April 17, 2011

Hello friends and family, Another week gone by already. Sometimes the days drag a little, but time to email comes around very quickly. I guess if you're sick of hearing from us so often, you can just delete the email. . . and we'll never know. One of the beauties of technology, eh? But we are thoroughly enjoying spring here and finally adjusting to our new way of life here in Russia. As long as we realize we mustn't expect anything in a hurry, we're usually ok.

Here are the top #3 picks of this week's happenings for these, our small plates. Our journals are the large plates, supposedly.

#3 SPRING has arrived and we went to the town square which borders the Tom River bend. EVERYONE was SO excited to go see the ice floating again. It is a sure sign of spring. . . like they didn't notice that we have 16 hours of daylight already. We have been tracking it and each week we gain 33 minutes of daylight. By summer, we will have about 20 + hours of daylight. Anyway, we took pictures of the city square and this great event. There were several bands playing along the shore and everyone was very festive. (See attached pictures in next email.)

#2 LANGUAGE BARRIER: We found out last week that language can be a problem in our teaching appointments. The Russian elders and us English Seniors are teaching this recent Mongolian convert. We finally were able to receive a Mongolian triple combination and he was proudly carrying it to the meeting. So the elder was teaching about how we just keep getting blessed from the Lord and can't keep ahead of him - and asked him to please turn to Mosiah 2:21-23 to read the scripture. So Sansar reads it in Mongolian and the elder asks him a question about it and Sansar looks puzzled. So the elder looks at the Mongolian scripture and says, "Oh, not chapter 3, chapter 2" - in Russian, of course. So then Sansar flips the pages and reads it in Mongolian again. Then the elder asks Sansar a question about what some of his blessings are and Sansar once again looks very puzzled. So finally, the elder takes the Mongolian scriptures and looks more closely and says, "Not Moses, let's turn to Mosiah". So John looked up what he had been reading in Moses and first of all it was about the creation of the earth and then about multiplying and replenishing the earth. We all got a good laugh out of that, including Sansar. Laughing crosses the language barrier, but it took us a few minutes of full out laughing and explanation and humor to finally get back to the lesson.

#1 OUR GUEST OF HONOR: Well, one of the zone leaders had to go on his visa trip - this happens every 3 months - we Americans have to leave the country for a few days to renew our visas. We get to go to Helsinki, Finland and go to the temple, which is good, but it really does a number on you for a few days afterward because of crossing so many time zones and back so rapidly. While he was gone, we had the other zone leader with us for 4 days and he kept us quite busy. He is like one of our new Ukrainian sons - Elder Gooshin. He is the epitamy of leadership and everyone looks up to him. He IS
humble, inspired and has the funnest dry humor. He usually has to explain that he was making a joke and that's when we laugh the hardest. His spiritual thought at district meeting was the answer to the question: "DO YOU THINK GOD TRUSTS US?" (answer is in the large plates) But, you can ponder that in your own lives. Obedience on our part is one of the ways we acquire the Lord's trust. . . . etc.

Well, that's it from Tomsk Times. We LOVE this work! And are learning a few new Russian words each day. Given 23 more months we will have this language part way learned. We have all the help we need when we need it, but we want to participate more fully and share our thoughts better. But, we have to totally rely on the spirit of when to speak and that is a good thing to learn right there.
Our love and blessings to you all!
Elder & Sister, John & Marsha, Ma & Pa Aland