Day Trip to Karaganda and Osakaravka, Kazakhstan - 4 April 2009

On Tuesday of last week, we left Astana early in the morning for a day trip. We traveled to Karaganda to visit a day care center for handicapped children. We met Tatyana Ivanovna Kravchenko who is the director of the center and a very caring person. She has received some wheelchairs from the Church in the past and we promised her that we would visit her again.

Tatyana gave us a tour of her facility that she and her husband are in the process of completely renovating. This is where the children get computer training. They also have a physical rehabilitation room where they work with the children to help them with their muscle development and motor skills. We were impressed with everything she and her staff are doing.

While we were there, we met Sally Kim, from San Francisco, who is with the Peace Corp and has been assigned to help Tatyana and her organization in writing grants to help procure money and to write and publish information to help the Kazakh people understand and accept the handicapped people in their society.

We told her that we were from Utah and were here for 18 months in Kazakhstan. She said that she had relatives that live in Salt Lake City!! She asked us what organization we represented, we told her that she had probably heard of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and she said she had!! She was delightful and wants us and Mira to come back again before we leave Kazakhstan. Sally Kim, Anne and Roy Welling, Tatyana and Mira, our translator. We felt like the meeting went very well and we hope we can do a project for them.

Afterwards, Tatyana took us to a Handicapped Children's Hospital where we met the director who we visted with about some rehabilitation equipment. They are funded by the government with medical equipment, but the government won't fund rehabilitation equipment. Director of the Handicapped Children's Hospital, Amangeldi Artekov, Roy and Anne Welling and Tatyana Ivanovana. We had visited this hospital once before and they remembered us and were appreciative that we came back to see if we could help them in any way. We hope to be able to do a project for them.

On the way back from Karaganda, we stopped in Osakaravka to see Svetlana and Ludmilla, two people who we have worked with before. We are hopeful that we can do another project for them, also.

We got back to Astana in the evening but felt that the day went well and we accomplished all we had set out to do. We were glad to be able to visit with these wonderful people again.

All last week we were trying to get a letter signed by the Minister of Health giving us permission to hold the NRT. Without this letter we cannot get pre-custom clearance to ship the equipment here. We will be working on that this week as well.

This little bus is called a "Marchuka" and they go all through the city streets. They cost a little more than the big buses but they go to more places.

This is our basic mode of transportation. We wait at the bus stop for a bus and then sometimes 4 or 5 show up at once!! There is no schedule; just show up and wait until the right one comes along!! But the buses come pretty regularly so we usually don't have to wait too long!!

We were able to stay up Saturday night late and listen to the first session of General Conference. We were also able to stay up on Sunday night to listen to the first session on Sunday. What wonderful counsel we have received this weekend!! We were able to download the first session and have Zhanna listen to it in Mongolian on Sunday morning. She was thrilled!!

We hope you were all uplifted by the messages of the General Authorities and that your testimonies have been strengthened as ours have been.

Love,

Elder and Sister Welling