Heaven or Hell?

A person was talking with God about Heaven and Hell.

"Come," said God. "Walk with me, and I will show you Hell."

And together they walked into a room of cold, rough stone. In the center of the room, atop a low fire, sat a huge pot of quietly simmering stew. The stew smelled delicious, and made the person's mouth water. A group of people sat in a circle around the pot, and each of them held a curiously long-handled spoon. The spoons were long enough to reach the pot; but the handles were so ungainly that every time someone dipped the bowl of their spoon into the pot and tried to maneuver the bowl to their mouth, the stew would spill. The person could hear the grumblings of their bellies. They were cold, hungry, and miserable.

"And now," God said, "I will show you Heaven."

Together they walked into another room, almost identical to the first. A second pot of stew simmered in the center; another ring of people sat around it; each person was outfitted with one of the frustratingly long spoons. But this time, the people sat with the spoons across their laps or laid on the stone beside them. They talked, quietly and cheerfully with one another. They were warm, well-fed, and happy.

"Lord, I don't understand," said the individual. "How was the first room Hell; and this, Heaven?"

God smiled. "It's simple," he said. "You see, they have learned to feed each other."

Given at our devotional today by Lidia Samaykina.

Well the past two days have been dominated by the economic turmoil in the U.S. Down 777, up 435!! What a week. Last night the Senate passed their version of the Rescue Package. Now it is back to the house.

In the office, we have been quitely working on our processes.

Two days ago we discovered a big issue associated with our upcoming EEA Broadcast. I learned more about satellite infrastructure than I ever cared to. It seems that we have three different satellites that transmit to the Europe East Area, across 11 time zones. There are probably more than 50 satellite dishes. We have to determine which satellite will transmit to which building (not all buildings have satellite capability), across all 11 time zones to produce a schedule so that the saints will show up at the right time. Add to that Daylight Savings Time goes off at 2:00 a.m the night before, in some, but not all locations, because some locations were never on it. Give me a break!!!!!!

We are still struggling to get our calendar published so that Mission Presidents can read it online. I won't go into the details, but we have been working on this since the last week in August!! We think we have a solution. We prepared an email yesterday, that needs to be approved, then we can send it out and hopefully, within a week we can accomplish our objective.

Yesterday, we had a watermelon feed in the office. This was our fourth one this season. The Russian's love watermelon. This morning we had it again!!!

Never a dull moment in Moscow. Stay tuned. Tomorrow I will introduce you to Baba Yaga (accent on the last ga).