Thankful 11/23/09

Weather -- heavy overcast after yesterday's all-day snow
Temp 20 F
Wind 3-5 mph

At this time of year, thoughtful Americans reflect on what things they are thankful for and generally about life and the meaning of things. I am no exception.

First, I am grateful to be allowed to serve God in Siberia. I never thought about Siberia as a place to be or to be grateful to be there; but I am. Mostly I am just grateful to be allowed to serve Heavenly Father anywhere. I have felt that way in each of the callings I have had from Scoutmaster to Bishop and back. Serving God is putting Him and your brothers and sisters ahead of yourself and as King Benjamin said, "When you are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God."

Who else would I want to serve? If I focus on serving myself, it ends there. When you serve God it is a message of your love for Him, it benefits others, and God blesses you for your service. Now that's getting good mileage out of what you do. Besides, I cannot pay Heavenly Father back for all that He has given me, both in my life here and before I came to the earth. No matter what I do to serve Him, I am always n His debt, but at least I can try to repay Him in my small way.

Second, I am grateful to be here with Sister Cindy. She is a great missionary; more than I imagined she would be. She has always been into "service" and she is the mother of the world, but her missionary service here goes beyond that. She truly wants the investigators who come to our home to feel the influence of the Light of Christ in our home and to have a witness that the Gospel is true, even though they know so little about it.

Third, I am grateful for my family. Each of them fills a place in my heart that would be empty if not for them. Each is unique, each is working out their own story, each is struggling with the same issues I struggled with (and sometimes still do), and each of them is precious to me.  I love to hear about their victories and even their defeats because they are alive and fighting for their own place in history. God must feel much the same way about his children; enjoying their victories and morning their defeats.

Fourth, I am grateful for the people I have met here; the missionaries, the members, the neighbors, the strangers on the street. I have reflected a lot this past month on how I was taught to be afraid of the "mean, atheistic, aggressive Russians" who want to take over the world.  Now I see the ones I know as very much like myself; just wanting to be left alone to enjoy what ever gives them pleasure and to be free from fear. Governments and extremists of all stripes will make policies and take actions that make enemies and we must always be ready to defend ourselves, our friends, and our liberties, but the common people that I meet aren't interested in taking what I have and just want to get along.

Finally, I am grateful for my country. With all of its problems, with all of its conflicts within and without, I will be grateful to go home to the liberties and justice I have come to more fully appreciate. In spite of its flaws, people from all over the world are doing unspeakable things, suffering untold hardships and dangers, and paying an enormous price to get into the US of A. It is still the best place on earth to live. I only hope that the right-minded of us can find the energy and courage to reinstate moral values into ourselves and our government leaders or find some others who have them and throw the rascals out. When we as a people give up our duty to control our government in exchange for free bread, we will go the way of Rome and every other great world power.We cannot permit this.

I am looking forward to coming home to join in that struggle to take back my country, starting with my community and my state. Patriotism and service are not dead in America. They are just taking a nap. Well, Satan and his henchmen will soon wake up one morning in April and say, "Oh damn. They're back".

What a country
DS

Goodbye Serge 11/8/09

Weather -2 F
Clear and cold
Wind 7-10 mph

Serge was the first baptism we attended after coming to Novosibirsk in June of 2008. He is a friend of Mesha Nikoliachev, son of Pyotr Nikoliachev, our office travel clerk and the president of the Novosibirsk District.

From the beginning, Serge was someone special. He is a tender spirit with a great capacity to believe. He accepted the Gospel without reservation and has immersed himself in the culture of the Church here and has risen to leadership in the Young Adults and the Second Branch presidency as a counselor to President Gushchin.

Serge was liable for military service and this was a great challenge for him. In Russia, all young men from 18 to 29 must serve one year in the military.Many young men pay for documents that would exempt them from service and Serge was offered such a document in order to continue working for his current employer and later to serve a mission for the Church. He told us that he thought it was impossible for him to tell others to repent and know that he had lied to get there.

What a sense of integrity. This is one of the most honest, sincere, genuine people I have ever met. I am sure that he was that way before he was baptized, but his life since then has been an example to everyone as to who we should all be. He is someone very special and some day he will be an amazing missionary, branch president and more. I am blessed to have known him and only wish that I could be here when he returns to enter into the missionary service. God's speed Serge, and may God bless you.

What a fine young man. What a country
DS

Don't Even Think About It 11/6/09

Weather
Clear and sunny
Temp -7F
Wind 7-10 mph

With more road behind us than is before us, I have made a decision not to think about it. That's right, I will not think about it for one second. Actually, I think that I did think about it for a second, and then I caught myself and immediately stopped thinking about it. I have so not thought about it that I have forgotten what it was I was not going to think about.

