Becks in Siberia: Moments on the train...

This was a fun week with our traveling and our English classes. We have a group of students that we call our adult class. This past week, they had us come visit their class and we had a party with cake and tea. They even brought juice for us. They are so fun to meet with and so loving to us. We want to have them come to our apartment in the near future and visit with us, as we only have a little over an hour in their class. The time goes by way too fast. A husband and wife couple even brought us some homemade raspberry jam for us to take back to our apartment. It is delicious. They also mentioned that they want us to come to their house when the weather warms up and have a BBQ, which we are excited to do.

On Wednesday, we went to visit one of our dear members who lives between Berdsk and Novosibirsk. It took us two different Marshrutkas to get there and longer than had we expected. He is very dedicated. Whenever we have church meetings or any other gathering, he is always faithful to be there. It was very humbling to us to visit this dear man. When we got to his “flat” as they call it in Russia, we became aware that he shares the kitchen and bathroom of an apartment with two other people. He lives in a single room of the apartment with a sleeper sofa as a bed. It is very neat and organized. We were impressed with his collection of journals from over the years. We have noticed that he is always taking notes during meetings. He is about 85 years old and is a retired mathematics teacher from a university here. It is a pleasure to know this dear man.

This week was a week of more travel than normal. We left early Thursday morning on the train to Novosibirsk to go to a university and judge an English class competition. We both split up and went into separate rooms to help judge two different groups of students. We were both impressed with the language abilities of the students that we met. The faculty there treated us kindly and expressed a desire to have some of their students attend the English conversation group that the missionaries hold one evening each week; so hopefully we will be able to put many young people from Novosibirsk in touch with the missionaries.

This past Friday was our week to have the missionaries in our district come to Berdsk and attend a training meeting at our apartment. Laura made a very nice meal for them and we enjoyed having them come to our apartment. She even made one of the Russian food dishes that we tasted at the college that we help at. The Russian translation name of it is, “Herring under fur coat”. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. It looks like it should be a sweet salad, but it is beets and several other vegetables. It’s very tasty.

On Sunday, we traveled to Novosibirsk again to attend church meetings there. We actually enjoy the train rides because we have the opportunity to sit by people we have never met and try to have conversation with them. On the way there, we sat by two young girls from a city named “Iskitim”. They were so cute, and were even sending us texts later that afternoon. On the return trip, we had one of those memorable experiences that we will always cherish. For about the last 20 minutes of the ride a sweet older lady got on the train and sat in the seat by us. We tried our best to have a conversation with her but she knew no English at all, so we started showing her pictures of our family and of the mountains around home and did our best to explain the pictures. It was one of those times when you wished that time would slow down. We arrived at the train station in Berdsk and had to leave her. As we were saying goodbye and shaking her hand, she had to pull Laura close to her and give her a kiss on the cheek goodbye. As we were walking past her window after leaving the train, she was right up next to it waving goodbye to us. We couldn’t talk for a bit because of the tears in our eyes.

We have come to the conclusion that we are to make as many friends as we can while we are here and just love the people of Russia, along with showing them how much we love each other and love life. Then hopefully when they have the opportunity to listen to the young missionaries sometime in life they will take the time to listen to their message.