Saturday is Area Council

Tomorrow, Chris and Linda Nearon have planned a girls day out, while I will particpate in an Area Council Meeting at the office. An Area Council is made up of the Area Presidency and Area Seventy. We have four Area Seventies, so with me that will make eight of us. Four will be in Kyiv and four will be in Moscow. We will hold a video conference between these two cities.

We are in the final countdown for St. Petersburg. We will be glad to get this one behind us. So many details and one more set of meetings and minutes between me and the first day of the seminar. President Paul asked if we had a good checklist. I told him we had one. We'll know how good it is once we get back to Moscow!!

We are going to have two cultural events in addition to instruction from Elder Perry and Elder Rasband. We will attend a Russian Folk Dance Presentation on the opening night of seminar and a boat ride to the Peterhof Gardens in the afternoon of the second day. I have seen a few pictures of the gardens on the internet. It was surely created in the style of the Versailles. But instead of just marble statues, everthing I saw was gilted gold!!

The Cascades at the Peterhof Gardens
We saw some of the opening ceremony of the Bejing Olympics on Russian television tonight. I thought the fireworks were spectacular--so much color! And the man running around the 360 degree tv screen at the top of the stadium to light the torch was pretty cool too. Let's hope that the games go smoothly and that oil continues its downward slide. It was $116 barrel today.

I have a 9:00 appointment with my landlord tomorrow...it's time to pay the rent!! Then I am off to the office. Stay in touch.