Becks in Siberia: General Conference, a nice way to conclude the week.

We were able to conclude this week by watching General Conference. We had to wait a week for it to be available for our members in Russian, plus the fact that we are 13 hours ahead of back home. We enjoyed it very much and now we are pondering our 25 words :-) We cheated and had our headphones plugged into our iPhones and listened in English over the internet while the others listened in Russian.

Last week’s events included another trip to Novosibirsk for a meeting. On our way we decided to take the train and get off up the line a ways and trek up through the forest and through a small community to try to make contact with a member that we haven’t met. We wondered around the community back and forth for a while until we came to about the last housing complex there. We did location her apartment and a relative was at home, but not the member. Oh well, hopefully next time we can meet her and let her know that we are now holding meetings much closer to her home. For many years, the members here have had to travel on Sundays for about an hour by train to attend any church meetings. Hopefully, soon we will have a building rented where we can hold church meetings and also other meetings that will be beneficial to the people here. We would like to be able to hold a free English conversation group one night a week where the local people can come and speak in English with us and the other missionaries as extra practice for their English. There is quite an interest from the young people to learn the language.

We met this last week again with the college class of students and had a great time. They made several Russian dishes of food for us to try. They also explained to us how they made the food and shared their recipes. It was very tasty. We enjoy being with them. We were also asked to stay after for another class of beginner English adult students. They were very timid at first, but by the time we left they seemed to have loosened up and felt more comfortable. It’s interesting to hear the questions that they have for us about America. We have a wonderful relationship with the English teacher of these classes. She could not be any more pleasant towards us.

One of our dear young friends in Berdsk told one of her professors in Novosibirsk about us being here and that we are enjoying volunteering. She made contact with us and we are planning on going this next week to assist her with one of her language competitions. We are looking forward to that upcoming opportunity.

It has been so nice to be able to put on a lighter coat and have the weather warm up a little during the days. However, we did about freeze while trying to find the members home that we mentioned. Also another side note, the little shed frame that was pictured in our prior blog did not survive. The snow released from the room during the week and broke the frame as expected.