Sept. 5

Church

Today was the best day so far for sure. It started off with making the trek to church: 25 minute bus, two metros, and about a mile walk. Attending this small branch in the middle of Moscow was definitely different in many ways from what I’ve become used to in Wyoming and Utah.

For one thing, I don’t think any unknowing passerby would look at the church or its surrounding area and think, “Hey, this looks like an ideal place to build a sacred place of worship.” To illustrate this point, here is what we see walking out of the church building:





And the front door of the church:





Despite the fact that “meth lab” seems a more appropriate label than “church,” the inside of the church was surprisingly nice: not super fancy, but very clean and new looking: not too far off from a regular church back home, except that all the rooms are much smaller (although we all seemed to fit well—I counted 34 women in relief society, which included our 14 ILP girls).

Another big difference between this branch and my wards back home was the diverse kinds of people we met there. The first hug I was given in Moscow was from this teeny little Phillipino (sp?) woman, who gave every single one of us one before handing us our sacrament meeting program (which was written in English—so nice!! You really learn how much you take for granted being able to READ everything in America!). Before going in, President Kosak, who I’m pretty sure has to at least tie Pres. Uchtdorf for being the sweetest/coolest German man ever, found us in the foyer and winked at us before saying in a mock-serious tone, “I am a German. Do not be late for my sack-er-a-ment mee-ting.”  (He is such a cool guy. He really made a huge effort throughout the day to make us feel at home and really looked-after.) Anyway, a woman from Armenia bore her testimony… a guy from Africa (I think it was?) was confirmed… I heard some Hispanics speaking Spanish in the hall after meetings… lots of different people and backgrounds, quite cool and new for me.

While the differences between this ward and mine back home were fun, the thing that made yesterday so awesome was that, despite the differences, the overall atmosphere and feelings I had throughout the day were all just, very familiar and wonderful. One of those probably overused Mormon phrases gained real meaning for me today: “The gospel is really the same everywhere.” Throughout meetings, it was so incredible to me how all these people from completely different cultures and upbringings—who’ve experienced so many things I’ll never come close to understanding or feeling myself—have testimonies of and live by the same things a girl from rural Wyoming has been taught. Experiencing such different attitudes and cultures this past week, the idea that, all over the world, people from such unbelievably diverse cultures have embraced, and are continuing to embrace, one encompassing belief is truly remarkable. I’m so grateful to know that God is perfectly aware of and loves all of his children, “in whatsoever land they may be in,” and that because of that, the gospel doesn’t just have the capacity to feel like home to a girl whose been surrounded by it her whole life, but to anybody. That to me is both mind-boggling and miraculous.

Proof we made it:




Happy Birthday

Anyway, today and yesterday held celebrations for Moscow’s birthday! We still haven’t figured out how old Moscow was turning (oh how I’ve missed Google…), but we’re guessing that its fairly old (), and the city certainly seemed to be excited about it! Before catching our metro home from church, we looked up a sidewalk a bit and saw a huge fair going on to celebrate the event; and, since we couldn’t pass up seeing how these no-nonsense Russians throw a carnival, we headed over.

Happy to see us?

Yesterday, as we walked around in our huge, obviously American group of 19, we seemed to get a lot of glares from people. Walking around this carnival today in our group of 4, though, we for some reason got to see a completely different side to these often intimidating Muscovites. Not only were people much more likely to smile at our obvious American-ness than scowl, but several of them talked with us, and were even giving us things! Here’s one photo we took outside of the carnival:



The symbol behind Whitney and I is EVERYWHERE--apparently, its the symbol of Moscow. Oh, and check out my dang cute boots.