What was that? I had it a minute ago, but I lost it. That's maddening. You walk into a room to do something and suddenly you have not only forgotten what you were going to do, but you wonder why you are here in the first place. What was it? Oh . . . darn I almost had it. It was something about ripe tomatoes, Basel, pea pods, and green beans. What did dirt have to do with it? Dirt . . . ripe tomatoes . . . fresh Basel . . . grass . . . lots of green grass . . . and water . . . the sound of splashing water . . . a cool shady pool of water . . . the sound of splashing water as I did something with a ripe tomato . . . a salt shaker . . . what's that got to do with it? Water? Tomato? Salt shaker? Basel, peas, green beans, berries, peaches, lemons, Oh!

I remember now. It's home. It is sitting on my deck, eating a ripe tomato from my garden, lightly salted, with a few Basel leaves that I just plucked off a plant, some mayo, yeah, and . . . oh darn . . . it's home . . . and I had decided to not think of home during this whole Siberian winter. Well, I guess I will just have to start again; not thinking of it. It? What was it? Oh darn, I lost it again.

What a memory (or lack there of). What a country.
DS

Ode to Margaret 11/5/09

Margaret Richins, the mother of our close friend, Belva Wilberg, right, died Wednesday in her Sisters Oregon home at the age of 95. We had spoken to Belva and Carl a week ago, just before we left on our visa-renewal trip Saturday. Belva was hopeful that she would get to see her mom in July when she and Carl would return from their mission to Denmark.

What do you do? Do you stay home because your grand daughter will be getting baptized, or your husband's gallbladder keeps acting up, or your unmarried daughter and her boyfriend seem close to setting a date, or because your 94, soon to be 95, year old mother is getting more frail each month?

I can't answer for others, but for us, no, we don't stay home and neither did Belva. There seems to always be something that will delay our doing what we ought to do doesn't there. Well, that's what priorities are for and I can't set them for anyone else, but the phrase, "If you love them, leave them." Rings in my ears.

Yes, we are missing our granddaughters' birthdays and baptisms, and our daughter's move to Washington D.C., and our son's daily challenge with stupid people, our son's new baby, and our daughter's struggle to nurse a surgery-patient husband, a sick daughter, and mentor a newly teenage older daughter, all while keeping up with us. Yep, we are missing all of that and more, but we are where we should be serving God and the people of our mission. Belva and Carl are showing exceptional courage by serving under the critical eye and vocally critical comments of her siblings. YOU GO GIRL!

The following is an email that Belva sent to us which she has allowed me to publish here. She has demonstrated extraordinary courage in doing the right thing in the face of ignorant critics who would have her in Sisters, holding her mother's hand for the last year. There is no sign that Margaret wanted that and there is no indication that it would have helped her live a day longer. Surrounded by a Ward Family in Sisters, a devoted Home Teacher and Visiting Teacher, and long talks on the phone with Belva, she had everything she needed or probably wanted at the time. Margaret has graduated and Belva has passed a critical test, choosing to serve God as well as her mother in these last months of her tour on this earth.

"Just a note that after 95 strong years, my mother passed away in her home on the evening of Nov 4, 2009. I have enjoyed talking to her every few days here from Denmark for as long as we wanted to talk about her busy life and about our mission. It has been a wonderful opportunity to share with her all my discouragements and happy times. Things that you only want to share with your mother. Life is way too short even after 95 years. She will be so missed. All of our children, and Stephanie with her family will fly or drive to Sisters, Oregon for our final good byes. Mother's only living sister, I think that she is about 90..was with her when she died. I was hoping that she would wait until our return home in July.. before she would leave us..but Heavenly Father invited her home this month instead. We hope to fly to Sisters, Oregon as soon as possible and will be there for ten days or so. Then back to Denmark. Life is bitter and sweet. Love you all and wish we could be together to share our lives once again. Keep us in your prayers. Love, Belva"

We love you Belva and we know that your mother, right, loves you and will be closer to you now, with her new-found freedom. Go take care of business and we'll see you on SKYPE when you return.

The miracles are beginning to come 10/29/09

Weather
Partly cloudy, cold, not much snow, morning fog
Ice everywhere
High 10 F / Low 5F

Sister Calderwood, a relatively new missionary who arrived on the 19th of August (second from the right in the second row) today reported the following Miracle in Tomsk in the mission email.

Each Tuesday and Thursday the missionaries conduct an English Club meeting where interested people can come and practice speaking their English with native Americans. After the club meeting on Tuesday a woman named Lubov came up to sister Caulderwood with this story that she writes to us:

I had given the spiritual thought about the Plan of Salvation at the end of Tuesday's English Club. After the end of the meeting, a woman who had been sitting over on the side came up to me very intently and I could see that she was dying to know more about the church. I Got her phone number and I did my best to talk to her in Russian, promising that we would call and make an appointment. We went home and called her the next morning but the number was incorrect and we were very disappointed that we could not meet with her.

