Ariving in Moscow

I was very nervous about starting a blog. I wanted to do it in order, but that didn't happen so I will just go back and pick up a few things. This is from the beginning of our adventure.

When we arrived in Moscow, we were babes in the woods as far as foreign travel was concerned. As would happen, one of my bags was lost. (We didn't know that it was still in Atlanta. Scott had been notified that it would be sent the next day, but he had no way to contact us.) Everyone got their luggage and left except us. We stood there bewildered and tired. A man approached us, I call him "Mr. Trenchcoat". He looked like he was right out of a Russian movie. Dark trenchcoat and crew cut and not a smile on his face. He directed us to a desk where I tried to communicate with someone that I had lost one of my suitcases. Mr. Trenchcoat was "helping" me. I finally got a paper filled out. We could see the people waiting outside the security area on a TV screen. They could see us, but we couldn't talk.

Mr. Trenchcoat decided that I had too much luggage and he wanted some of it searched. How could I possible have too much luggage? We were allowed two suitcases each (total of four) that were up to 50 lbs each and then we paid $100 each for an extra suitcase (now the total is six). Plus we were allowed two carry-ons each (now the total is 10), but not really because one was missing. How could he possible think we had too much? Anyway, in his most furious voice he told me to pick a suitcase because they were going to search it and I had to tell him "everything" in the suitcase. Now we had been living out of suitcases for about 6 weeks. I had packed and unpacked them. Who knew what was in what. I tried to explain that Jack and I had been married a long time and that things were packed together. He said, "NO-I WANT YOUR SUITCASE." I was getting more and more nervous. I picked a suitcase and prayed. He took me over to the customs man, but first he pointed out a sign that said I would have to pay a fine. Fortunately for me, the customs man had no interest in looking at my suitcase. As I stood there helplessly, Jack asked if he could let the people that were waiting know that we were here. He was allowed to go to the door, but not go through.

The people there were David Stapley (our boss) and his wife, Lisa and Vlad Nechiporov (the man whose job we were going to take (he is a native Russian). David handed Jack a cell phone and

Jack came back to me. The phone rang. It was Vlad. He asked to talk to Mr. Trenchcoat (although he didn't call him by name). They had a conversation and all of a sudden we were not going to be charged a fine and we were good to go.

Who said we had too much luggage?

Old friendships renewed.

We left in one car and Vlad in another. We had not gone a mile when there was a policeman waving a stick and pointing it at cars to pull them over. He pointed at David. The easiest way to get out of the situation is to pay a bribe and drive on. We don't pay bribes so David spent about an hour sitting in the police car. Lisa called Vlad and he came back, but didn't want to interfere unless it got serious. Other drivers were pulled over, paid their fines and moved on. David was given a ticket and then we left. Let me add here that none of the drivers had broken any laws, they were just on the wrong street. We went to the Stapley's and spent the night.

The next morning we were driven to our temporary apartment. It was a shock to me. I have never lived in an apartment. This was an apartment that sister missionaries had lived in, but it was going to be closed down after we found an apartment. The apartment was very small.


The only explanation necessary here is that Jack was trying to hold the washing machine in place. It sounded and felt like an invasion when it ran and you can see how small it is.

We were shown the market by the young missionaries and somethings were explained to us, but between the jet lag and the language problems, when we went back to shop we didn't do very well. We could figure out canned peaches, top ramen, bread, cheese and butter. For the first few days that was about all we ate.

We called the airport and my suitcase had arrived. We had a form to fill out that included listing everything in the suitcase in Russian. I wasn't any better knowing the contents of that suitcase than the one the day before. One of the young elders filled out the form and we all went to the airport. The two missionaries and I went in and found the "lost luggage room". After filling out more papers the door was opened and we entered a room about 30 feet wide and 50 feet long with shelves full of suitcases up to the ceiling (about 12 feet high). We were lead to an area of shelving about 10 feet long and told the suitcase was in there. We finally found it and we were not allowed to touch it. It was taken to a man who looked at the papers that the missionaries had filled out. He said they were wrong because they had a Moscow address instead of a United States address. The poor missionary had to do it again, in Russian. All of a sudden, Mr. Trenchcoat showed up again. He said a few words and we were on our way.

About the fourth day, Jack started with a rash. The mission doctor thought it was a reaction to something. I didn't have a rash. The seventh night when I got in bed I felt really creepy, like something was all over me. I got up, turned on the flashlight, didn't see anything and told myself that I was just imagining things and to get my act together. I got back in bed and eventually went to sleep. The next morning I had a rash all over my body. Oops, not a rash, bed bugs. I told Jack that I was out of there. We called David Stapley and he came and took us to an empty home in an expat area and we stayed there for 2 1/2 weeks while we looked for an apartment.

We worked every day, looked for an apartment almost every day and finally found one after 3 1/2 weeks.

