New "Centeral Eurasian" Mission Announced!

This week is a big week for a lot of the people with whom I've been blessed to work over the last two years. On Saturday we received some miraculous news from the First Presidency, through our Mission leaders. As follows:

<Please Pass this to all missionaries. I will pass it to kazakhstan: "The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have approved the creation of the Centeral Eurasian Mission effective July 1, 2015. This new mission will be formed from divisions of the existing Bulgaria Sofia and Russia Novosibirsk missions. The new mission will be comprised of five branches and will serve the countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. The mission president and his wife will reside in Istanbul, Turkey.">

In my last two years betweek my procelyting areas in Tomsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk and Barnaul, I've known and taught people from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In Novosibirsk we even started to greet people in Uzbek or Tajik rather than in Russian as it better got their attention and spurred conversations. With the challenges that there are with the work in Kazakhstan, I thought it would be years until these other -stan countries would receive more attention from the church. The Lord is, however, hastening his work! Over the next years and decades, we will see miracles as the people in these contries are given opportunities to accept the gospel. Let us pray for the political barriers to fall and for the Mission president and missionaries that are to serve in these places to be blessed with the spiritual and temporal preparation that they will need to fulfill the sacred trust that awaits them. 

As for the rest of my week. We were in Novosibirsk on Tuesday for Elder Gardner's medical care. He's been in contact with specialists in Novosibirsk, our mission doctor, and President Williams, and his parents. He may need surgery and if it comes to that his options are to get it in Moscow or to return to the States for a few weeks. We'll see what happens. 

We returned on Wednesday and had exchanges with the other elders. I was with Elder Reynolds It was his last exchanges on his mission. He goes home on Wednesday. I met his group in the MTC. Weird. While on exchanges, we got transfer calls. Elder Gardner is going to the center area in Barnaul and will train a missionary coming from Kraznoyarsk (another city in our mission). He will only be out for 6 weeks on a mini mission. I will be in my area still and will serve with Elder Hatch. Elder Hatch will be my 17th mission companion. That averages out to one in the MTC, and one companion per transfer. Crazy! 

The sisters are being taken out of Barnaul. We just don't have enought of them as they are all starting to go home! So we have the task of closing their apartment. After 5 years of Elders, Sisters and Senior couples living there, there is a LOT of stuff!! We're almost done, but it's a big project. Lots of moving. Lots of left over clothes. Lots of throwing out. 

This next week. We're going to Novosibirsk tomorrow for transfers. Elder Hatch goes to Finland for his visa trip, and then it's on to the rest of my mission! 

Hope all is well at home, and that you are all happy. 

Much Love,

Elder Moore

 Pictures:
Novosibirsk 

Walking down the tracks to the bus station

 We're Siberian!!

Stay Wild

Doctor's Visit, Medical Visit to Novosibirsk, Families

Privyet!

Well it wasn't me needing to visit the Clinic, but this last week I had the luck of bringing my third companion to the clinic. I've become pretty aquainted with the Russian medical system, and explaining symptoms in Russian. Since last Thursday, Elder Gardner hasn't been feeling too good. So on Tuesday we went to a clinic in the center here in Barnaul. It wasn't too great, kinda dirty, and the Doctor there wasn't really professional. Long story short, after being in contact with the mission doctor who lives in Moscow, we were refered to a specialist and scheduled an appointment in Novosibirsk at a better clinic. 

Thursday evening we went down to the bus station to buy our bus tickets for 6:30the next morning. The Zone Leaders were coming to town that night and got to our place at like 10:30 to find out that we were going to be leaving the next morning at 5 and wouldn't be able to be on exchanges as was the plan. So they just did exchanges on Friday with the other elders in the Center. Before we had found out that we were going to Novosibirsk, we bought pancake stuff to have for breakfast the next day. 

We woke up on Friday at 3:30 in the morning to make them anyways. So there's me making pancakes at 3:30 am right before our five hour bus ride to Novo. The bus there a little over half full, so we had a bit of room and it wasn't too bad. I slept most of the way anyways. Since it was so early, there wasn't much traffic, and we had time to stop into the "I'm Siberian" store that was near by the clinic before his appointment. We saw a doctor who perscribed him a medicine, and scheduled an ultrasound for Tuesday. (You can get your baby guesses in within the next week.) :) Then it was to the mission office where we ran into Elder Aubrey! It's been 14 months since he and I served together back in Tomsk. That was still one of my favorite transfers. Updated with the Turmans, who then invited us over for dinner when we come back on Tuesday for Elder Gardner's follow up visits. By 6 we were back on a bus to Barnaul. There was not an empty seat on the bus, and Russians don't believe in open windows, or air conditioning or so it seems. It was a Hot, crowded, miserable 5 hours. But we're still alive and well. 

