an outdoor museum.

Our Primary is very small but the older children need to be able to have meaningful lessons and be prepared for the program and YM/YW.  We have these two little ones that need to be in a nursery but they put them in with the 6-8 other children.  At times, it is chaos!  I volunteered to be the nursery leader and help with the reverence in Primary.  I figured if I had enough activities and toys...I could love these two little ones into wanting to be with me.  Well, here you can see that I failed miserably!  They went and got their moms to come to their/my rescue.  It will take some time for them to get used to me...but we are making some progress in allowing the Primary children to have a more "traditional" Primary meeting. Baby steps before we can run...right?!

Sunday, after the block, we had our friend, Michael, over for dinner.  You probably remember Michael from a previous posting on our blog.  When we first met Michael, we were trying to help him with his visa to the states so he could attend UVU.  Well, things have changed.  We had our Branch Conference two weeks ago and our Mission President met with Michael.  He felt so strongly that Michael should go on a mission.  He challenged Michael to pray about this and get back to him.  Michael has decided that this is the course of action for his life right now!  He notified his father and his father was furious.  The father has ordered the whole family...six brothers and sisters to not have any communication with Michael until he changes his mind.  He loves his family, so this has been very hard on him...but he is going forward with it.  This picture shows Elder Pocock and Michael getting Michael's mothers work submitted for her temple ordinances.  We told Michael that he could take this with him when he goes to the temple and they could have a sister take care of it.  He knew that our visa trip was coming up soon and he turned to me and asked, "Sister Pocock, can you do the work for my mother?"  "Of course, if that is what you want, " I gladly replied.  So Elder Pocock and I fly out to Finland tomorrow, May 10, for our visa trip.  We have emailed the temple and made all the arrangements for us to take care of Michael's request.  It is truly an honor to help this young man who is valiantly going through this enormous challenge.  Can't wait to fill you in next week with all the experiences in Finland and at the temple!

Here is our hero... I had to take this picture of Michael putting pepper on the soup I made.  I guess in Nigeria they have the hottest pepper...so everything here tastes very bland.  Hence, the ton of salt and pepper!  He is an amazing young man.

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