Saturday - Walk Around Town

Kathy and I had a good day today inspecting the missionary apartments, taking the metro across town to the institute building and then walking back to the apartment. It snowed lightly on us all day, but the walking was great to be outdoors.  We walked through downtown St. Petersburg and it is like walking in the high rent district of any big city. Our camera ran out of battery so we didn't get any good pictures of downtown, but we got a couple by our apartment. We will get some more downtown pictures next week.  Downtown there were a lot of very nice stores, restaurants and nicely dressed Russians walking the streets. They even wear short skirts in the cold winter months with high heel shoes.  

We met a couple of the older senior couples and they showed us around the town, Notice the Russian spelling of Subway on the left in the picture. We will need to get some maps so we don't get totally lost or turned around in the future. We have to take the metro out to the institute (45min) from our house on Wednesday to work with some of the youth.  We plan to go over a little early and just study. I attached a couple of pictures. 

Many of you have asked about a typical day in our lives on a mission:

1) Wake around 6:30am (although we did sleep until 7 one day because we still aren't sleeping well at night)

2) Exercise, eat, shower, gospel study and language study until 10:00

3) Work with administering the affairs of the missionaries from 10 - 7

4) Dinner at 7-7:30

5) Language study and write in journal until 9 or 10.

We take a lot of phone calls on our cell phones from the missionaries in the mornings and evenings so it is busy all day long.  On Saturdays we will have some free time to do our laundry, shopping and preparation for the next week and Sunday will be mostly gospel study and working with the youth.  It is our goal to set aside one evening a week and have a date night and walk around the city.  There is so much to see, but it takes 30 to 90 minutes to walk to anywhere so it will limit our site seeing until we get the long nights of summer.  We are really enjoying the mission team we work with here in St. Petersburg and the mission president and his young assistants are awesome. The couple that is training us have also been wonderful and patient. I look forward to hearing from all of you. I testify that this work is true, that Joseph Smith restored the gospel, that Thomas Monson is our modern day Prophet and that Jesus died for our sins.  With this knowledge and through our works we know that we can live together again. Love Mom and Dad.

P.S. Love the missionaries if they ever stop over, make them some dinner and think of us here in Russia :-)