On Thursday, she came again to English and afterward she came up to my companion, Sister Bistrova, in an excited fluster, explaining how on Tuesday night she had had a dream about our church and in it she had seen a book that she had never seen before, but in her dream she knew somehow that it was the word of God. When Elder Nelson held up the Book of Mormon as he gave his spiritual thought on Thursday and she recognized it as THAT book that she had seen in her dream.

As we met twice with her later, she shared her search for truth. As we all watched the DVD on the Restoration she was almost in tears the whole time. It was clear that there were many events in her life that had pointed her to this moment. She was prepared of God, no doubt or question. She has been prepared in evey aspect of the gospel and it really is a miracle. We were able to meet with her twice, but she actually lives 4 days away by train in a town 300 km from Ulan Ude, but wants to move to Tomsk. Lubov is truly one of those miracles that have been promised.

What a miracle. What a country.
DS

It has finally happened 10/29/03

Weather
Overcast, cold, foggy, lots of ice
Temp high 10F / low 5F
Wind 3-5 mph

Someone has fallen in the storm drain in the street in front of our house, next to the drive way; Sister Woodhouse! Here she is on the far right with her companion, Sister Boggs.



Background:
The right bank sisters, Sister Woodhouse and Sister Boggs, brought one of their investigators, Anna, to dinner tonight before English Club. We had a great meeting during dinner and Anna felt the Holy Ghost as we bore our testimonies of God's love for her and the truth that the sisters were teaching her. Here she is with Anna at a Family Home Evening a few weeks ago.








Deep background:
From the first day we moved into this apartment, I have been expecting someone to fall into an uncovered storm drain in front of our house. It is located in the gutter on our side of the street about 10 yards from the driveway. The picture below shows it during the spring thaw last April, looking at our building from the opposite side of the street. The open storm drain is the first in a series of four, end to end, with this second one missing the grating so that it is about a 18 x 36 inch hole in the gutter. The picture at the right shows it during the thaw with a hole in the center, probably made by some "newby" that stepped on it just at the right time to go through. Earlier in the winter the ice was a foot thick and able to bear even the weight of cars passing over it.
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The picture below is just another of the winter hazards. Here it is the uncovered maintenance entry to the heating pipes buried in the ground in front of the houses between them and the street. Someone tried to cover it with an old door, but here it is eschew. During the deep winter these are covered with ice and snow with only the covers, or in this case the collar, showing because they stay warm even when it is 40 below. At night they are all but invisible as you walk past them to our building. With that as background, here is the story.

The three ladies, Sisters Woodhouse and Boggs with Anna, left our apartment in a hurry to get to English Club; they were late of course. From our front door, they could either go through the "woods", the thicket of trees between our building and the street, or right, through the parking lot and then left across the street toward the office and the Oktyabraskaya Metro station on Kirova, right in front of the office.

They chose the latter and headed out almost at a gallop. As they hurried across the parking lot, they missed the driveway and decided to cross the dirt area between the parking lot and street (now covered with snow and ice) just at the right place. Sister Woodhouse was in the lead and stepping off the curb plunged shest-deep into the a fore mentioned open storm drain. She describes it this way:

There were two cars coming from the right and two from the left. We were in a hurry, so we ( I ) decided we could cross before they got to us if we hurried. I was focused on the cars and making sure the three of us got across the road before they arrived and just didn't see what was there in darkness along the curb of the street.

As I stepped into the hole, my book bag hit the ground and scattered its contents; books, English invitations, calendar book, and the usual miscellaneous purse items; across the entire width of the street. As I hit bottom, between four and five feet down, and the purse went flying, the cars stopped with their headlights shining right on me with just my shoulders, arms and head showing. I am sure the occupants got a good laugh as I did my little trick. You can bet that none of them rushed to my aid.

As Anna and Sister Boggs hurried to pick up my bag's contents in the glare of the four cars' headlights, I stood very still in the storm drain, assessing my physical condition. Finding no pain and everything in tact, except for a bump on one knee, I struggled to get out of the hole, but with my dress and coat wedged into it with my legs and torso, I couldn't get out. I could not even try to get a leg out of the hole for lack of space. Of course, I started to laugh.

Seeing my struggles, Sister Boggs came over to me and tried to pull me out of the drain by the arm; no good. We were all laughing so hard that it was just impossible. I was wedged in pretty tight and could give no assistance to any attempt to pull me out as well as laughing uncontrolably. I couldn't even jump up to clear the hole because I couldn't bend my legs. I finally had to press myself up enough to bend at the waist and lay on the street. Rolling over, I cleared the hole with as much grace as possible, being on stage and under the spotlight as I was, and got to my feet.

