Lots of cooking...

Last week was a very busy and fun week for us here in Siberia. First of all, we celebrated our 37th anniversary. We were able to speak with most of our children back home on Skype and visit. Skype and Facetime have been a real joy to be able to stay in close contact with our family.

We visited a very large and nice zoo in Novosibirsk with the Palmer’s, one of the other senior couples in our mission area. It is in a beautiful area in the middle of a large pine forest. The Novosibirsk Zoo happens to have a Liger, a cross between a lion and a tiger. We happened to show up the day after they let new cubs from the Liger out in the cage. It was an enjoyable visit to the zoo with good company.

On the morning of June 19th, just past 6am, we both were awakened by an earthquake. We are living on the 6th floor of an apartment building, so we felt it quite well. Our bed was shaking back and forth for what it felt like several seconds. It ended up being a 5.3 earthquake several miles to the East of us. It was kind of exciting for a bit. Laura was nervous and wondering what to do. It was actually quite interesting.

On Friday of last week, we had the district meeting at our apartment in Berdsk for all the missionaries in our district. Laura made a nice big meal to feed 19 people. She also made a batch of homemade cookies for the companionship that made the most contacts during the prior week. The assistants to the president won that contest quite handily. They said they enjoyed her cookies very much :-)

On Saturday, we had a little party in the park area of изумрудный (Izumrudnyy, which means emerald), which is the area of Berdsk where we are living. We had several of the members and some of our friends come and enjoy a popular Russian summertime BBQ, called шашлык (shashlyk, kind of like shish kebab). It was tasty!

Sunday was a great day for us in Berdsk. We had President Gibbons and Sister Gibbons visit our group and speak in our sacrament meeting. We had all of the active members of our group attend plus a member that lives in Akademgorodok, which is a city located between Novosibirsk and Berdsk. We enjoyed a nice meal after our meetings with the Berdsk missionaries and President and Sister Gibbons. It was a busy week with lots of cooking...

The entrance to the Novosibirsk Zoo

Great day at the zoo

The Liger

"That's for the birds"

Two fine elders with us at the end of their mission, soon heading home 

Summertime view of the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Berdsk

Interesting architecture

The party outside of our apartment

Cooking шашлык (Shashlyk)

New Friend

Since our last blog update, we have found a new friend. It is quite an interesting story about a young girl that we have met in Berdsk. While sitting next to a very nice lady on one of our train trips, we were told about a seventeen year old girl in Berdsk that was sent to Russia from America by her mother. We understand that she thought it was to be a short vacation to visit her father that lives here. Well, it ended up being a one way ticket with no return. She has been somewhat lost for the last two years going from living with her father, to foster care, to now living with the family of a friend. It has been quite a road for her being dropped off in the middle of Siberia, not knowing any of the Russian language. She has picked up some of the language, but is still very reserved as to the things she will attempt. She came to church with us last week and is going to visit with us this week. She said that it feels good to be able to communicate with someone that speaks English. We hope that we can lift her spirits and be a good friend to her.

We had the assistants to the mission president come and speak at our sacrament meeting on Sunday. They did a great job and it was such a pleasure having them with us. Two of the three of them are returning home next week, so it was nice to have them visit Berdsk and speak before they leave. What fine missionaries there are here in our mission, every one of them are great examples to us.

It seems that every time we travel on the electric train we meet someone special. We love our trips on the train! It is fun to climb on board and walk down the aisle looking for someone to sit by and talk with. It has been very interesting to us how quickly people will become friendly to us after showing them pictures of our grandsons :-) Laura gets a kick out of it when I ask someone a question that I already know the answer to. She has finally caught on to my trick of getting people to talk to us. We love talking with the people of Russian, even if we can hardly tell what they are saying to us…

Garden spot of one of our members

Beautiful flowers

Many pretty flowers in her garden

Our walk to the Ob Sea near our apartment on our 37th Anniversary

The yellow pipe is how the natural gas is run here

Another party in Russia

Very near our apartment

The new fence service project is done

Wrong Train

An occurrence that is not too uncommon seems to be getting on the wrong train. After we arrived, the Elders hopped on the wrong train which headed to who knows where. After they realized, they had to get off and find a taxi, etc. to get back to Berdsk. About a week ago, a friend of ours that has lived in Berdsk for several years happened to do the same thing and it took her most of the night to get back after she realized what had happened. Well, not to be completely outdone, we were in Novosibirsk last Friday waiting by the train tracks for our train to come in; about 4 minutes before our train was to arrive, a train came in. We asked a lady that was getting on if this train went to Berdsk and she said yes, so we hopped on it. After going down the tracks for a ways, a couple of young ladies came and sat by us and tried to explain to us that this train was not going the way that we needed to go. They didn’t speak one word of English, but we were able to decipher what they were saying. We are thinking that the lady that told us incorrectly sent them to inform us of the error. Anyway, we went down the wrong tracks until we could exit the train, wait for another train to take us back to our original train station and then catch the next correct train. It ended up being a very beneficial mix-up for us anyway because we were able to meet several people during our wait and on the train, some of which we hope to be able to become better acquainted with in the near future.

