Central Eurasian Mission - Week 43 - Jan 8 - Jan 14, 2018



This was a blizzard week.  My first clue was when I went downstairs to do my morning walk and discovered the two drifts of snow (shown above) which had been blown under our apartment building's entrance door.  No.... really, the first clue happened during the night - two times.  We open our bedroom window about an inch at night to try to lower the room's temperature to below  to below 60 degrees and we use two big 5 liter jugs of water to block the window from blowing open completely. So....I was sleeping and I heard (in my sleep) a big whirling whistling sound of the wind screeching through the crack of the window and then a big WHUMP!!!  I woke with a start and found that the wind had blown open the window - and  pushed the 10 liters of water about ten inches.  I readjusted the jugs and the windows again, went back to bed, but was startled awake again by a similar wind incident.

Oh, I so wanted to take great pictures that would show the fury of the wind as it whipped the snow into swirling whirlwinds and formed snowdrifts.  But sadly, the pictures only show darkness and footprints and, if you have a good imagination, you'll see blowing snow slither over the ground.



This is to show how deep the snow was



And this shows that the track I use usually walk on, but today it was covered with snow dunes.



I'm amazed to see how snow drifts are formed, all based upon wind direction and obstacles in the way of the wind.  On the left is a three foot snow drift and on the right the walkway is untouched.



And here I walked in it - such fun in the morning!



The snow and, mostly, the wind certainly do complicate our lives, but we are being militarily optimistic and good-natured about it all.  Honestly, sometimes the snow is magical because there are tiny ice crystals mixed in with the flakes, which makes the ground and the air sparkle.  You need to see it to understand.

The day after the terrible night was also terribly windy.  All schools were closed, the international airport was closed, all roads leaving the city were closed, and governmental employees were sent home.  There was all kinds of damage to buildings and terrible traffic jams.  The funny part was that we'd thought storms like this one were normal, but we found that the Kazakhs were trounced by it too.

There were even jokes circulating on the internet.  Here are a few:
During such abnormal Astana winds, my 120 kg gave me confidence.  Two models, a fitness instructor, a granny-vegan and iron man were holding onto me as I walked outside.
Actually, the weather is fine in Astana, only the slim women flying by the windows on the seventh floor kinda distract me from my work.
Due to the severe weather - the terrible snowstorm and wind in Astana, the residential complex, "Asia" has been re-located from the right bank of the river to the left bank.  The relocation of other poorly constructed residential complexes will be announced shortly.

After snow storms, the city goes crazy cleaning up the snow.  Big front loaders push and pile snow everywhere to later be loaded into dump trucks and taken....somewhere...



We had two good humanitarian meetings this week.

The first was with WAQYP - the governmental charity fund that has requested 250 wheelchairs.  We'd gotten to go ahead from our Moscow office to proceed with another meeting to discuss more details.  This time we also met with the President of the fund....he is on the left, and the vice President is on the right.



They have requested wheelchairs for cities all over the country, so it'll be interesting to see how it will all work out.  The church's Wheelchair Specialists will be here in Astana, in February, when many of these details will be taken care.  We are happy to be the boots on the ground who follow the directions of the Specialists.  The meetings in February will include Ministers of different governmental departments - like Department of Welfare and Department of Religion so we will be rubbing shoulders with legends.

And.....we met a second time with Marina at the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic.  This photo of the building says Transplantalogia.



Here is Marina on the right and the Executive Manager of the Bone Marrow Transplant department, Vadim Kemeeken.  Vadim started the first hematology work  in Kazakhstan ten years ago.  The government provides money for salaries and surgeries and food, but when it comes to simple services like beds and curtains, there is not enough money.  Marina is going to be working on her documents for us to make into a humanitarian project.



We finished our meeting right at lunchtime so we found the hospital cafeteria and had a nice lunch  I had some kind of curry and rice and dad had some kind of fish and rice.





As you know we are Humanitarian Missionaries........but we are also anything else the Mission Presidents wants us to be.  So we are also Young Volunteers'  associates, helpers, friends, google searchers, and grandparents.  And, we also have 50 years more of institutional learning and memory than they do.

So we do things with them - like this dinner of camel meat.  One of their investigators is from Shemkent, and she recently returned from that city with a bag of frozen camel meat.  What are Young Volunteers and three Kazakh friends supposed to do -?? have a camel dinner at our apartment.







On Saturday we had our weekly District Meeting, and the Taylors from Almaty came up too.  After the meeting we went across the road and ate at our favorite restaurant.  Ten people devoured our lamb sashleeks like buzzards.








For Sunday dinner I used my crock pot to slow cook the left over camel meat.  Then I shredded it and made a biscuit topped pot pies.  After dinner everyone relaxed.....



And we watched a TED talk about beauty, nature, and gratitude.  Here is the link.  It is a great 6 minute video.  Start at 3 minutes 15 seconds - or just watch the whole thing; it's nine and a half minutes long.

https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_nature_beauty_gratitude/transcript?share=14ffb6d45e#t-186082

From the frozen frontier of the church.....