From Russia With Love...

a.k.a. Letters from Sis. Lynes in Russia

Letter #60: From the Mission Field in Russia

Subject: #60
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 18:50:48 +0600
From: Shirley Lynes <gma@jacklynes.com>
To: jlynes@jacklynes.com

Dear Folks! It's a beautiful day in this Siberian neighborhood! The sky is clear, the sun is shining, and it makes you feel like all is well with the world! We had a thunder storm last night with strong wind, but today is gorgeous. Sis. Burlena and I took a walk this morning to the reenock and bought some fresh vegetables. I would have liked to look around more, but we were short on time. I had to get back for the 11 am class. There was only one student, Stephen. I was glad to have some time to talk to him. He says his mother is fine, and has given up on trying to change his mind. His baptism is scheduled (again) for next Saturday, if nothing else happens. He says the third time is a charm! He is such a fine young man. I heard him say yesterday that he wants to serve a mission!!! His mother won't be sorry for the changes the gospel will make in his life. The biggest news I know this week is that I made the Finland trip safely. I didn't get lost or anything like that! I won't give you a blow by blow account of the trip. I don't think people enjoy hearing that exact account of someone else's trip! But if I don't write about the trip, this letter will be awfully short! I don't know anything else this week! So here goes: I left here on Sunday morning on the marshroot (I finally saw this word written out and realized that I've been spelling it wrong. But I was spelling it the way I heard it!). It was raining when we left here, but it wasn't raining in Yekat when I got there. The elders picked me up at the vox haul (bus station) and took me to my old apartment, where I spent the night. Sis. Rogers didn't get in from Chilly until about 9 pm. It had started raining by then. We were up early the next morning at 4 am. I looked out to see if it was still raining, and everything was white! It was snowing! On May 13!! When Alexander, Pres. Hall's driver, came to pick us up, it was still snowing, big, wet flakes. The streets were slushy but not overly slippery. When we got to the airport, Victor was there. I've mentioned Victor before. He is the Russian brother in charge of CES in our mission. He had to fly to Moscow too! He took good care of us! When we got to Moscow he got us to the right bus, and then the metro (subway). He was getting off the metro the same place we needed to go! I felt like the Lord sent him to "shepherd" us! We got to the Mission Service Center and picked up our train tickets for the rest of the trip. They called two elders who didn't have a lot scheduled for that afternoon, and they came and escorted us to Red Square! We looked around there for a while. Lenin's tomb was closed. I was glad of that, because I have no desire to see the body of a man who's been dead all those many years!!! We took the elders to lunch, and then they took us to see a very famous Russian Orthodox Church. It looked more like a cathedral than a church. The walls and domed ceilings are covered with paintings. Very ornate. Lots of gold. It just doesn't look anything like a regular church. There were several tour groups visiting at the same time. It's really large. We caught the train from Moscow to Helsinki. It was an electric train. That makes for much quieter travel. We had "luxury" accommodations, only two beds, and not bunk beds! It was quite nice. Sometime early the next morning the customs people came on the train, checked our custom declarations (we didn't have anything to declare) stamped our passports, and searched our rooms. Later the Finnish customs people checked our passports and stamped them too. We were met at the train station in Helsinki by Bro. and Sis. Harrington, who handle visa renewals all the time! The Russians have changed the procedure for renewing the passports. The usual method was that we would be met at the train station and they would take our documents to the embassy, and we would be free to "explore" Helsinki. This time we had to go to the Embassy with them, wait in line, present our documents ourselves and ask for an express Visa. There were no problems, except it cut into the time we had to spend looking around Helsinki. We got some lunch and looked around Stockman's, a really huge department store. I didn't have a lot of shopping I wanted to do, but Sis. Rogers had a few items she was looking for. We had to meet the Harringtons back at the train station at 4:30, and our train left at 5:30. So there was our big trip to Finland. It is a beautiful city, what we saw of it. We saw the ferry boats that the saints from here have to go on to Stockholm Sweden to the temple. These ferry boats looked like cruise liners! It's an 11 hour trip from Helsinki to Stockholm. They have cabins and can sleep for most of the trip. When you hear that a ferry has gone down in this area of the world, it's a BIG ship! I've never seen a ferry this large before. So we were back on the train after not seeing much of Helsinki. What we saw of the countryside of Finland was beautiful. The farms are very well kept. Finland is three hours behind Yekat. Moscow