In our earliest inquiries about the Church in Yekaterinburg, people said, "Oh, they have a chapel in Ufa, and another one in Kurgan." They didn't tell us that Ufa was a sixteen hour train ride away from Yekaterinburg. The distances here are immense--in fact, this is the most sprawling mission in the Church. It's as if the Mission Home were in Salt Lake City, UT, with some missionaries assigned to San Francisco!
The Mission President travels so much to see his missionaries once a month that it's considered a "hardship" mission and he's asked to serve two years instead of three. The most remote missionaries are in Surgut, some 600 miles from the mission office; Perm is 197. President and Sister Allen along with the AP's fly, take trains, sometimes drive. Thank goodness for email and cell phones!
Speaking of distances, this is Ksuesha Strelnikova, 21, the only member in her family. She's participating in a tele-conference planning session here at the Mission Office today. TV remote makes the meeting possible. The all-Russia/Baltics youth conference will be next year in St. Petersburg for as many as 1,000 youth. Amazing!!Map from here.
4 comments:
Wow, your mission is not without it's challenges. A hardship mission? I had never heard of that before, but it makes sense. You would need to have very obedient missionaries to make it work, I would think. Well, every mission needs obedient missionaries, right? That's an immense mission.
crazy!
Hi, Dixie. I just keep thinking that we're lucky to be in this great country. And yes, the missionaries here are not only obedient--they're AMAZING!
I guess Elder Whitehead is in a pretty big mission, too. I mean, nothing over here is small!!
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