This week there are a ton of pictures...

FHE is one of our favorite nights of the week.

Nadia (baptism set for June) her son, Feorda and daughter, Mela have been on vacation.  We missed them so much.  We celebrated by having them over for dinner and an investigator lesson for Feorda.  He gave us a mini concert that we cut way down in hopes that you can enjoy.  Sorry about the Russian singing video that didn't work last week. Let's hope this one does.

This week we took an hour and a half trip to Ugokomske to visit a wonderfully active member, Olga.  She comes all that way most every Sunday to church.  We went with our wonderful sisters who only have
days left on their mission!

We saw another side of Russia!  It was so beautiful...rolling hills, farmland, villages nestled in the hills as you can see below.

We even got into a forested area.

Welcome to Ugokomske.  As soon as we got off the bus, we walked to the nearby reservoir and breathed in the fresh air...free from smoke and pollution.  It was so refreshing.

This is our dear Olga.  She was married for 25 years to a man that would not allow her to participate in her new found religion.  They didn't have any children and so she left the Ukraine and moved five years ago...back to her home town to live with her mother.  She is a teacher of English in a small school here in her community. She served us a delicious lunch.  It was a cold soup (for hot days)...tasty!

Meet Olga, her 80 year old mother and her sister.  Olga's sister is married with two children and a new grandchild.  They live about 3/4 mile from Olga and her mom.  They have a large backyard (which is very rare in Russia) where the 80 year old mother works day in and day out.

Now this family is serious about gardening!  They built this hot house, and the oldest of the three women walks the 3/4 mile a minimum of twice a day to cover and uncover her vegetables.  She spends the day "weeding, picking the bugs off the plants and watering the plants with warm water" that she collects in a variety of old bathtubs in the yard and lets the sun heat it. Absolutely no pesticides.  She said that it is much better for the newly sprouting plants to have water warm.  From the looks of the garden...I think this is better than Miracle-Grow!

Here Grandma is watering her tomato plants that she won't put out until the end of May.  She started these from seeds in March.  We participated in a lesson for Olga's Mom.  She has been a widow for over 50 years!  We talked of the Plan of Salvation. What a sweet lady. Olga is retiring from her teaching job and moving to Perm sometime this summer.  She is wanting to be closer to the church and be able to participate in more of the activities.  She will have to find another teaching job because even after 30 years teaching...her pension is not enough to support her.  Olga promised me that she would come to America and visit us!  It was a delightful visit and such a treat to see what lies beyond the hectic city life!

While walking with the Elders to visit an inactive...a man ran across the street and asked for help with his car.   All in a days work...

Meet Lenna and Tanya.  Tanya is the ice skater that has appeared on our blog early on.  These gals are also English teachers.  They took us on a walk Sunday evening down by the Kama River.  The city Perm follows the Kama. We had a thunder storm, but it didn't stop us.  These two gals participate in our English Conversation Group each week and also attend FHE.  They have been so helpful in showing us around and introducing us to many cultural activities that Perm offers.

We have been here almost four months and this is our first visit to the banks of the Kama.  Two large bridges take many across to Komske, where we have several members of our branch.

In the distance, you can see the sea port that is still in use.  We saw some barges travelling the river.  They also have large tourist ships that give daily rides in the summer.

On the way home, we passed Gorky Park.  If you have followed the blog at all, you may remember the pure ice slide at this park.  Now we will show you the fun they have in the summer...

Meet Slava...our fun, red-headed investigator (on the far right) with a baptism date!!!  Here he is with some of the youth at a FHE activity.  Thanks for patiently enduring our weekly adventurers.  The weeks pass quickly and we are getting so attached to the wonderful people we are meeting here.  They carry a heavy load helping this little branch; they are valiant spirits!  I am proud to have them in my life.

What a wonderful week!  FHE was the largest group yet...21 young adults packed into our apartment.  In our lesson, we shared feelings on the Family Proclamation.  This revelation is so important for families everywhere!  The majority of families we have met have only one parent and most families rely on the grandparents because both or the one parent must work.  If our young adults would embrace the Proclamation and its' teachings...what a difference it would make in their lives. 

We went to visit this sweet sister, Luba (which translated means love). She works full time feeding patients in a hospital.  She loves her work.  She lives in a one room apartment with a shared kitchen and bath!  This single hide-a-bed is where she sleeps.  The closet to your left is where she keeps her clothes.  She has her grandson over on her days off.  He hung on the doors of her closet and broke them off...so Elder Pocock came to the rescue and repaired them. She works two days on...two days off, so she is only able to attend church two weeks of the month.  She is a lovable sister!  The rest of the day was spent teaching an investigator, teaching piano lessons, altering missionaries suit pants, and packing for our visa trip!

