Week 33 - Continued
Saturday - We flew to Vilnius, Lithuania. The weather was absolutely beautiful! After dropping our luggage off, we took off exploring the Old Town to see what it looked like in the summer weather, rather than the snowy, cold weather we saw in February. Vilnius is a university town, so there are lots of young people here.
We passed little booths with local items in them.
This is a district called Republic of Uzupis. It even has its own constitution.
Basically, its constitution says you can do anything you want to do.
We then headed over to the Bernardin Garden area. Beautiful green area with many flowers.
Gediminas' Tower is the remaining part of the Upper Castle in Vilnius. The first wooden fortifications were built by Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania. The first brick castle was completed in 1409 by Grand Duke Vytautas.
This was a huge Lithuanian flag entirely knitted on huge needles in this knitting shop. Very cool!
Sunday - Today was Lithuania Mothers' Day. We took a taxi to the church from our hotel, and while we were traveling, we were so excited that the cab driver had such good English. He started asking us why we were there and why we were living in Moscow. Gpa George told him we were doing volunteer work for our church and he asked which church. We told him we were Mormons. Anyway, he seemed to be more interested, and about that time we were almost at the church and Gpa said, "We believe in the Book of Mormon, as well as the Bible, as another witness for Christ," and told them a little about the Book of Mormon. He said, "Would you like your own copy to read?" He said, "Sure, I would!" So when we got to the church, Gpa got out quickly and ran in while I stayed by the taxi. I wanted to make sure that he was still there when Gpa came out. In no time, George was out with a Lithuanian Book of Mormon, with information about how to get ahold of the missionaries on a card inside! It couldn't have been more perfect! The man seemed very pleased, and George said, "I want you to promise me that you will read this," to which he replied, "Yes, I will!" This was such a fun experience! We wish we could do this in Russia the same way. It just has to be so different and so cautious there.
It was fast and testimony meeting, and of course, we had to have head phones because everything was in Lithuanian. We were so impressed with the District President who bore his testimony in Lithuanian, but his wife told us this is their second mission in Lithuania, and they will be going on four years soon. That made me feel better--but, she says he studies two hours a day to get the language beter. He is very dedicated, and the people really appreciate that he knows the language and can understand them.
One of the most pleasant surprises was meeting a Lithuanian young man who just came home from the Scotland-Ireland mission and knows our grandson, Carter, very well! Such a small world! A girl from Scotland, who he had met while on his mission, was now visiting here in Lithuania and they are dating. She, also, knew Carter very well (and Carter later told us that her family was always so good to feed the missionaries).
Later in the day, we went to a Break the Fast Dinner at the District President's apartment, and met so many wonderful young adults and missionaries. We met an Elder from South Africa who is in the same ward as Elder Golden of our Area Presidency, and a Sister Missionary who went to Lone Peak and played on the lacrosse team with our granddaughter, Jenna. It is such a small world when you are members of the church, for sure!
Top pic: The young Elder next to me comes from the same ward in South Africa as Elder Golden in the Area Presidency comes from.
Lower pic: The young man next to George just came home from Scotland-Ireland Mission three months ago and knows our grandson, Carter. He is now dating a girl from Scotland who he met there and, also, knows Carter.
Monday - Before leaving Lithuania, we had to visit Trakai (Trakkie) - the island, resort town, and castle. It was mentioned in the 1300s, it was a home to the grand Duke of Lithuania and definitely mentioned in the fights with the crusaders.
George absolutely loved the peaceful ride around the lake.
A young girl's (about 14 years old) boot. Look how tiny it is!
The royalty always loved to hunt. This was their trophy room.
After our time in the castle, we walked over to the little town.
The little town of about 7,000 people is so quaint with little houses all painted bright colors.
We then ate lunch at this little restaurant right on the lake. Absolutely beautiful with the best pizza!
We really enjoyed our stay. After, we took a tour bus that Gpa just happened to spy and asked if we could hitch a ride back to Vilnius. They said we could for only 10 Euros. What a bargain! Plus, we got to hear the tour for free! We then grabbed our luggage and headed for the airport.
After traveling in a small Polish plane to Warsaw, we were delayed and ended up staying in the airport for 2 1/2 hours finally getting to Sofia, Bulgaria, at 3:00 a.m.
We then arrived at our hotel--quite hysterically called Hotel Favorite--immediately feeling like we were going to be attacked by wild dogs. Then, when we got to our room, we looked outside and could make out an old house situated by an apartment house where laundry was hanging out on the porches, and under all the the trees, we figured that's where the dogs were hanging out. Each dog was trying to outdo the other in their barking! We were so tired, we finally could ignore it when we got to sleep.
It was such a unique castle totally surrounded by water. We went on a little boat around the castle and got a better look at the surroundings, then went inside the castle--it looks just like you would imagine a castle for knights!