Saturday we had Zone Training and a short exchange with the Zone Leaders before they got on a bus back to Novosibirsk. We'll be back on a bus today after we're done emailing and won't come back to barnaul until Wednesday morning. 

Transfer update. So a year ago we had almost 100 missionaries in our mission, and by the time July comes, we'll be down to mid 40's. So areas are being closed down with every passing transfer. Sisters will be taken out of Barnaul as there are just not enough of them anymore! So this wednesday will be their last day here. Sister Lohrey goes home to Alaska on Friday, and Sister West will be transfered somwhere else. It'll just be two companionships of elders now. I've never been in a district without sisters before, so we'll see how that goes! 

Before we went to Novosibirsk, we were having weekly planning and got a call from Arman. He was over at the branch and a guy came in who wanted to talk with us. So we went over  having no idea who it could be. We were greeted by the smell of Alchohol and a clearly hung over man named Denis. We sat and met with him and just talked with him. He had a close friend that died the day before and had evidently drowned it all out with the alchohol. When life is hard, people turn to God. We introduced to him concepts from the Plan of Salvation. We had a conversation like this. 

us: Do you believe in God?

him: No

us: Do you believe in Jesus Christ

him: Fifty-Fifty

us: Do you believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior?

him: ... .. Can I play on that Piano?? 

So we let him play on the piano. He evidently played at some point in his life as he knew how even though it was pretty horrible. He even sang a bit, and it was quite commical. As he was playing and we were sitting there, I took a bit of a mental step back to see Denis at peace. Something he probably hasn't felt in a long time. Even though we weren't in lesson mode teaching him doctrine, it felt right to just let him have his moments of peace. As he was playing it seemed that he forgot about his worries. I don't know what'll happen with him, or if he will go anywhere in the teaching process, but he was in the branch at that time because he has a loving Heavenly Father. 

Sunday came around. It was branch conference. District leaders from Novosibirsk came into town to speak and such. Arman and Armen have been working on getting their Mother and Father introduced to the church. Their mother has been meeting with the sisters and will be baptized on Tuesday. This was her third time at church. Today their father came for the first time as well! I had met him briefly on the street my first week here, but actually got to exchange a few words on sunday. He's such a nice man, and loved the Sacrament meeting. That evening I called Arman and was able to talk to his Father as well. Thanked him for coming to church, and said we loved seeing him there with his family, and asked if we could meet with him some time. He told us that his home was open to us any time, and he's love to meet with us. What a miracle! We'll be meeting with him and his family on Thursday. 

That was our week. In short. I hope you are all enjoying the spring weather, and are studying/working hard. 

Elder Moore

Pictures:

 Clinic in Barnaul

 Elder Gardner on the phone with the mission doctor

3:30 AM Pancakes. :)

I'm Siberian Bear!

Plastic Booties for the Novosibirsk Clinic

Elder Aubrey!

General Conference, Easter Cakes

Just a quick one about this week. It was a fast week as they seem to be these days. We spent a little less time on the street which was a bit of relief! There was some organizing that needed to be done with our efforts to work with the Less Active members that we did one afternoon. Our investigator Noor also found time to meet with us as well! We met on wednesday and read out of Mosiah 2 to introduce General Conference and to invite him to attend on Saturday and Sunday. He ended up not making it which was a bummer. 

General Conference though, was great! We got to watch it in English on the computer in an office in the Branch. It's hard to pick a favorite talk, but both of Elder Uchtdorf's talks stick out. Especially his talk on Grace in relation to the gates and windows of heaven. An underlying theme that also stuck out to me regardless of the individual topics of the talks was being able to keep an eternal perspective in all we do. 

At home this week, we've been trying to make pancakes. We finally just figured we should try the recipe we have in an old mission cook book. They turned out pretty well! We boiled down some цикорий to make a pretty good syrup. цикорий (Tsikori) is some kind of flower... You can google the translation or something. 

Well, I hope you all have a great week, and aren't already forgetting what you heard in conference last week! Go back and re-listen, and re-read talks. Get what you can out of it, and let the guidance and answers you received carry you to the next General Conference in October! 

Much Love, 

Elder Moore

Pictures:

Easter Cakes!- It's like a pretty flavorless bread with raisins in it with frosting

Tram tracks at night

We've moved on from Snow to Rain. :)

Syrup and Pancakes! 

Cloudy Skys Become Blue, Sidewalks Become Rivers

Happy Easter!

I'm kinda in Easter limbo over here. I wore an Easterish tie to church yesterday only to be told that Easter in Russia is next week. Which works out great because General Conference will be a week later here as well so we can still watch it on Easter Sunday! So I guess I still win in a way. 

