Becks in Siberia: Singin' in the Rain

Last week we had another couple of trips to Novosibirsk along with meeting many sweet people and some service projects. Many of the missionaries in Novosibirsk along with those of us from Berdsk were asked to sing at a care center for seniors last week. We enjoyed visiting and singing for them. They were very humble and appreciative towards us.

Last week one of our dear members here in Berdsk was hospitalized all week for a bad case of what appeared to us to be Shingles. He was a very ill man and it hurt us to see him so sick. He teaches our Sunday School lesson each week and what a sweet, humble man he is. We hope and pray that he will be able to return to us soon.

For our Sunday meetings we had a member of the Branch Presidency from Novosibirsk come and speak to us. He is native to Russia and served a mission a few years ago in the Sumara, Russia Mission. It was interesting to us, while talking after our meeting, to find out that he served his mission with our language tutor from the MTC that we became good friends with. They know each other quite well and still communicate with each other. Small world!

An interesting coincidence, if you want to call it that, happened at the train station in Novosibirsk. After leaving the senior center where we sang, the four of us from Berdsk just missed the Metro subway that all of the other missionaries boarded; that put us delayed just enough to miss a train back to Berdsk. While standing and waiting for the next train for us to board, Laura looked at the person standing about two feet in front of us and said: Hay, we know that guy. It just so happened to be our friend, an older gentleman, we met on the train a month ago. He is the man that we posted a picture of on our April 29th blog. We were all able to sit together for the hour long train ride back to Berdsk and talk. He is very musically inclined and he hit it off real well with our elders, as Elder Stoneking is amazingly talented on the piano. He agreed to come to our apartment this next week and bring his accordion and play for us. He was also excited to take a Book of Mormon with him when he left. He has a real pleasantness about him.

We also met another new friend here in Berdsk that speaks English extremely well, which is very unusual. He is also very knowledgeable about America. He is very proud to be Russian but has great admiration for the United States. In the short time that we have known him, he has been very helpful to us. It is interesting how he came along at the perfect time, as our sweet young lady that has helped us so much just left last week to work in Texas for the summer. She won’t return to Russia until after we are home. We will miss her.

It has been said that you can tell when spring has arrived in Siberia... The people unzip their coats. Yay, we have now experienced spring. People started unzipping their coats last week!