Are We Not All Beggars?

We were warned that encountering the beggars would be hard and it is.  The legless maneuvering their way down the aisles of the metro, money being placed in their jacket hood, ancient women at midnight crouching in the shadows, crossing themselves.  We have learned to load up our pockets with change when we leave home.  King Benjamin's words fill my mind.  It can be a tender time for us.

 The good news is that we all know that we are far more alike than we are different.  One of the greatest joys of life is digging deep enough to connect on a new level as children of God.  One of the tasks we set for ourselves in this gigantic metropolis is, as much as we can, to really LOOK at as many individuals as possible, especially the beggars.  Sometimes it's a brief  glance, sometimes, like on the metro, we may be facing the same person for an hour or more.  It's wonderful how we can connect without words.

 I wish I had taken a picture of a woman we encountered on the metro. We sat across from each other for quite awhile.  This is the only way I can describer her.  Picture an aging woman who at one time was a stunning beauty.  The deep wrinkles had not yet crowded out the dark, exotic features.  Her once shapely figure was now more than ample and not very modestly wrapped in a garish knit dress that was no longer doing it's job.  Long, stringy, too-black hair was draining her face.  I pointed to the flowers she held (Moscovites love flowers) and tried to say how beautiful they were.  She shyly smiled without revealing how few teeth remained.  As she reached her stop, she stood, grabbed my hand and kissed it and earnestly expressed some thought.  I don't know what she said but she was still beautiful in my eyes.
 I had a similar experience a couple of weeks ago as we entered the Ballet.  I smiled and locked eyes with a woman coming the opposite direction.  As we passed she took my arm, kissed me on the cheek and whispered, "spaceba" (thank you).  I cried.

Unless it is raining, we have the pleasure of enjoying the company of at least 3 "babushkas" (grandmothers) who sit outside our apartment building.  They talk and laugh and I'm sure gossip as women do everywhere.  They are often there when we leave in the morning and can be counted on to be there when we return in the afternoon.  They welcome us home as though we were family.  We pretend to understand them and they do the same.  Today we asked if we could take their picture.  They were so excited.  We photographed the 3 who were there, then Dick made copies for them.  When he took the copies down, they stood, made crosses, kept bowing and chattering as Russians do,  laughed and hugged him.  Simple, good women who, like all of us, love to get a little attention.

We are purposely not making this blog a travelog.  We are not tourists, we are missionaries, carrying the sacred gospel of Jesus Christ, but we do love to see the sights.  Each saturday we explore the city, along with other wonderful missionary couples.  We are awed by the grandeur and history we see. 

Last week we explored the Victory museum.  It is a testament to the terrible price that was paid by the Russian people in every war, but particularly the "Great Patriotic War", (WW II).  Russians are sensitive to the perception that we in the west do not appreciate the suffering and sacrifice made by them in that terrible conflict.  The museum is gigantic, magnificently presented and sacred. It takes multiple visits to try to absorb. From the ceiling of one spacious room hang hundreds of thousands of strands of tiny crystals, strung together.  The crystals total 26 million, roughly the number of Russians who died in that war.  The figures at the end of the room of a woman holding a dying son is meant to represent the suffering of women throughout time, losing those they love to war. 

Also touching to me is the gigantic sculpure on the grounds outside.  It is a series of figures signifying the universality of suffering.  Without the knowledge of the Lord's Great Plan of Happiness, it would all seem so pointless.  We are grateful to be part of this great work. We know that each of us is a precious child of God.  We see that in every person we encounter.  We are individually important and loved.  As we try to bring this message of joy to others, our understanding and ability increases and we are all transformed.  This is so much fun!

Our New Children

Even though we are part of the East Europe Area CES office, we have been asked by the Moscow Mission President to attend the Rosinka ward and help the 6 missionaries who are assigned to this ward.  Every week we are blessed to feed these wonderful young people and sit in on their District meeting.  We are very impressed by their maturity and devotion to the gospel.  I have to keep reminding myself how very young they are.  They are pretty much the same age as our own darling grandson, Jayce, happily serving in Brazil.  The Lord places a lot of responsibility on their shoulders but they are eager and worthy to carry it forward.  We will do all we can to help them.  When we introduced ourselves to them at church, they threw their arms around us, "Yeah! We have parents!"