This week was a slower one. Lots of time on the street. Upwards of 6 hours a day. At least the weather has been nicer. Stayed above freezing most of the week so the snow banks have taken quite a hit. The skys have been pretty clear, and the sidewalks in places are completely flooded. Whoever introduces some kind of gutter system to Siberia would be pretty well off. :) 

The best part of the week was Branch Council! Last week president Williams came and gave them a training, so this week when we all met, they had an agenda, and got down to the important things right away. Now out missionary district has specific things that we can now go and do. I'm sure that as we take care of the assignments from the Branch Council regarding less active members, we'll see lots of miracles! One, because we're going to be working more with members, and more miracles always come when missionaries and members work together and two, because this is what our Area and Mission leadership has felt inspired to ask us to focus on at this time! 

I hope you all enjoyed General Conference! I'll be able so say something more about it next week. :)

Hope you all had a great easter, and will have a good spring break as well. 

Much Love,

Elder Benjamin Moore

Pictures:

 Melty Sidewalks

It was so nice out we had to sit and enjoy it for a minute!

The Sun: Haven't seen much of him in a while! 

President's Visit, BYU Class Registration

Hope that everyone had a good week! I had to spend some email time signing up for my Fall semester of classes at BYU, so this one will be a quick one. 

As far as lessons and our area this week, Noor called us on Tuesday and we met with him that evening and discussed the Plan of Salvation. Edward came back into town and we met with him as well. Found out that one of the recent converts in the branch is his brother! We talked about the Book of Mormon and prayer with him. Come Saturday, President and Sister Williams along with Elder and Sister Turman were down visiting us in Barnaul. We spent all day Saturday with them in a meeting with our district, then individual interviews. Come Sunday, I had a lot of translating to do as President Williams, his wife, and the Turmans all spoke during Sacrament meeting and don't have the language ability to do it all in Russian. Then I stuck with Preident as he met with a few people, and then for when he trained the Branch Council. After about 4 hours of non-stop translating, your brain starts to feel like it does after a week of Russian in the MTC. 

Inbetween all of that, Elder Garnder and I have been doing a lot of foot work, and contacting on the street. They came out with another Anti-Mormon video the other day, so people here are pretty mis-informed as to who "The Mormons" are. Makes it difficult. 

I'm all signed up now for classes for Fall semester at BYU! Pretty crazy. I've got some Russian, German, Physics, Humanities, Religion, sport, and an intro to engineering class that are all thrown in the mix. 

Tomorrow is the end of March! Today I read up to Moroni chapter 10 so I'll finish up the Book of Mormon tonight for the month of March! My focus was revelation, and how God communicates with us. A highlight that I wasn't expecting to be so prominent was how God works through our Priesthood leaders, through those that have the keys, to bring us his words. Though personal, and very direct answers to prayer come, It is more often that God will speak to us through the people that he has called! General Conference is coming up this next weekend! I invited you all to watch it with questions and see this principle in action as you receive answers to your prayers through the words of living prophets! 

From Russia, With Love

Elder Moore

Pictures:

Elder Gardner during Weekly Planning.

Snowy Day. Some day it will actually be spring. 

Zoo Park 

Sunset

IT'S RAINING!, Tomsk and Novosibirsk Updates

Winter may actually be ending. But it's Siberia, so we won't know for sure until May! Today during studies, it started to rain. The first rain that I've seen in about  7 months!! That means that I'm two for two surviving the Siberian winter. :) 

We headed up to Novosibirsk early on Wednesday morning to make it to the mission office by 1. We pulled in at the same time as the Tomsk bus, and off came a couple Tomsk missionaries. We took a taxi and got all of elder Yungfleisch's stuff to the office. The office at transfer time is always pretty busy. Elder Carlson filled me in on what's goign on in Tomsk. Nikolai, who Elder Batson and I started teaching way back when in my first transfer in Russia is still kickin' it! He's still meeting regularily with the missionaries, and has even helped to teach Elder's Quorum on Sunday. It was his birthday so I used Elder Carlson's phone to call him. He remembered me! oh man was it easier to understand him on the phone than it was 18 months ago. He remembered me! Because our mission is losing missionaries, my area that I served in in Novosibirsk is being closed down. Elder Stucki is off to Tomsk and the Assistants are taking over our area as well as theirs. My last week Elder Stucki and I found Simyon and started teaching him. He's still going strong, and has been the source of three more solid investigators! So that's pretty exciting. It's worth it to work hard to the very end. Day, transfer, mission, You never know when you're going to make the difference for someone. 

