We were asked to do some things this past month that were out of the ordinary for us. Three times we spoke at a local linguistic university to English speaking students. The first two were about our family and living a healthy lifestyle by eating right and avoiding alcohol and tobacco. The third time was on either visiting or living in Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Cambodia, and Scotland. All of these included photos using an overhead video projector with a laptop.

We were invited to speak to couples preparing to get married. The law here requires classes on various aspects of marriage. We had thirty minutes with half of the time spent in translation. Our text was from the optional classes for Sunday School on Strengthening Marriage. We could quote General Authorities, but not use their titles. No video here. We threw in some comments on about the problems leading to divorce tended to be mobile and followed a person to the next marriage. Which brought up the next comment, the best place to solve those problems is up front and not kick the can down the road. There were 16 there.

There is also a law requiring couples who want a divorce to attend some classes first. A woman there said she was in charge of that and may have us talk to that group. We will see what happens and if we are invited back to teach another marriage class.

A change in another law now grants three year visas. New missionaries now will never have to make visa trips. The nice part of that for us is we made our last visa trip last week instead of one more before going home. Balance that with us already having made 14 such trips, if our aged memory serves us right. That included two trips each to Estonia and Kazakhstan and 10 to Finland. Sometimes we were able to attend the Helsinki temple. As much as we enjoyed those trips, they were wearing.

Double passports were used for a while to facilitate missionaries going in and out of the country every three months. We were tasked with taking six passports to a travel agency in Helsinki and picking up 20 to bring back. Everything that is anywhere near official in Russia requires a purple stamp to pass muster. We had the purple stamped paper authorizing us to carry the passports out of Russia, but the travel agent inadvertently did not include such a paper for our trip back. There are three choke points where that can be a problem, security, passport control and customs. Anyone of those can question why and want to see the paper with the purple stamp. With some prayers answered there were no problems. Once before a purple stamp was missing and we nearly missed a flight from a strange city to home. Prayers were answered there too.

We still support the members, leaders, and missionaries, by being available for meetings at our apartment, the Church building, and members’ homes. I give blessings to members, non-members, missionaries as requested. All the leadership positions are held by Russians, as well as teaching. Today there was a mission wide leadership meeting for branch and district leadership. The work is moving forward for the creation of a stake. Reports are going in and men advancing in the priesthood in a more timely manner. Records are being cleaned up. The records for those who moved or died years ago are being passed on. More effort is being made to bring the less active back. Since 2006, the talk was a stake in five to ten years. Now it is in a year or less. That is real progress. It has been nice to be part of what is happening.

The time is going so fast. We don’t have a firm release date, but it will be sometime around the end of August. Our health is still good and we are enjoying our time here. We may be road kill on the information highway, but we are on the right side of the snow in winter and grass or weeds in the summer.

Love,
Elder and Sister Holmes