is 2 hours behind Yekat. This is a big country! There are 11 time zones in Russia. That will give you some idea of how large a country this is! We had to go through the customs thing again. Sometime after we crossed the border into Russia, the train stopped and the customs people came on. They checked our customs declaration form and told us we didn't need them because we had nothing to declare. But someone must have had something to declare. We were stopped there for over an hour! The rest of the night it felt like the engineer had put the "pedal to the metal" to make up for lost time. Even at that we were a little late arriving back in Moscow. Then back on the Metro, and the bus, back to the airport. We flew out of Yekat on a 737, but it was a smaller plane that brought us back. I don't know what kind. We had no trouble on the flight. The elders met us at the airport, for which I was glad! I was afraid they would forget! On the way back into Yekat, we got stopped by the highway police (militia). Elder Warby was speeding just a little. When they are stopped by the police for anything, they are told not to speak Russian, but to only speak English. The police have to furnish them with an interpreter if they want to question them. The militia man let them go, with no fine. We were delivered back to the apartment after going to the vox haul to get tickets to go home the next day. My ticket was for 10:30 am. The elders finally picked me up at 10:30. (This was two different elders.) The taxi driver who was bringing them thought he knew where the street was, but got lost a couple of times. So I missed my ride. We went on to the vox haul and exchanged my ticket and got another one for the next marshroot going to Kurgan. We had some time to wait, so we got another taxi and went to the mission office. When it was time to get back to the vox haul, they called me a taxi and I came back to the vox haul by myself. I had no trouble getting to the marshroot on time, and finally made it back to Kurgan at 8:30 pm. Only trouble was that the office elders told Sis. Burlena that it would take seven hours for the trip, and it only takes 6! So I had to wait half an hour for Sis. Burlena, who came early to be there when I got in! Except I was already in! So I made it home all in one piece, with no major calamity. It was a long trip, with no mishaps. The Lord takes very good care of me. I'm home now, so you can start writing again!!!!!! Now, aren't you glad I didn't give you a blow by blow account????!!!!!!!! I left out a lot of details! Sis. Rogers won't be flying home with me in September. She is extending for 6 months. She will serve a 2 year mission instead of an 18 month mission. She will have another winter here. More power to her! I'll be home in September. Right now my release date is Sept. 18. But we have a new mission president coming in the first of July, and he could change things. We will have to wait and see. We have been told that we won't be getting any more senior sister missionaries here. They say we have a lot of senior Russian sisters, and don't qualify for any more senior Americans. There will be no one to take my place when I come home. The Russians can't do what I'm doing. I don't know what they will do about the English program. Maybe our new president will have some new ideas about finding people. The English program is working very well here in Kurgan, furnishing a goodly number of investigators. I don't know how well it is working in other places. The other missionaries covered my classes while I was gone. Most of the sister missionaries in our mission already have Russian companions. Maybe there just aren't any senior sisters available. I know there are a lot of senior sisters who could serve who aren't serving. I know it is more comfortable at home than lots of other places in the world. But the blessings far outweigh the inconveniences of living elsewhere. There isn't much else to write about this time. I don't want to bore you anymore with stories of my "big" trip. I haven't had time to do any extensive reading, or even thinking! So no preaching today. But look out next week!!! I really hope everything is going well for all of you. Thanks to everyone who took the time to write to me this week. It was good to have some email waiting for me when I got home. Checking my email was the first thing I did when I got home. It was nice to find some there! You really don't know how much good it does me to hear from all of you. Oh, I came home to find that Sis. Heslington has been transferred. She is now making the Chilly runs! Bless her heart! She was called on Monday and told to be in Chilly on Wednesday, so I didn't even get to tell her good-bye. Sis. Jones has a mini-companion till August, when I think she will get someone new from America. Sis. Heslington now has a Russian companion. She will learn a lot more Russian now! It's not up to us to decide where to serve. We just go and do as the Lord commands! Works for me!!! I love you all and pray for you every day. Please keep me in your prayers. Till next week!!

Love,
Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma, Sis. Lynes, Shirley, sister, aunt, cousin, friend, acquaintance, email pal, babushka back safely from Finland!! (choose one!)