We have made some great friends in our branch named Larissa and Victor Veselov, they are so good to take us places and to help us. They even speak English. Here are some pictures of a park in Puskin (a small city by Saint Petersburg) they took us to.

On the night of the Fourth of July Larissa and Victor took us for a walk by a river running into the Finnish Gulf.

A machine gun bunker.

Some of the standing water in Russia has this green film on top of it.

When we were walking by the river there were several men fishing on an old rusty barge. I heard this big splash and I wondered what they had thrown in then I looked down at them (we were on the bank above them) and saw a man in the water not in the river but in the filthy water that was on the inside of the barge. I said “look” to Larissa and she grabbed my hand and said, "let’s pray" and started to pray in Russian. The other men were trying to pull him out by this big rope but he kept losing his grip. I think he was drunk. Another man jumped in to help him. They got the first man out but I don’t know about the second one. We didn't pray for him.

Last winter Victor and Larissa took us on a "Winter Picnic" to the Finnish Gulf. I can never remember being so cold in my entire life. I never dreamed I would ever be... on a picnic... in the middle of the winter... in Russia.

We gathered wood and started a fire.




It was so cold and wet that it was hard to get the fire going even with all of Tom and his little helper's hot air.




Then Victor made us some Fir Tree Tea in this teapot he carried with him. He boiled water then put pine needles in the water from the Fir Trees.
It tasted.......well....... interesting to say the least.

This is the Finnish Gulf and it is so cold the water is frozen over. The ice is so hard you can actually walk out on where the water usually is.