Sunday in Moscow

Well, most of you know what a typical Sunday is for an LDS member in America, so I won't bore you with the details. But, my first full Sunday in Moscow was, let's say, not so typical.

So, Bobby, Katie and I decided, since out of the three branches to choose one, we'd go to the one closest to us. It only made sense, so that was the plan. We were to meet up at the metro station closest to the church. Once we had all met up at about 10:35/40 this morning, we ventured out. None of us had ever been, but we had, what we thought, was the whole address to the church. We asked someone on the street to point us in the right direction, and so we started on our way. After about 10 minutes of walking, and having seen it on the map, I said that we'd probably passed it. We realized we needed to be on the other side of the street. After carefully J-walking behind a cop that had pulled someone over, we quickly found the street. The address we had said number 4. That should be easy enough, right? Wrong. We went up and down the street, and the only thing attached to a number 4 was a school. Katie decided we should pray, so we did. As odd as it was, we followed Bobby up some stairs that went over a coffee shop and the school and up and behind the school there was another street. (Of course, the streets are really marked so well). We went back and forth on that street for a while in the blazing sun, and still no luck. We found a 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 but no signs of a plain old 4 and no signs of the church. Soon we had searched that whole side, and turned the corner to find...hhh, nothing still. There were more buildings down the side, but we were just about to go look somewhere else when Katie asked if she could just go look at the last building down. We said of course, and lo and behold, there was the church. They had started a little late it seems, because we walked in during the first verse of the opening hymn. I didn't understand a whole lot of what was said in Russian, but two talks were given in English by a couple missionary and translated over the pulpit which was nice. I did as best I could to try to hear both the English and Russian translation of what was said, or at least some words. Everyone was really friendly to us there. They are very delighted to have 3 more members of their branch for the next three months, two of which are worthy priesthood holders. In Priesthood we all introduced ourselves, and a member of the area auditing for the church authority was there as well. It was a sweet and short lesson. Afterwards, I got to talk in Chinese with a brother who has been in Russia for 7 years, and has been a member for 1 year. That was pretty sweet. He's from Beijing. Then, the missionaries took me downstairs (oh yeah, so after Sacrament meeting, we had Priesthood, and that's all we have, I think because it's a really small branch-about 30 members, 4 of which are elders (missionaries) and 2 sister missionaries, and a senior couple missionary), and they took me downstairs to meet Mike. Mike is from Taibei, Taiwan! Can you imagine that! Probably the smallest branch in Moscow, and probably the ONLY branch in Russia that has two brothren who speak Chinese! By the way, they speak pretty good English and pretty good Russian as well...probably speak all three better than I speak any of the three. But, there's hope. Oh, and get this, when I told Mike that dad was born in Finland, he got super excited and said "Hyvää päivää" to me, greeting me in Finnish. He said he met lots of Finns in St. Petersburg and he said he really wants to learn Finnish! What a small world. And I thought I was the only one trying to learn Chinese, Russian and Finnish...So, church was a great experience. Afterwards, we walked around outside some and then to get away from the heat, we went inside the mall and just walked around and used the bathroom. Then, for about an hour, we watched professional dancers dancing in the mall, some sponsoring thing for a bank, but it was pretty fun to watch. Then I came home and my Babuska fed me a wonderful dinner of a pureed (sp?...whipped?) soup and then she made me all the Blini I wanted (Russian dessert crepes basically). She has me put sour cream and some...something else on it, but it's SOOO good. I probably had 7, and she kept asking if I wanted more...I did, but I didn't want to come off as TOOOO much of a big...yet at least. :) Well, until next time.