Finland, Jam and the Book of Mormon

We have received the exciting news that for our visa renewal trip, which is coming up in two weeks, that we can go to Helsinki, Finland overnight and attend the temple there. This is wonderful news for several reasons: first of all, how great it will be to attend the temple, made all the better because my dear friend Ronda Groberg and her husband Dick are missionaries there. We had been hoping we would be able to go sometime during our stay here. And the 3rd reason is that after our last visa renewal trip to Estonia (which, if you read of it on this blog you know that it was a miserable day), we were rather dreading that trip again. For reasons we don't really understand, the country that the American missionaries are sent to every three months changes now and then. We had thought we would always be sent to Estonia so this was a pleasant surprise.

I thought it was pretty cool that a couple of weeks ago I made some raspberry/black current freezer jam -- in Russia! (It just always seems amazing to do 'ordinary' things here.) A friend brought me 2 kilo of berries from her garden. I thought this sounded like it was going to be a huge amount, but it wasn't. She had already given us a large bottle of freezer jam so I wanted to make some but had never seen pectin in the stores. She told me that they just mash the berries and add equal parts of sugar. So, it's not quite like at home but tasts delicious over pancakes.

Ten American girls have just arrived to teach English in an elementary school here. They are on the ILP program (International Language Program) and a new group of them comes every four months. Those who are members, of course, seek out the church and the institute has always provided a scripture class for them (if they have had an English speaking couple to teach it). So we knew they would be coming soon and were set up for Lou to teach Book of Mormon in English on Tuesday night, at the same time a class is going on in Russian in another room. Three of the girls found their way to our building for FHE last Monday evening. How surprised we were to meet Kendra Ricks, from Rexburg, who greeted us with a greeting from Ken and Doug Sakota! It truly is a small world in the Church. So they were excited to learn about the B of M class. We also have had several Russians in the class who speak English and want to improve.

Next week we will be starting a couple more classes in Russian, plus I will teach a music class and piano lessons and Lou will teach, or supervise, what we are calling 'Culture Club,' a class studying various aspects of different countries. We will get some local people here from the countries of Africa, China and whoever else we can find to help. So we will, at last, be having something going on at the institute every night of the week. This is progress!

Here is what a branch picnic looks like in Russia. After a nice boat ride down the Neva River, and while the men were playing tag football, some of the members went to the market and bought all the fixings for sandwiches and fruit and cookies. (No one is assigned to bring anything.) We had to eat in a hurry as it was starting to rain at that time.