 

Picked up Elder Kolten Gardner from Texas/ Lafayette Indianna, and headed back to the bus station and on to Barnaul. We got a really nice, new bus both ways the "Golden Dragon". Usually we get an old, retired bus that used to be used to tour around places like japan or Thailand. So it was a good change. Made the 5 hour drive in 4 and got home by 8. Elder Gardner had just gotten back from Helsinki and hadn't slept in over 48 hours so he crashed right when we got home. In the taxi ride home from the bus station, the taxi driver had a bill from Tajikistan on his dashboard. We talked a bunch on the way back, and in the end I asked if I could have it, so he gave it to me. 

Since then, we've just been going and going here in Barnaul.

All I've got time for today! 

Have a great week!

Elder Moore

Our Study Room

Monument in the center

 Elder Yungfleisch leaving
















We finally found time on our last day together to play on the Ping Pong table out in our entranceway.

Realized I didn't have any pictures of Elder Gardner yet so I snapped this one this morning. More next week!

Winter's End...Will Never Come

Hello Family and Friends! 

Well, I sent a picture home last week of Elder Yungfleisch and I eating ice cream outside in the Sun. I don't think we've really seen the sun much since then, and in the last week, we've shoveled over a foot of snow from in front of the branch. :( The days are getting longer though. It's starting to be light out later and earlier. So at least there are some signs of the changing of the seasons! I won't count it as Spring until I can go outside without a pukavik or any fur. I will tell you though, that after 7ish months of wearing some sort of jacket outside, the first time you go outside in just a white shirt and tie is very nerve racking. With jackets, we've got some element of surprise... and ability to blend in when it's good to blend in. Okay that's a lie. We never blend in. Ever. We're always looking oh so American. I don't know how they know! From as much as 50 feet away people will shout "Yankee Go HOME!" Yes, they actually yell that... among other things. :) 

Anyways. This week was another quick one. It was full of a lot of opportunities to serve, meet with and help our members. But I'll start with last Monday night. We met with Noor again Monday night. He was only an hour and 20 minutes late! So we didn't have much time. Since he couldn't make it to the Branch, we met him at a Mall closer to his apartment, and walked around in there a bit. We sat on a bench, and ended up having a great conversation about God's plan of happiness, in relation to our families. His parents are Muslim, but somewhere along the line, he was converted to Christianity. He saw a film about Christ, and I think that was the turning point. It was a good little bench meeting in a mall. He had work all day every day until Sunday. He missed out on Sacrament meeting, but made it for Priesthood in the 2nd hour. Afterwards we stayed in the room and just talked for a while. Read from Ether 12, and 2 Nephi 31. He's got such a desire to receive a spiritual confirmation about all of the things that we are teaching! He's also just a nice guy. A nice Tajik family man who is here to help put his kids through school. 

Armen and Arman are the Armenian twins who got baptised last summer. They're just a bit ball full of energy. Armen is moving to Moscow later this week. (if things work out). And it will be the last time we see him. Pretty sad, but Moscow will be better for him than Barnaul. They are the best member missionaries ever. They always give us contacts of people they meet on transport, or on the street. They just go for it and have no fear of sharing the gospel. This week we met with Armen and a friend, Edward, and taught the Plan of Salvation. 

Sunday rolled around, and Arman went with us to give a blessing to one of our members. Their lives have made a full 180 turn around since finding the gospel, and embracing it. I can't even explain how their lives have been blessed by coming unto Christ through Baptism and striving to follow his example. 

We got transfer calls this week! I honestly wasn't expecting any changes. But that's when they come I guess. Elder Yungfleisch is being transfered to Omsk! He'll be in my old area there! I'm super excited for him, and It's good to know that the members and investigators there will have such an awesome missionary working in their area and Branch. I'll be serving here in Barnaul still, and I'll be with Elder Gardner, who has been in Omsk(but in the other branch) since coming into the mission for his first 4 transfers. 

Elder Yungfleisch have perfected our bread maker's performance, and have also perfected the tortilla recipe. We're proving that it is possible to make good Mexican food on this side of the planet! We think we'll come home making better Mexican food than the missionaries serving in Mexico. Just because they never have to cook for themselves, and we never don't cook for ourselves. Unless we have lazy days, when we get 1 dollar pizza. from the little grill on the street corner outside our apartment. 

So Wednesday we'll leave early in the morning to get to Novosibirsk by 1 am, when I'll meet up with Elder Garnder who will be fresh off the plane from his Helsinki Visa run, then we'll get on a bus and be back in Barnaul by Wednesday night. 

So here goes another transfer! 

Hope you're all enjoying the spring... send some over this way. 

Take care, and find a little extra time to pray!

With Love, 

Elder Moore

Pictures:

 Noor at the mall

Stopping by, and not getting in

 These pizza's are $1 each!

 ...It's still winter

 Some of the members and their friends at Youth Night

Armen and Arman 

On our way with Arman to give a blessing after church