Back to Astana, Kazakhstan

Latest email message sent Saturday, Jan 5th...

Dear Family,
Monday afternoon we went over to the Elder and Sister Vincents to celebrate New Years Eve with the three sets of missionaries (2 sets of elders and a set of sisters) and Gary Despane (a retired American Airlines pilot now working for Air Astana). He is from Mendon, Utah but stationed here in Almaty. We ate and played games and watched the Work and the Glory until the Elders had to leave by 12:30 a.m. There were a few fireworks going off all night but at 11:30 they started going off everywhere even out of windows and along the sides of the street. We went home at 12:30 but couldn't sleep because of the fireworks that never quit until 4:00 a.m.!! We had a wonderful time with all of them. New Years Day Sister Vincent called and we went up to Medey with the missionaries and her. It is a winter resort with Olympic size skating rink up in the mountains above Almaty. When we get our blog going we will post the pictures. It was very cold at all and we had a great time. After we got back we went to the Vincents to finish up the leftovers from the day before. Wednesday we slept in and went to Svetlana's home and met her mother. She helped us a little with our job and we got some more things straightened out. We have to do more with our registration in Astana at the end of the month. After we got back we started packing for our plane trip out on Thursday. The Branch President in Almaty, Murat Mongaseive, took us to the airport. He is a wonderful man and speaks pretty good English. We appreciate him so much and paid him for the ride. We would rather pay him than a taxi. We knew that our luggage was overweight because it had been flown to Almaty and they only allow 44 lbs. per person. We packed as much as we could into our carry on and my purse but we had to pay over 100 dollars but then they wouldn't let us take our carry on aboard because it was too heavy and so they made us check it too. At that point, I lost it!! The lady behind the counter felt sorry for me when she saw all the tears and so we didn't have to pay extra for that bag. Whatever works, I say!! We were met by Robin Wikle who took us to our apartment and a stranger on the street helped us up the stairs and onto the elevator with our 5 big bags. We couldn't get in the apartment so the neighbor had to help us unlock the door. What a day!!! We have had so many people do so many little kindnesses for us the minute we left the United States. The Lord is really watching out for us and blessing us!!! We moved in and unpacked and it sure feels good not to have to live out of a suitcase. It has taken us a couple of days for the apartment to warm up. We found a space heater out on the patio. We turned up all the radiators and we still wear our thermals and sweaters indoors. Friday it was -30 Fdegrees below and it makes it even hard to breath. We did laundry Friday while we moved in and went through file after file. We hope we get this all figured out soon. The church is delivering a container full of clothes sometime the end of January or the first part of February and then we are doing a Neo-natal Resusitation Training sometime in June. Elder and Sister Brown from Moscow are flying in here next weekend to train us in our job. Since everything is shut down in Russia until the 15th because of holidays, they decided to come. Saturday Gene Wikle, who works at the American Embassy and a great guy, took us shopping. He told us that he doesn't know why he decided to come to Kazakhstan but he feels it is his opportunity to serve and support us while we are here. What wonderful people he and his wife and children are!! It would be pretty lonely without them. The funny thing is that he and his family will be here until August 2009 and we leave in June!! He's from Chandler, AZ and we told him that when he gets back to the states that we will look him up when we visit in Arizona.
Well, that ends another eventful week. We will be attending church on Sunday with the Wikles and a lady from Mongolia will be there and she just speaks Russian and very little English. We told Gene that it was up to him to do most of the communicating. We'll see what happens. We hope to stay home and start in earnest our humanitarian work. Bye until next week. Keep those messages coming.
Love, Roy and Anne