Finally, free of the hole and collecting my things, we waved to the cars and got across the street, again headed for the office and the Metro station beyond. We took a short-cut across the big parking lot next to our building, still laughing so hard it made it difficult to walk straight, when suddenly Sister Boggs disappeared. She had slipped on the ice and landed in a heap of sheepskin leather coat, bag, hat and scarf laughing too hard to get up. That caused another seizure of hysteria in all of us as we helped her up and tried again to hurry to the Metro. We were now hopelessly late and out of breath with laughter.

As you can see, the Sisters enjoy each other and Anna was right in the thick of it. Laughter is the cure for almost everything in life and these sisters are abundantly blessed with it. Especially when things happen that you didn't expect and could not control, laughter is the remedy, even here in Russia.

We first heard this story from the sisters themselves as they reported in to Sister Cindy after English Club. Thank you sisters for that story and for being such wonderful example of how to handle life's little surprises and bumps. We love you and hope your knees heal up quickly.

What a pair of great missionaries. What a country.
DS

Weather
Clear skies with occasional cloud covering
Temp 19F at 9:00 pm Tuesday 10/27/09
Low tonight 10F
Wind 3-5 mph

SPRASNIKUM to ME!

Sprasnikum is a greeting of congratulations given on celebratory occasions. In this case, I give it to myself on my birthday because today I am beginning my 68th year of experience on this world and 67 years of absence from God's world where I was given a spirit body and was taught at the knee of those I have forgotten for the moment.

With more of my life behind me than ahead, I often think of those days, as if there were days in eternity before my birth, and wonder how it all came about. How did I progress from being a disembodied intelligence to becoming a spirit child of Heavenly Father to eventually warranting birth into this mortal existence with its wonders and challenges.

What did I love? Whom did I love? Who were my classmates and my friends? Did I love music then? With whom did I make promises much like the "I'll write you every day" promises after a summer together or with whom did I make more solemn oaths to find and bring into God's kingdom during mortality because I was to be born in the Covenant and they where not. Have I done well? Have I found them? Of those we have met here or in Sacramento or in Germany or on cruise ships or in elevators, or . . .? Have I found them?

I feel sure that I found some of them, those whom I recognize immediately as strangers that I know intimately, and I think I have planted seeds with some others who might be them, but where are the others? I know I found Sister Cindy and that's an oath that I fulfilled, not without doubts and not without wanderings before she made the commitment to baptism, but with complete fidelity and eternal continuance once she joined me in the Kingdom. How can I find the others?

Well amidst all of this reminiscence, I enjoyed the day with many renderings of "Happy Birthday"; cookies from Julia; candy from Pyotr & Olga; lemon-chicken, mashed potatoes, and crispy non-chocolate chip cookies from Sister Cindy; a baptism commitment from Lenna at dinner tonight with Sisters Woodhouse and Boggs; and three playings of Neil Diamond's "America" and two playings of John Denver's "Country Roads" all played much too loud. What a day.

Thank you for all who remembered me, my family, my Russian friends, my missionaries, my great companion and even my friends in Sacramento. Diane Keys, my favorite sister, set up SKYPE in her Seminary class and called this evening about 7:30 pm which was about that time AM in Sacramento, where I got a rendering of Happy Birthday and the opportunity to tell the class, made up of many of our Sacramento friends, about our mission, the weather, the people, and our goal to get 62 more baptisms in the mission by December 31. I explained the background and asked for their prayers for our missionaries. Actually, I, we, were an object lesson for the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5, being grafted into a tree in the nethermost part of the vineyard.

I am grateful for the day, grateful to be allowed to be here on this mission in Siberia, grateful for Sister Cindy and my family whom we had to struggled to find, grateful for my health, grateful for the means to pay for this mission, and grateful to Jesus Christ as my personal savior and the redeemer of all mankind. I don't remember the meeting, nor the confrontation between Heavenly Father and Satan, but I know that it took place, I know that I was there, I know that I choose to follow Jehovah, and I know that he did do what he promised to do for me and for you as part of Father's plan for us.

Now it is up to me, and each of us, to do what WE promised to do. There is no sacrifice, there is no labor, there is no gift, there is nothing within our grasp that we can do to repay that Jesus of Nazareth for what he did for us. If we labor our whole lives to serve him, still we are in his debt. Surely just two years of service is not enough, but it is there on the alter just the same.

I hope that each of us will realize our debt to Jesus Christ and continue to put our sacrifice on the alter. What is it that we can, or are willing to, sacrifice, to give, in His service. What Sister Cindy and I have done here is no sacrifice. It has been a great blessing. I have tried to find the sacrifice in it and just cannot. In fact, we are planning our next mission right now. Oh, I miss artichokes and ripe tomatoes from the garden and my hot tub, and playing Hand and Foot with my friends, but I guess I will have to find something else to sacrifice because being here isn't it.

Happy birthday Elder Grampa.

What a guy. What a country.
DS