For some time now, we have been talking about having a party with the adult English class that we have been helping with. Well, on Saturday, we had them come to our apartment and we had a fun get together. Everyone brought some type of food item and we sat around and talked for quite a while. Actually, it started at 3pm and went until 9pm and we had a great time with them. We have become great friends with all of them. We talked of having another one before we leave.

We went to Novosibirsk in the middle of the week and helped the missionaries with the English conversation group that they hold each week. They invite people off the street to come in and speak with missionaries from America. They divide into about four groups based upon the English ability of the individuals. It goes for about an hour and a half and there is time for a short language activity, a story, a musical number, a spiritual thought and then one on one conversation after. It was enjoyable and we hope to do it again. Hopefully, we will be able to start doing the same thing in Berdsk sometime soon.

We had our new friend, Yuri, come to our apartment again and we had a nice visit. He is a BIG fan of Chuck Norris. He even brought his Russian Chuck Norris,“чак норрис”, book to show us. We have great hopes of becoming much closer friends with this good man.

It has finally warmed up… The apple blossoms are out!!  We were able to go for a nice walk down the road from where we are living and it was very nice. Lots of pine trees line the road and walkway and there is even a nice beach along the way, not too far from our apartment.

Sunday felt great in our new meeting place and it is working out real well. The best part about it was that our dear Brother Vitali, that has been so ill, was able to make it to our meetings. It was such a welcome sight to see him walk through the door.

Natalia visiting us from Novosibirsk

The Elders making pie shakes - Actually very good

Walkway from our apartment lined with pines

The beach close by along the walkway

Walkway from our apartment towards the lake village

Our friend Yuri

Chuck Norris in Russian

Elder Adlard's birthday - Super Snickers birthday cake

A brand new grocery store in Berdsk - One like they have never had

Look who we found in our June Russian Liahona - Our niece and her husband

Halfway Point

We are now at the halfway point of our mission. We can’t believe how fast the time has flown by. We are already saddened at the thoughts of leaving our dear friends in Russia. So much for the downer news, we’ll focus on the great week it was. 

Our buddy, Yuri, that we met on the train a couple of times came to our apartment and brought his accordion. We had a nice dinner and he played for us and sang. What an enjoyable evening with a very nice man. He is planning on visiting us again this next week and wants to bring his guitar. We are looking forward to it.

We worked on a couple of service projects during the week for friends and members. Must say that is does feel good to put the Levi’s on and work getting our hands dirty…

The great news of the week for our group was the fact that we found a place to hold our meetings in instead of our apartment. There is a hotel near our apartment that has a conference room that we can rent for our Sunday meetings. It is near enough that we can carry our portable organ and all of the items for Sacrament Meeting without a problem. It feels great to have an official room to meet in for the members and visitors.

We had our regular district meeting on Friday and made the trip to Novosibirsk. While there we went and visited our member, Brother Vitali, who is still in the hospital. He is much improved from last week but still has a bit to go. We hope and pray for him that he will be able to return to be with us shortly.

One of the other seniors serving here, Sister Gundersen, had a birthday party in Novosibirsk on Friday evening, so we also attended it. She and Elder Gundersen are serving with the CES program of the church here, so many of the young adults were there also. The young members are full of energy and are very pleasant kids. While there, they asked us if we would come and speak at their Sunday fireside, so we hopped on the train Sunday after our meetings and headed back to Novosibirsk for the afternoon. We had a fun time talking with them at the fireside answering their questions and telling a little about ourselves along with sharing a message.

Children's Day celebration at the площадь (city square)

Dressed for June 1st

дети is how you spell "children" in Russian

The Berdsk Fire Department

Our buddy, Yuri, playing for us at our apartment

Super Kontik cookies - A favorite among the missionaries to suck milk through

Enjoying milk through a Контик cookie

Getting water for a dear friend on a service day

Sister Gundersen's birthday party

Young Single Adults at the birthday party - Fun kids

Getting ready for Sunday meeting at our new location

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!

Elder Stoneking and Sister Brown singing for the seniors

All of us singing

The seniors being entertained

The electric train station in Berdsk that we have become very familiar with

In front of the Theater in Novosibirsk

Countdown to the Olympics in Sochi

Another view of the Novosibirsk Theater

Singin' in the Rain...

Visiting our dear friend in the hospital

Doing a service project and having lunch at a friends

The moon coming up at 10:30 at night

Our visitor from the Branch Presidency along with our newest member 

This is where you put your bags when you enter the grocery store

Look what we saw near our apartment in Berdsk