George absolutely loved the peaceful ride around the lake.
The royalty always loved to hunt. This was their trophy room.
After our time in the castle, we walked over to the little town.
We then ate lunch at this little restaurant right on the lake. Absolutely beautiful with the best pizza!
After traveling in a small Polish plane to Warsaw, we were delayed and ended up staying in the airport for 2 1/2 hours finally getting to Sofia, Bulgaria, at 3:00 a.m.
But, everything went up from there!
Tuesday - We took a cab over to the Bulgaria-Central Eurasian Mission Home.
There we met with the new mission secretary couple who we had met in Istanbul in February, plus another Senior Elder who had come over, too, in the last few days. There is such a long story connected with all this, but suffice it to say, we had planned to go to Istanbul to do two audits there when we were flatly told not to come by the Senior Audit Chairman there. Then we found out from the Mission President that we would find out in the next few days why we couldn't go there, so we hadn't purchased tickets to go there. Well, a couple of days prior while we were in Lithuania, one of the attorneys in Moscow called us to tell us to read the Deseret News, which we did. Because of political unrest, the whole mission was shut down in Turkey, moving everyone out including 20 young Elders, 4 sisters, and five senior couples. The Mission President and his wife had left only two days before, making sure everyone was out, then they left. Most of them only had a 24-hour notice to get out. Anyway, we are so grateful that we had the opportunity to go there in February because there are so many wonderful saints there, and we loved going there. I doubt we will get the opportunity to go there again before we go home in August 2019. We went to lunch with the Mission President and his wife and really understood the stress they have gone through all this. They are just living out of suitcases and in a hotel and hope to be settled here in Sofia soon. In addition, we were able to reorganize the Audit Committee and give ideas how to finish out the audits in Turkey.
There we met with the new mission secretary couple who we had met in Istanbul in February, plus another Senior Elder who had come over, too, in the last few days. There is such a long story connected with all this, but suffice it to say, we had planned to go to Istanbul to do two audits there when we were flatly told not to come by the Senior Audit Chairman there. Then we found out from the Mission President that we would find out in the next few days why we couldn't go there, so we hadn't purchased tickets to go there. Well, a couple of days prior while we were in Lithuania, one of the attorneys in Moscow called us to tell us to read the Deseret News, which we did. Because of political unrest, the whole mission was shut down in Turkey, moving everyone out including 20 young Elders, 4 sisters, and five senior couples. The Mission President and his wife had left only two days before, making sure everyone was out, then they left. Most of them only had a 24-hour notice to get out. Anyway, we are so grateful that we had the opportunity to go there in February because there are so many wonderful saints there, and we loved going there. I doubt we will get the opportunity to go there again before we go home in August 2019. We went to lunch with the Mission President and his wife and really understood the stress they have gone through all this. They are just living out of suitcases and in a hotel and hope to be settled here in Sofia soon. In addition, we were able to reorganize the Audit Committee and give ideas how to finish out the audits in Turkey.
After our meetings, we walked around this ancient city that literally dates back to 7,000 BC from some of their findings. So fantastic how they are allowing their residents to be a part of the findings and just building around the artifacts. Their whole city is a museum!
Wednesday - We took a cab to the airport and flew back to Mosco, getting here about 3:30 in the afternoon. So much to do when you get home! But, such a wonderful experience! We felt so good about our training and the information we were able to give to each of the areas we went to. I think we are getting much better at knowing how to help the people by showing them, not just telling them how to do things. We are very blessed to be learning, along with them, at how we can better serve. We came home to lots of singing and many people celebrating Victory Day--May 9th.
This is a day that the Russians celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany, along with its allies. Then, there were huge fireworks at night that we could see from our apartment windows on the 18th floor. Too bad that we were so tired, or we would have gone to see it more, but we weren't encouraged to go down to Red Square because of so many people, and hopefully no trouble.
Thursday - Today, I had to wait for our landlord to come and take our passports to the Embassy substation where we can be registered again. Every time we leave Russia, we have to be re-registered within two days. We have to present the Identification paper we got as we re-entered, plus our Visa, our passport, plus every single airline stub to show where we went, plus make a copy of every single page of our passport so that the Russian government knows exactly where we have been. And we have to do this every single time we leave the country! Our poor landlord has a huge responsibility to take care of this for us, but he must feel like it is worth it to rent to our church because he says we are responsible, pay our rent, electricity, and internet on time, and we keep the place very clean. That makes us happy because he is so good to always keep us registered so as not to have any trouble with the government, hopefully. After a couple of hours waiting for him to get back with our passports, I went to the office. George had already gone this morning and took a chance of not having his passport with him. We must always carry it on us.
Well, this is much too long again, but I like to record everything, and I know some of you enjoy the details, while some of you probably just skim, or maybe even ignore. Well, it's up to you. Hah!
Much love to all of you,
Gma Laura
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