Ufa

Dear family,

We have spent the last four days in Ufa, a large city about 400 miles from Yekaterinburg. We flew here rather than taking a train which takes about 14 hours and actually costs more than a two hour plane flight. We arrived early Thursday morning (Thursday because there is no flight into this city on Friday). We met the four elders and four sisters and dad interviewed each of them. I left with two of the sisters and we went out to do street contacting. We knocked all the doors in an apartment building and talked to three people in a park. Most people were not home. The others would not let us come in. While I did that, dad was out with two of the elders.

Early Friday morning we joined the same sets of missionaries at their apartments for personal, companion, and language study. After that we all met at the church for a zone meeting. These zone leaders did a really great job of covering all the material that Dad had covered with them last week in our mission leadership conference. We hope all the other zone leaders did as well. After zone meeting we had an hour to let them get to know us. They asked questions and we showed pictures of all of you.

Friday evening at the chapel was a celebration welcoming home a young man named Misha who had just returned from serving his mandatory year in the Russian army. His parents both spoke, then he spoke and played the piano, then his little sister played the piano, then several missionaries were called up to sing and play. Then they called us into the kitchen where a long table of food was set up and everyone joined in a happy feast. It was a wonderful evening. We felt very welcome and they appreciated us being there. Misha is now going to submit papers to serve a mission. He will be fantastic

Saturday we each went out with the other set of sisters and elders in Ufa. I traveled with sisters out to the little outlying town of Dioma where we visited several older sisters. I am sending a picture of Nona separately. She was so thrilled to be visited. She is 85 and unable to come to church She taught for 50 years at a school for deaf children. She just kept hugging and kissing me. I truly felt the lords love for her.

While dad was street contacting he met a man who spoke German. He was walking up the street that the church is on with two elders. Elder Riddle asked a man as he approached if he spoke English. He had not asked anyone that all day, but felt inspired to. The man said no, that he spoke German, obviously hoping to avoid a conversation. Well, you can imagine what happened next. Dads fluent German came in handy. The man resisted coming into the church at first, but was persuaded, enjoyed talking with dad in German, shared several poems in German, ended up accepting a Book of Mormon from dad and setting up a teaching appointment with the elders for lat this week. It was a perfect illustration of the principle that Dad has been teaching that The Lord will place people in your pathway.

At 7 PM Saturday we spoke at a fireside at the chapel. We showed the PowerPoint of family pictures and told about how we met We shared our testimonies about families. They are all quite amazed at the number of grandchildren we have. Several young sisters came up to me the next day at church and said that it inspires them to want to have bigger families than they were planning. We talked about the joy of being mothers

By the time we finished everything for the day we were happy to pick up a few simple groceries at a little market and sit in a park to eat. It felt good to be "off duty", although dads phone rang twice with questions from missionaries

Today we spoke in church. Dad spoke for about 10 minutes and did it all in Russian and without notes. The people are so excited that he can speak. There were many smiles and a few tears on faces as he spoke. The other thing they are very excited about is that we will serve for three years instead of two and also that we will be attending the branch about every two months. After church dad had many interviews including some that were unscheduled but were older members who asked to meet with him because he could speak Russian and they had not been able to meet with the former president without having to have an interpreter and were not comfortable with that

Well it is late now. After we returned home I fixed an omelet for dad and the assistants while they worked on transfers. We had a great time in Ufa and loved meeting our missionaries and such wonderful members. We are feeling a little more comfortable with the many aspects of this calling and know that The Lord is blessing us with the help that we need. It is humbling and happy work. We love you all so much!
Hugs!
Mom

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