St. Petersburg

Well this is our last Russian Blog. We arrived home on the 21st of Sept. after a long flight from St. Petersburg. Our two years in Russia was amazing. We met many people and made many friends in Russia. We will miss our branch at Sestroretsk, and also the humanitarian work. We leave many dear missionary friends and some that left before us. Our mission highlights were our work at the branch at Sestroretsk, The Humanitarian work, The rich cultural opportunities in St. Petersburg, Our side trips for migration and visa renewals to Latvia, Finland, and Estonia, our amazing trip to the humanitarian conference Istanbul, Turkey, The young single adult conference, working with our language tutors- Daniel and Anya, our interpreters-Vladimir Sherov, Eugeny Nikitichev and Vladimir Egorov and our friendship with and working with the Mission President and other Sr. couples and with the young full time Elders and Sisters. I have included some of our final pictures before we left to come home. The first is of our last zone conference, and then some of the branch members at our last Sunday in Sestroretsk, our tutors Daniel and Anya with their new baby who was born just before we left and some pictures of our final project closing with our replacement couple, Elder and Sister Eastley.

We visited Sister Volkova at her home and thought you might like to see what some Russian homes look like. In “the city” everyone lives in high rise apartment buildings but when you get outside of the city some actually have houses and even small farms. Sister Volkova has an amazing garden, both flowers and vegetables and also goats and chickens. Except for barking dogs it was amazingly quiet even though her house can be seen from the highway. It was a treat to spend some time there with her. She is a very faithful and strong member of our branch and I thought you might like to see her home which is located about 12 miles north of St. Petersburg and about half way between the metro stop, where we get off and ride the marshroutka, and the branch at Sestroretsk. (first picture is sister Volkova, Dianna, and Sister Volkova's son-in-law.

We had a special treat this summer when 6 students here in St.Petersburg with a BYU study abroad program to learn Russian. They were all BYU students except Rachel who was from North Western Univ. They volunteered to attend the Sestrotretsk Branch for the 6 weeks they were here. Oh how we loved having them with us, it was fun for the branch to get to know them and it was fun to watch their Russian improve week by week. All of them spoke at least once, Aubrey played the piano for us and having three priesthood holders who weren’t full time missionaries was an exceptional treat. Amber, Rachel, Aubrey, Tim, Matt and Kevin, we miss you and we want to thank you again for adding such a wonderful spirit to our meetings this summer.

On Friday 27th of June we had another baptism at our branch. The weather had been rainy but for the baptism is was only cloudy and everything turned out very nice. This is the third baptism we have had in the river behind our branch building in Sestroretsk and the fifth baptism bringing new members into our branch since we have been here. The person baptized was Anatoly Tomachev and he will be a great asset to our branch. There are several pictures of the baptism if you follow the link above.

We're having a lot of fun here in St. Pet. with the family here. The first couple of days have seen the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral and the Hermitage. Pictures tell it better than words so here are a few.