Weekend in Almaty for Zone Conference - 18 February 2009

We hope all of you had a "Happy Valentine's Day"!

It's been a week of pretty cold weather but we realize this is the last winter that we have to go through, so we will make it!! It's been in the -20 degrees F. all week! We can hardly wait 'til Spring!!

We wanted to make Sugar Cookies for the English Club. We spent the first part of the week looking for a Valentine Cookie Cutter, red food coloring and red candies. No such luck! We ended up making round sugar cookies, using strawberry jello to color the frosting and bought 2 packages of M & M's and picked out the red ones to decorate the cookies with. They made a hit at the English Club!! As Mira told us, we could survive anywhere!!

We had another project approved this week for the Woman's League who needed computers for training. We are grateful for that!

Friday morning we flew to Almaty for Missionary Zone Conference on Saturday. Friday night we were invited to go to see the ballet, "Gizelle", with Sister Pat Vincent.

This is the ballet and opera theater in Almaty. It is a beautiful building on the inside as well as the outside and we were so glad that we were able to go to the ballet!The ballet, "Gizelle", was wonderful and the scenery was beautiful! We have seen more opera and ballet in Kazakhstan than we had in our entire life!! We think it's great!

After the ballet, we saw Olga, one of the nurses from Kostani that we met while doing the NRT. We were so glad to see her!! She is attending school in Almaty to receive more training.

Olga, Anne, Pat Vincent, Nadezhda and Roy. Pat invited Nadezhda to meet us at the ballet. She is not a member, but her son and husband are. Her son, Dema, is on a mission in Russia now. She is a wonderful lady and we hope that she will eventually join the Church. We feel very blessed to have met her. We also got to visit with her in Church on Sunday!!

On Saturday, we were able to attend Zone Conference and to meet President Collins and his wife, our new mission president. Kazakhstan is now in the Russia Moscow West Mission. President Pieper, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy and our Area President, was also their with his wife. What a treat that was!! We also got to meet the new Elders and Sisters that are now serving in Almaty.

It was wonderful to listen to President and Sister Pieper and President and Sister Collins and hear what we can do to be better missionaries!! President Pieper has such a love for Kazakhstan and the people here and you can feel it!!

After our meeting, President Pieper took us to a wonderful Uzbek restaurant with wonderful food and the ambiance was great!!

Sister Collins, President Collins, Pat Vincent, Craig Vincent, Anne and Roy, Sister Pieper and President Pieper ready to enjoy dinner.

President and Sister Pieper, Roy, Pat and Craig Vincent, Anne and Sister and President Collins. We had a enjoyable time visiting and talking about Kazakhstan and what a wonderful place it is. President Pieper told us that they are working towards getting missionaries into Astana, but some events have to take place first and that we are on the Lord's timetable. We just have to be patient!

We were able to attend the Branch on Sunday and that is always a treat for us. President and Sister Collins spoke to us about how people can influence our lives and how trials give us the opportunity to see how we will react to things that happen to us. President Pieper bore his testimony about the 3 missionaries from the Branch, Maxem, Dema, and Rasheed, that are in Russia and the Ukraine doing such a great job and that their testimonies are so strong.

He also told us about the hard times that we are living in and that we need to pay our tithing, get out of debt and keep up on our food storage. He also told us that we need to have faith and that we need to rely on truth. He told the Saints that there will be a Central Asian Mission someday centered in Almaty with wards and stakes everywhere. He told us that God sees us in Kazakhstan and sees what we can become. All of our problems can be solved through faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ! It was such a wonderful meeting and the Spirit was so strong. We felt very privileged to be there and hear him!!

This is our accountant, Olga Berkaliyava, who pays for all of our projects when they are approved. She has to keep a record of all 9 documents and invoices so that we can stay legal. She belongs to the Branch in Almaty and has a 12 year son, Sasha. We love her so much and enjoy working with her!!

Sister Pieper is holding her granddaughter, Sophie, and President Pieper is holding the other baby, who are"stars" of the Branch!! These two babies are spoiled by everyone!! President and Sister Pieper's son and daughter-in-law, Chris and Evelyn, are living in the Branch while doing research for his Fulbright Scholarship.

The two young ladies in the center are sisters. The sister on the right is Erra and she is getting to ready to go on a mission. Her mother is the Relief Society President. Erra is such a dynamic person and will make a wonderful missionary. Sister Zonova is from Ufa, Russia (on the left) and Sister Jensen (on the right) is from Springville, Utah. They both are great missionaries!!

After Church on Sunday, President and Sister Collins and us were invited to the Vincents for Sunday dinner. We had an wonderful time and enjoyed getting to know one another better. President and Sister Collins will be going home from their mission in July but hope to see us at another zone conference before we leave.

President and Sister Collins and and Elder and Sister Vincent. What can we say about the Vincents!! They have been wonderful to us while we have been in Almaty. They plan fun activities when we are there and always are inviting us over for meals. They are the Leadership couple but do humanitarian projects on the side while also taking care of the young missionaries in Kazakhstan. Elder Vincent is a lawyer and a former member of the Seventy and has been working hard to get the Church registered in Kyrgyzstan. They do humanitarian projects in that country, also. They will be leaving to go home the 1st of April and we will miss them very much!

It has been a wonderful and uplifting weekend for us and we are so glad that we had the chance to go and be there with everyone.

It was hard to come back to the really cold weather in Astana, but we know that it won't last forever!!

We love you all and miss you too. The gospel is true and is the most wonderful thing that we have in our life!! We are so blessed!

Love,

Elder and Sister Welling