MOSCOW WEST SAINTS LEAVE

TODAY, LAUNTAI!

It has been a challenging week for several reasons: Absolutely NO temple workers were in this group, not many of the saints spoke ANY English at all and they did not have a 'group leader' to speak of. All of those things add up to more work for us Temple Missionaries. That is not all bad, just a challenge because we have to spread ourselves so thin to accomplish as much as possible for them. And they have come some 2500 miles. Nothing to sneeze at! We wanted ALL of them to have a good experience while there were here. As usual, we met some adorable people and made some good friends. We hope we will get to see some of them again......not likely but we can always hope!

Above are two folks that were so sweet. The guy is a convert of about 3 months. He came because he wants to start doing temple work for his family. The sister is also a recent convert of about 4 months. She has two daughters who are back home. They were not able to come. Her husband passed away 10 years ago! What a sweetheart!! Wayne is so good with doing family history. He was able to go in the Family History Library (1st floor of the asuntola) and help them put together information so they could do the work for family members.....especially the sister who was able to have her husband's work done! She was absolutely THRILLED. I think that just might be an understatement! I can in the library on Thursday night just to say hi. She came up to me and gave me the biggest hug and pointed to my husband and said something I couldn't understand (because it was in Russian). I knew she was thankful for Wayne and all he had done for her in preparing this paperwork!

She took this beautiful ring off of her hand (pictured above) and put it on my finger! Before I could even say anything she was saying nyet, nyet, nyet.....no, no, no.....she would not take 'no' for an answer from me. She insisted I have it. I had also made her a cross stitch bookmark earlier in the week. She was just so grateful for all we had done. We just hate to see these great people go home but we know they have to. We hope see will be able to come back when she has been a member a year and do her own temple work and be sealed to her husband! What a joy that will be for her!

I just can not part today without a picture of our beautiful (KAUNIS) TEMPLE! What a great week.........OH, and I was asked to be 'Acting Matron' today because Sisar Haikkola had to be out of town! And it was a great day when some of those 'tender mercies' happen! I have reported all to Sisar Haikkola and she was also thrilled for a great day at the temple! :-)