Today at dinner, Elder Jordan, from south Louisiana, brought two pair of suit pants, given him by another missionary who was returning home.  They were so long on him they were pooling around his ankles.  Thank goodness for Stitch Witchery.  I fixed the very long pants as I listened to their lesson.  The spirit filled our home and we are all blessed.  They are so darn cute!

The Russians Pulled It Off!

For the first time the Moscow Mission Young Single Adult conference was run entirely by Russians.  In the past, most of  the extensive planning, classes, workshops, group leaders, service projects, dances, etc were run by those of us from somewhere else primarily Americans.  Well done always but this year  it was all pulled together and executed by those who live here and I couldn't have been more impressed.  Wonderful, mature leadership.  None of our CES missionary couples who love their youth was invited to attend.  Hard for them but good for those here to carry it out on their own.   There were close to 400 SAs attending and they had a fabulous time.  It was held at a beautiful resort outside of Moscow.

The focus of the conference was to help each of these precious young people fill their spiritual lamps.  Everyone I talked to, young women and young men, had either served a mission or  it was in their plans.  These are grounded, spiritually mature servants of the Lord.  Obviously everyone is hoping to find an eternal companion but whatever their situation, each felt that he or she is a much loved child of God and that each life has a plan.  As I talk to them and see their joy, virtue and goodness, I continue to feel gratitude for gospel principles that they have embraced that  allow them to grow into all that the Lord wants them to be.  As the youth felt the unifying power of the Gospel, the biggest problem  the group leaders had was breaking up sweet scripture sharing time as the hours grew late.

We felt privileged to be one of the very few english speakers there.   We understood little of the presentations but felt the confirming power of the Spirit.  Actually the scariest thing for us was being driven there by our boss, Sergei, in his VW SUV.  I sat in the back and kept my eyes closed for much of the two and a half hour drive.  Driving in Moscow is not for the hesitant.  One creates one's own space where a space did not exist before.  Gun it and move is the technique.  If you find yourself on the outside lane of a major highway and realize you need to go the other way, you simply cross in front of oncoming lanes, cross the median and join the opposite traffic.  THe amazing thing is, it seems to work.  We have yet to see and accident. 

This gospel is so true and we are blessed to be a small part of helping build His kingdom.

Misunderstandings all over the place

We have been touched by the kindness of so many good people here, from the concierge of our apartment building  who daily blesses us with her shy smile, clean hallway floors and a beautiful  garden, to the sweet woman who sits in her glass cube at the bottom of our metro escalator and never fails to wave and smile at us.  With our very limited Russian, we can't tell them how much we appreciate their goodness so we went to google translate to write out several notes in what we assumed was proper Russian.  We took our stack to Anya, our native born secretary to see what she thought of what we had written.  After she stopped laughing hysterically, she re-wrote every one. 

Most of our notes were only mildly wierd but harmless but the one we painstakenly wrote to Claudia and Victor, our landlords, had her doubled over cackling.  We tried to tell them how much we love our apartment and the goodies they bring to us from their garden and how we love having them as our landlords, etc. However,  Google used some 19th century phrase that evokes the era of slavery and serfdom and how we love being in their benevolent power.  Anya said, "Never use Google Translate again.  Only use me!" 
She is super smart.  She speaks English, Ukrainian, Spanish, Japanese (served her mission there and teaches it at a university here).  She keeps everything moving around the office but we will still need our google translate in the grocery store.  This is Anya with our mission president and wife at our home for dinner.

My worst misunderstanding was last Friday evening around 10:00 as we boarded the metro, returning home after dinner at another senior couple's home in central Moscow.  The train was pretty empty, especially the car we entered.  Just us and a disheveled looking man who had been drinking a bit too much.  As Dick and I settled into our seats on one end of the car, the man was at the other end, facing us.  What he couldn't see but I could was a darling little boy with his parents in the next car, behind the man.  The little boy and I started waving at each other.  Our waves and smiles got bigger and then we were throwing big kisses at each other.
 After several minutes, the previously ignored man staggered determinedly to us, plopped down next to me and started trying to grab my hands, then Dick's hands.  We were shocked and instinctively pulled away.  He then wrapped his arms around himself and pointed to me, then continued to try to touch me.  He wanted a hug.
Apparently, he thought all of that affection was directed toward him.  In his inebriated state and with my eager waves and kisses, he thought he had found Mom.  As we totally rejected him he wove his way to the doors and got off at the next stop.  I felt terrible that I had broken his heart but the little boy and I continued to have fun.