   

Every three months, visitors to Russia must leave the country and renew their visa.  It was hard to believe that our three month time had come.  The church must fly their foreign missionaries to either Finland or the Ukraine for this process.  They send us to a country that has a temple so that we can enjoy the blessings of temple attendance and complete the necessary visa requirements.  We left for the Perm airport at  five a.m.!  This is all that we saw of the capital, Moscow.  We had a long layover, but it being our first trip...we were quite content to walk the halls and take pictures from the airport.  Next time we will get a little more daring and if time allows, maybe see a little more of Moscow.

We made it through the maze of passport/customs control in both the Moscow and Helsinki airports with great relief!  We took a taxi outside of the airport and were thrilled that the young driver from Somalia spoke great English.  Finland is beautiful.  The driver told us that they get a lot of moisture and a ton of snow and you can see the results...it is lovely.

I took this picture of farmland ready to plant and individual family dwellings that we rarely see in Perm.

The Helsinki temple is located in a suburb called Espoo.  It took us about 20 minutes from the airport.  This is a view of our approach to the temple.

It is a beautiful temple, built on a bluff.  We got our room at the hostel that is just across the street from the temple, and then ran to the temple for their final session.  There is a driveway where patrons can be dropped off right at front of the door, or these steps that provide a gorgeous view.

As you would expect, the grounds are manicured and there is a very peaceful feeling in this wooded area.

This is the hostel that the church provides for members to stay when they come to participate at the temple. Because people must travel so far to attend the temple, this is really a wonderful service. The accommodations are very reasonable, clean and comfortable.  The temple president and his wife live here as well as the foreign temple workers.  The earliest session begins at ten a.m. and the latest is six p.m., making it five sessions a day with an additional one on Saturdays.  We got up on Friday morning to get to the eight a.m. session only to find that they don't start until ten.  Finland is three hours behind us in Perm,  so when we got out of the temple on Thursday night, it was eight their time, but it was eleven p.m. for us!  It was a long day but how wonderful to be in a temple again.

We woke up to rain on Friday, May 11, 2012.  Everywhere we looked from the second story windows we saw trees and more trees.  This day was dedicated to completing our dear friend Michael's mothers temple work.  The workers were so accommodating and everything went as planned.  It was a very spiritual experience.  Michael is no longer alone in the church!  As I sat in the temple, there was a sister from Russia to my left, a sister from Finland to my right, and I thought this is what it is all about.  We are all brothers and sisters!

This is the main area past the check in desk.  Next to this room they have a TV room with toys for children, a piano, plus a computer that has a keyboard with multiple alphabets on it.  Straight ahead they have a lovely dining area.  It was totally fun to talk to the American temple missionaries.  I thought that the Russian language was difficult, but the Finnish language is the hardest by far!!!

This is the dining room with two complete kitchens.  To the far left of the picture you can see four refrigerators.  There are two more in the kitchen areas.  These are assigned to the rooms.  Each room has four bunk beds, closets, lockers, a lovely shower, and bathroom.  When it is busy, women are assigned to one room and men to another.  We stayed at a slow time so we got our own room. You are required to clean it when you leave but for the convenience, it was little to ask.  We walked about a mile to a nearby market and got us some food so that we could prepare our own meals.

Here is a lovely patio for eating during warmer, drier weather.

Goodbye Helsinki.  What a wonderful experience we had.  I have to tell you that both the Aeroflot Airline in Russia and the Finnair Airline in Finland serve meals (small and simple) but non-the-less, they
do serve more than a drink and peanuts.

Helsinki from the air...the Baltic Sea in the distance.

Below you see Moscow from the air.  You can see that there are many individual homes in this area.  The young people told us that Moscow is where Russia puts a lot of its money.  It is a tourist stop and it is cleaner and kept really nice...according to the young people here in Perm.

We got home about eight Saturday night. As we got off the elevator and rounded the corner to our apartment...taped to our front door we saw this candy bar card from the dear sisters in our zone!  We have totally enjoyed the candy!!!

Our dear friends, the Skows, who are the mission office couple, sent me this Mother's Day/Birthday greeting from some Elders in the Ekat area.  Click on the arrow in the middle.

Flowers from the Sisters of the branch for my Birthday on Sunday.  A special thank you for all your email cards, emails, and skype calls.  We feel your love and pray that you can feel our Heavenly Father's watchful care.  Have a great week!