October 25, 2009

We were recently on a 3 week plus adventure! We went to our office as usual on a Friday. At 9:15AM we were called to the office of David Stapley, the Director of Temporal Affairs for Eastern Europe. He said, “How is your visa situation?” (The reason for that question is that we are only allowed 2 entries to Russia in 90 days.) We replied that we were OK and he asked us to leave immediately to go to Turkey to help with flood relief there. By 10AM, we had our tickets to go and had shut down and packed my computer for travel. We walked 10 minutes to our apartment and were picked up by a cab for the airport at 10:40AM. It impressed on my mind that we need (we now have) a grab and run bag for travel. We forgot a few key items like my thyroid medicine, but we survived.

We arrived in Istanbul, Turkey about 5PM and went to our hotel, the Konak. We have stayed there before. On Saturday, we left bright and early Turkish time, 11:30AM to see the flood damage in one municipality. It had been 3 days since the flood and this municipality was doing well to help their people. We were driven to the flood area where we saw water levels that had been 9 feet high and mud levels that were 18-24” high. The municipality had provided 400 workers that went in with shovels and attacked each area to get the mud and water out. Each home has a hole about 10” in diameter in the wall just above the mud level to allow the water to drain out of each room. The mud had been shoveled out and by the time we got there the people were washing down everything. Furniture was in the streets (or what they could salvage) and they were washing down walls and floors. They wanted us to come in to see what they had accomplished. It was amazing. We saw a woman, wearing yellow boots, with water and rags in a plastic container like a small child’s wading pool. She was walking up and down in the water trying to get the rags clean so they could be used again. She kept changing the water until the rags were clean and then other women took the clean rags and started washing walls and floors. The women wanted to show us the progress they had made. We were impressed. You could see the water and mud lines on the walls, but they were clean and the floor was clean. They said that the entire family huddled together in that room at night to sleep. They had no furniture and no blankets, just each other to keep warm.

This woman was cleaning rags by walking up and down in clean water then changing the water over and over until the rags could be used again.

The first municipality sent in workers each day to shovel mud and help the people.

How they punched holes to let water drain (2nd floor)

Some people came up to a city worker and asked who we were. He said we were Americans. The people had puzzled looks on their faces and said, “But we thought Americans were bad and they are here to help us?” Maybe we did a little good.

We left that area and went to another and met with the mayor (same municipality) who was out in the field coordinating help. He didn’t know us or what we can do and he said that if we could provide immediate help he wanted it, but if it would take us a week they didn’t need our help. We asked what their immediate needs were and he said blankets. He was providing hot food 2 times a day to all of his citizens that were being affected. He and his city workers were actually doing a great job. They needed more immediate help.

We left and went to work. It is not easy to get money into Turkey and everything has to be done in cash. The missionary couple stationed there, the Paskett’s from Bountiful, Utah, were wonderful at leading the effort there. We were just support and backup. We both started drawing money in Turkish Lira out of our bank accounts. We needed to get the equivalent on $30,000 in US money to buy the blankets. Our debit cards had limits of how much could be withdrawn each day. Les Paskett is a retired banker. We called our 24 hour bank help from all over the world and got our limits changed to as high as possible. The branch of the church here had 16,000 Lira that we could use temporarily. The church was working at getting money to us, but it would take a few days that we didn’t have. Les Paskett had a Turkish account, but the banks there don’t have cash on hand so he had to order cash on Monday morning to be delivered to the bank on Tuesday morning. He ordered the blankets from a factory to be delivered on Tuesday as soon as they had cash in hand. Somehow we got everything aligned and were able to deliver the blankets on Tuesday afternoon. The mayor was so impressed that we could do things that fast that he allowed us to do other things to help. They asked for and we provided hygiene and cleaning kits, school kits and shoes.

Off duty marines helping.

Distributing blankets.

Happy faces.

When we distributed the blankets (4000 of them) we drove to different neighborhoods and the “headman” of the village called out the people and we gave them blankets. Two employees from the American Embassy, 5 off duty Marines, some church members and people from the municipality participated. This was on a Tuesday. We found out that there was a four day holiday for the end of Ramadan that started on the next weekend and went until Wednesday. Everything was closed, banks, municipalities, etc. There was nothing we could do so Jack and I left on our original trip to Belarus, Georgia and Armenia and came back on Friday to continue helping. When we got back we helped arrange for the other kits and went to 2 other areas affected by the flood.

The first new area was just shanties that were put up too close to the stream bank (all the flooding was flash flooding because of rain). They were from a different political party than the mayor, plus there had been an attempt on his life so the people got no help from the government. We provided the same things, but they were in worse shape.

"My own blanket."

Second area of help.

This area had much poorer housing. It was built out of anything they could find.

This little girl was helping with the scrubbing.

The suffering in this area broke my heart and there was so little that we could do. In areas of the world where we have more church members, we can bring in crews like the first municipality and go to work cleaning up areas. Our church is not recognized as a legal entity in Turkey so the membership is very small.

We left Turkey after spending 2 weeks there with good feelings about helping, but sadness that there is so much suffering in the world and so much poverty.

I will send out information on the other countries that we visited on this trip in another email.

We love you and miss you. Thanks for your prayers.

Frances and Jack