I hope our drunken friend remembered nothing about his unhappy experience with his "mother".  I do need to be more careful where my waves are headed. 

Metros are a blast.  This way of getting around is so much fun.  People are endlesssly fascinating and I can always read.  I absolutely do not miss driving.  I miss family and friends but not my car.

I'm including  pictures of our fabulous metro.  My favorite is the Watercolor Train.  Each year the Moscow Museum of Art outfits this train with beautiful works

from their collection.  I get so excited when I see it coming.  The outside is beautifully colored with various landscapes, not the utilitarian blue/gray. 

Life is wonderful, the Gospel is true and we are forever blessed to be part of this vast army helping to build His kingdom.

God takes care of His missionaries

Twice within the past week we have been hopelessly lost and each time we were rescued by angels out of nowhere.

We have not yet been assigned by the Moscow mission president to attend and assist any particular ward so we have been ward-hopping.  Each of the wards we have attended has been russian speaking so last sunday we decided we would love to have the opportunity to bear our testimonies in English without a translator so we got directions and time for the International ward, way down in south Moscow.  We thought we had plenty of time to join those who would be arriving by metro and follow them to the church, which we heard is a good hike from the train.

It took longer than we thought and we were the only ones exiting the station in "church" clothes.  We had no idea which way to go but as we looked down the many streets radiating from the metro we caught sight of a white shirt several blocks in the distance.  We tried to keep it in view but after several blocks we lost sight.  That chapel could have been anywhere in the maze of huge buildings. With no better idea,  I suggested that we look for a McDonalds or somewhere with internet access and perhaps zero in on the area through the church website.  We were about to turn into a commercial area when a darling woman walked up beside us, took my hand and said, "I know where you are going.  Come with me." 

This sweet Filipino lady, Maritza, talked happily as she led us the last 1/2 mile or so to the chapel.   We never would have found it.  Maritza is a nanny for a very difficult little boy (bite marks visible) whose single parent mother is very troubed.  Maritzas son just returned from his mission and her 8 year old daughter was baptized last week.  Maritza has not been able to enjoy any of these precious events.  She is hoping to go home for a short visit next year.  The previous night she got 1 hr. sleep, due to this poor little boy's problems. Sunday is her only day off but here she was, happily walking with us to church.

Today found us near Red Square, again lost.  We had directions to a printing place where we needed to make many copies of handouts for a Young Single Adult conference next week. Exiting the metro after more than an hour, our directions made no sense.  We trudged on, facing hordes of Moscovites.  Frustration was setting in.  Copy places are not common and we needed 3000 copies made.  We could not get any kind of bearings and out of nowhere on the sidewalk appeared Sasha, one of our Moscow young adults who had served an english speaking mission.  He works in an office in the area and knew just where we needed to go.  In a city of 20 million, how could the one person who could help us appear right in front of us? 

The Lord is in charge of this work and we are humbled as we try to be where He wants us to be, doing what He wants us to do.  We witness his hand every day.
I don't have Maritzas picture but here is Sasha as he found us today.

 

first Russian yoga class

I love these Russian youth.  About 15 showed up for our first yoga class at the Intitute of Religion in Mocow.  Purely word of mouth.   They have wonderful attitudes and did their best, in spite of my terrible Russian and their limited English.  We had tons of fun.  We're going to shoot for twice a week.  Maybe a senior class on another night. 

It's always amazing to me how we can understand each other through the workings of the spirit. We're united in the things of the spirit.

I finally realized that my ipad just doesn't work with photos on the blog.  The laptop seems fine.  I'ge gone back and added some pictures to earlier entries if anyone is interested. 

We are truly being blessed as we try to further this work.