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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It's been another amazing week in Perm, Russia.  We are now having Russian spring weather...rain, rain, and more rain!  We have worked at cleaning up our branch directory and challenged each of our four sets of missionaries to have us visit a less active with them each week.  So this week, we started out with the zone leaders.  We were to catch a bus early in the morning and travel for about 55 minutes to the end of the route.  There we were to meet the Elders and visit a young mother and her children.  We were riding along and got a call from the Elders, "She's cancelled...get off the bus at the next stop and come back towards town. We've connected with Irena and we can visit with her...we'll meet you there."  We had just missed a bus stop so we rode to the next one and got off.  By now it was pouring rain (thank goodness I had an umbrella in my bag) and we had quite a hike.  We had been to Irena's before so at least we knew where we were going.  We had to walk past a prison (it is the large, white building at the botton of the hill and one of many locations where we are to remove our name tags when passing by).  As we walked several prisoners called out to us through their tiny windows.  This is the first time that I've been glad that I couldn't understand Russian!  Then we proceeded up a steep, muddy hill. Last time we hiked this trail, it was snow and ice.  I'm not sure which was the hardest.  We were sure that the missionaries were standing out in the rain waiting for us, so we really kicked into gear and made it to Irena's in record time.  We were debating which was the door that lead to her floor of apartments when we get this phone call.  It's the Elders: "Where are you guys?"  "We're at the front of Irena's apartment, where are you?"  "Wow, you guys are fast", they replied.  "We just got a call and she has company so she doesn't want us to come. Sorry."  Elder Pocock and I looked at each other and recalled a quote that the senior couples got at the MTC..."Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."  It's all in a days work.

April 27, 2012 was the third anniversary of my Dad's death.  There is a large cemetery that we pass each time we ride the bus to the church.  We decided that this would be a great time to visit this special place.

Along the right side of the walkway, there are five huge metal wreaths that were lying on cement bases that are carved in the shape of 1941 thru 1945... representing Russia's involvement in WWII.

At the entrance to the cemetery, is a large statue of a grieving mother.  In the picture above, it stands on the white base in the center of the photo.

One section of the cemetery is dedicated totally to fallen soldiers.

You can see that all of the soldiers in this section died in 1942.

Another section of the cemetery is for the public.  There were wide variety of markers. Some were just wooden crosses, others stone, most were wire.  There is no grass but it appears that there is ground cover and a variety of perennials everywhere.  I am sure that it will be much greener later in the spring.  As you can see, some grave sites are surrounded by fences.

This shows the wire markers that often had vines growing up them.  The sad thing was that not all of the graves were marked very clearly.

At the end of the long path, this quaint Russian Orthodox church appears.  It is small and simple but well cared for.  The cemetery was so peaceful and a nice place to come with it's hundreds of trees.

On our way out, we passed this bell with wreaths displayed all around it.  Probably the most touching part of this monument was a wire "crown of thorns" at the very top.

We don't have a Young Men's President yet and we have been very concerned about several young men that are less active that need attention.  The Branch President and the missionaries put together a sports activity for the young men.  A few young women decided they had to crash the party.  A great deal of fun was had by all and the greatest part is that we had two less actives, and three investigators come!  Here they are playing basketball and believe me...the Russians are big into b-ball!  The young man on the far left is Shenya...he hasn't been out to church for some time.  He was born with his left arm developed only to the elbow.  YOU SHOULD SEE HIM PLAY BASKETBALL!  He was the Michael Jordan of our team.

Our Branch President had purchased mits, bats and balls and wanted the missionaries to teach the youth how to play baseball.  It was so much fun explaining the rules...and then seeing them actually play the game.  They caught on really fast.  Here is Shenya again...hitting the ball with one hand.  There wasn't anything that he didn't try, or couldn't do.  What a great sport.

Here is a blurry shot of the Sandlot crew.  The activity was a great success.  Even Elder and Sister Pocock got up to bat and played outfield.  I am sure that we will be having many Branch Baseball games this summer.  We even had people stop playing soccer to come and watch this new game!  After the game, we were walking back to the church and one of the young men said to me, "Sister Pocock, I got two goals!"  I said, "they are called runs."  Igor replied, "I think goals sounds better."

I've found me a baby to love...Darya, the President's daughter.  She is about 18 months old.  It helps when
I'm feeling homesick for those grandchildren back home!

Sister Eulia Ustyuzhaninov twisted her knee as she was running the bases.  Thank goodness we had lots of strong young men to help transport her to their nearby car.  She showed up in church on crutches. What she won't do for the youth of the branch!  Until next week....