Christmas in Siberia

Christmas, 2012 was one that we will never forget.  Who would have ever thought that we would be celebrating Christmas in Siberia, Novosibirsk, Russia.  But here we are and loving our experience.  We soon realized that Christmas is not that big a deal here in Novosibirsk.  Not that many decorations in the stores, or music streaming through the malls.   I realized that I missed that part of Christmas.  But thanks to our wonderful children, at least our apartment was decorated for Christmas.  They sent us cute snowflakes with the grandchildren’s pictures on them, and prints of their feet for Mistle Toes.  And some very creative decorations of Popsicle sticks and Q-tips

Our newest Nativity from Finland

Our Nativity from Kakistan

 On Christmas morning we had our District over for breakfast.  We consider them our mission family, so it was almost like being home.  That afternoon we all went over to the Mission Home and had Christmas dinner with all the Novosibirsk missionaries.  They shared their musical talents and then we all left and went to the Nutcracker Ballet.  It was amazing!  To think that we went to the Nutcracker presented by the Russian Ballet on Christmas Day.

Do you recognize the Sugar Plum Fairy?

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It was a Christmas to remember!

Bergst – New Group formed

There are a few members who live in a town about and hour outside of Novosibirsk, so the President decided to start a Group there.  He sent two missionaries there and assigned Elder Webb to be the Group Leader.  The Webb’s travel there every Sunday to hold Sunday meetings.  Elder Webb asked us to speak there the Sunday before Christmas, so we went out with them Friday night after the Branch Christmas party in Novosibirsk.  It is a town of about 500,000 nestled around a lake in a rural area.  While there we visited a historic church and snow sculptures we found on the way.  The city places large cubes of snow in some of the parks and the local people carve their snow sculptures from them.  It is a fun tradition.

Since they do not have Costco here I have not been able to find my favorite treat (animal crackers in the gallon jar) to fill my cookie jar.   So I have been testing every cookie I can find to fill that gap.  It is fun trying, but so far I haven’t found the perfect match.  Although I have found several that are good second choices.  Oh, the trials and sacrifices I am faced with.  I found some alphabet cookies that I hope will help with my pronunciation and vocabulary.  I figure if I eat enough of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet characters, when I speak, the correct sound will automatically come out of my mouth.  So far it hasn’t worked, but I will keep trying.

 

This is only a small sample of the different cookies I have tried.  I think the count has reached over three dozen types of cookie/crackers.  Still no match.

Happy Thanksgiving

One of the primary objectives here in Novosibirsk is to help this new district mature enough to become a self sustaining stake.  Since the Church is very young here, first started in the mid 90’s, the Priesthood leaders are inexperienced and need training on how to handle church affairs.  The mission President who is the presiding authority here has scheduled a series of training meetings to help these new leaders.  Since the President, Elder Webb and I have all had many years of Church leadership experience, he has asked us to help him do the training.  We take various scenarios and role play best how to handle each one.  I think this first session went well and the priesthood leaders appreciated the training they received.  If all goes well we hope they will be ready to create a stake during 2013.  We have loved working with the Russian members. They are wonderful and have strong testimonies.  

For Thanksgiving we spent the afternoon with the Novosibirsk missionaries in the mission home having the typical turkey dinner.  Between Sister Gibbons, Sister Webb and Sister Gundersen we had more food than 28 missionaries could eat.  We ended up having turkey leftovers for our next district meeting.  It is amazing about how talented these missionaries are.  After dinner we had a small program where some of the missionaries performed on the piano or song.  They are amazing.

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Each week a district meeting is held at our apartment, where about eight missionaries attend to report and receive training from the more experienced missionaries.  What tremendous people they are.  Of course after the meeting we serve them one of Sister Gundersen’s famous hot meals.  They love her cooking.  She has already gained a great reputation for providing the best meals in Novosibirsk.

It is hard to believe that four months have already flown by.  We are really enjoying our stay here.  Even the freezing temperatures haven’t slowed us down or damped our spirits.  However, the icy uneven walkways have slowed us down a bit.  I have fallen four times and Barbara twice.  Wherever we go, it is arm in arm.  We can’t count the number of near falls we have had, but thanks to our partner we have been able to recover before going down.  So far our coldest temperatures have been minus 52 Fahrenheit.  So we just dress up really warm and off we go.  We average about 3.5 miles walking per day. 

Life couldn’t be better.  Well warmer temperatures would be nice, but hey, we are in Siberia.

View from our kitchen window.  The white area above the houses is a frozen lake
Everything freezes and stays that way until April.  Our Winter Wonderland.

                   

VISA TRIP TO FINLAND

In Russia, all missionaries only have a three month visa.  So we are required to leave the country every 90 days.  In December we went to Helsinki, Finland.  It was 20 degrees F, snowing and windy and the humidity was very high.  But we thought, hey, we are from Siberia it is going to feel warm there.  Wrong!  We were so cold. Maybe because all the restaurants were cold and even our hotel room was cold.  We could just never warm up (except in the shower).  But, we were there to see Helsinki so we went exploring.  We went to the Helsinki Temple, which was beautiful.  We were able to figure out the train and the bus schedule so we had no problem getting there. It is also helpful that most of the Finnish people we met spoke very good English. We met and talked with several missionary couples from America, which was wonderful.  

A beautiful Nativity outside the Helsinki Temple

We then went downtown.  They had an outdoor Christmas craft fair that we went through, and found the customary magnet.  Then we walked downtown which decorates a lot more than Novosibirsk does for Christmas.

We saw this man playing some music on some bottles.  He was really quite good.

We then went to a Finnish Craft Store and found the most beautiful carved wooden nativity, which looks very nice in our apartment:-)

All in all, it was a very nice trip to a country that we had not visited.