Cold and Snow in Astana, Kazakhstan, 18 January 2009

The exciting news this week is that the containers from Salt Lake were released on Friday from Customs and delivered on Saturday to the consignees!!! We are thrilled!! We know that it wouldn't have happened if the US Embassy and the Lord had not helped us out and for that we are truly grateful!! We are continually blessed every day!

We spent most of the week just working on the projects. There is a 9 step paper chase that we have to do for every project and since it's been a slow week, we will explain it to you. (You might want to get a snack!)

When a project is approved, we have to get an official Letter of Request, stamped and signed and properly dated, from the organization of what they need, along with their Bank information, Tax Information and their Certificate of Registration. When we have these three documents, then we get the Prepayment Invoice from the vendor stamped and signed.

We then email this to Olga (she eventually has to have the original), our accountant who lives in Almaty, because we cannot handle any money, and she makes the Bank Transfer of funds to the vendor. Then Olga creats 3 Contracts and gives us all of the copies. We have to get all 3 Contracts signed and stamped by the organization and then we send them to Almaty, so the Branch President can sign and stamp all of them. Then Olga keeps one copy and sends the others back for us and the organization.

After the goods are delivered, we have to get a copy of the Delivery Invoice from the organization, stamped and signed and we send a copy to Olga and we keep a copy. Then we get a Final Invoice from the organization saying all taxes and charges have been paid. These are also signed and stamped. Olga gets a copy and so do we!

After the Closing Presentation, where we go and take pictures, we get a Letter of Acknowledgement from the organization, stating what the Church donated to them, signed by the organization--original to Olga and we get a copy. It's quite a process and sometimes we don't know what we have handed to us so that's where Mira comes in. She tells us what we need and if it is properly signed, stamped and dated!! If it wasn't for her we wouldn't know if we were coming or going!! She is a blessing in our lives!! And that's the story on the paperwork!!

It has been a pretty uneventful week but we had lots of snow fall and they even closed the roads into Astana because of the drifting snow. We stayed in when we could but did have to go out Wednesday night and boy, was it cold!!!!

Here we are dressed to go out. Roy even has his ear flaps down on his "shopka"!!

This is the upper walkway along our apartment building. It has drifted quite a bit, as you can see.

When we go out, we either take the high road, where Roy is, or the lower road, where the cars are parked! This is a lot more snow that we had last year!

These nice young lads were out playing in the snow and they let us take their picture!

We are keeping busy but trying to stay in when it's really cold!! It's been down in the single digits and with the wind chill it's even colder. Winter does seem to last forever here. Only three more months of it and it should be getting better!!

Thanks for all of the prayers, love and support from all of you. We feel it each and every day! We are so blessed to be here on a mission in Kazakhstan! We wouldn't trade this experience for anything! May the Lord bless you in all that you do!

Love,

Elder and Sister Welling