Becks in Siberia: Crashed computer

The hard drive on our laptop crashed last week :-( so we decided to go find another. We are grateful that we still had our iPhones, so at least we did have an internet connection; they are just limited as to what you can do and are also a little awkward to type on. Here is where it gets interesting! We found a laptop at an electronics store here in Berdsk. We thought, no problem, we will just download the English language package from Microsoft and change the language from Russian to English. Well, little did we know that computers sold here with the Russian version of Windows installed will not allow you to install the English package. So now we are faced with many new Russian words on the computer screen that we have never seen before. Thank goodness for language translators on the iPhones :-) One more interesting point; Russian words are generally not very short!!

In the middle of the week, Laura decided to stay at the apartment while I went downtown to go to lunch with a good friend, named Michail. However, the place where we had planned on eating lunch was having some repairs done, so we couldn't eat there. It turned out for the best, as we went back to his apartment to have a nice lunch with his mother. A tasty lunch of Borsch was enjoyed while we had a wonderful conversation. He has been very helpful to us whenever we have needed help finding anything. He is a good friend and his dear mother is one of the sweetest ladies we have ever met.

On our return to Berdsk from Novosibirsk, after our district meeting on Friday, we were asked by a member of our church, from Novosibirsk, if we could stop in Akademgorodok to see her nephew who is in a hospital there. We exited the train at a stop called "обское море" (Ob Sea) and headed into the forest. This was just like walking through the pine forest in our mountains back home. After a nice walk on a dirt trail through the trees we came to this beautiful city in the pines. (Here is another plug for the benefit of technology) We have a program loaded on our phones that doesn't require phone service or an internet connection to direct us to the exact building that we are looking for. It led us directly to the hospital without a hitch. With the new changes coming forth in the missionary program regarding the use of new technology, maybe the young missionaries will someday soon be able to use programs such as this. It works wonderful!

One of the fine young missionaries that has recently been coming to Berdsk each week came to our Sunday meetings for his last Sunday of his mission; his name is Elder Dawson. He is a wonderful missionary and speaks Russian as if he is a native. So for a special, after dinner, treat Laura decided to make tasty fresh raspberry shakes for the elders. The raspberries are on right now and boy are they delicious. There are many ladies around Berdsk with their own little fruit or vegetable stands setup on the sidewalks. Not only are there many places to buy fruit or veggies on the sidewalks, there are lots and lots of little ice creams shops. The Russian people love their ice cream :-) They don't look it though; most of them seem to look very fit.