Don't get too comfortable with the idea that I will be serving in Ryazan sometime soon. Also, I am not writing this e-mail from Tula. As often occurs in our mission, logistics get all twisted and confused to the point where I have personally have no definite idea about what I will be doing over the next few weeks.
In my last e-mail I outlined a plan. That plan changed. As such, I didn't go to Tula this weekend (due to Kazakhstan Troubles, the bane of office existence), instead I stayed in Moscow. I will actually be going to Tula tomorrow for only two days and then I will head over to Ryazan for a week with Elder Hunt. After that I will return to the office for two weeks to serve with Elder Anisiforov in the office in Moscow. After that, I am not too sure what I'll be doing, since the AP's and President Woolley both told me two completely different plans. So I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens. Although this seems unusual and nightmarishly complex (if it doesn't seem complex, you haven't had to order train tickets for the whole mission to transfer) logistical mix-ups occur quite often in our mission, by nature of the fact that our mission is huge and has a ton of factors working in it. The least of these factors being that we have to coordinate our efforts across three different countries with three very different governments and laws. But alas, that is our life.
Other than these mix-ups, our week was actually quite boring. On Thursday we took a road trip down to Voronezh. One of the Moscow senior couples moved down to Voronezh, so we had to help them move. Voronezh is our most southern city in our mission and is about seven hours away on the road. Early Thursday morning we got on the road and started down to Voronezh. I had a great chat with the senior couple about farming practices, San Francisco and military aircraft (Elder Craythorn was a builder of Minuteman ICBM's and also traveled the world helping foreign countries integrate the F-16 fighter plane.) Unfortunately, we couldn't stay in Voronezh too long so we turned around in less than an hour and drove back to Moscow. It was a long fourteen hours on the road, especially because we ran into traffic. I did catch up on my letter writing during the time, so if you wrote me a letter recently you should be getting a reply.
We did not travel to a different city for the weekend. We had far too much work to do with the common transfer. On Saturday though, we did take a P-Day, since we rarely ever have P-Days in the office. Elder Lantukh and I decided to go tour the Tsaritsyno Park and Estate. The Estate was built in the 16th century by Tsar Boris Godunov for his sister Irina. Catherine the Great purchased the land in 1775 and had a new palace built on the site in 18th century pseudo-Gothic style (which gives the palace an ominous and complex look). The park is covered with various buildings, including concert halls, an art museum, an Orthodox church and various pavilions. The landscape is so large and expansive that you could spend at least a few days exploring all of the paths and finding all of the various buildings hidden in the forest. During the 19th and 20th century many of the buildings fell into disrepair. Mountaineers used the ruined buildings for practice until government officials repaired many of the dilapidated buildings. Now, the estate is a open to public and offers tours of the grounds. We decided not to take a tour but to just wander around somewhat aimlessly. Because I don't have much else to write, I included the pictures I took of the estate as well as some other pictures of Moscow. I hope you enjoy them and have a great week as summer gradually creeps upon us.
As Always,
Elder Zachery Brasier
Some pictures. I've noticed that many of my pictures lately have been about military equipment and graveyards. So here is a softer side of Russia. We toured one of the many parks in Russia, so I allowed myself to be a tree-hugger and take pictures of trees and animals and flowers. Also I included some other stuff.
The lake in Tsaritsyno Park
On the port!
In the forest!
I call this "The Joy of Retirement." Once you retired, you can go sit in beautiful parks and have stalker American missionaries take pictures of you!
Some swans (at least I think they are swans)
This random arch on an island that we couldn't get to.
A statue! (note the sickle in the left hand. This is a perfect example of the Soviet usage of Greek style for sculptures and buildings)
Elder Lantukh
An abandoned soccer field. It hasn't been played on for quite some time.
I played a little with my macro focus feature on my camera. This is the same soccer field.
I don't know why, but I really liked this tree.
The forest
A destroyed building.
Me playing archaeologist and trying to figure out how the building was destroyed.
On a bridge, with a part of the Tsaritsyno Estate in the background.
The Tsaritsyno Estate.
The gates to the gardens and park (we toured the whole park backwards).
The builders. I imagine them saying (in Russian): Man on the Left: "As you can see Matvey, I have built this little man out of extra bricks and clockwork left over from the estate." Man on Right: "Wow Vasiliy that is outstanding, but unfortunately it seems that he is brainless, he cannot even speak Russian properly."
Me, indignant: "Yes I can speak Russian! (in my poor American accent!)" Man on Right: "See Vasiliy, my point is proven!" Both men laugh to my embarrassment. That is just how I would imagine this conversation.
More pictures of the Estate
The Tsaritsyno fountains.
The National Library with our good friend Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky in front.
An exterior view of the Kreml.
The Pushkin National Art Museum
The doors to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Unfortunately the building was way to big to get in one picture and for some reason my other pictures didn't save. This was a sweet Cathedral though, the biggest in Russia and the most beautiful. Also it has an interesting history: The cathedral was commissioned in the early 1800's to commemorate the victory over Napolean's Grande Armée in 1812 and wasn't finished until 1860, finally being consecrated in 1883. After the death of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union took a strong anti-religious stance and chose the site of the cathedral for the super-tall skyscraper "The Palace of the Soviets". In 1931 the cathedral was demolished by order of Joseph Stalin but the Palace of the Soviets was not completed before World War II. All construction halted during the war and building never resumed. After the fall of the USSR, the Orthodox church received permission to rebuild the cathedral on the originally site. Construction commenced in 1992 was finally completed in 2000. The cathedral is huge, and I'm really disappointed my pictures all disappeared. If you have time I would strongly recommend looking up pictures of the cathedral.
Street Dancers (they were actually quite good, I got some sweet videos)
Some guy with a crazy Indian guitar.
A random lady playing the accordion. As you can tell nobody is interesting in listening to this poor old lady.
A cool statue on Arbat Street
Some statue of horses drowning. I don't really get it.
Moscow Time