Greetings from Moscow! This is my first entry into our blog so I hope it works. I have to share some information with you so you may understand how excited I am to be here. Geri and I are so thrilled and we know that we must be here for a purpose. In many ways the world is so large and in many other ways it is so small. This picture is me standing on Red Square with St. Basil's Cathedral in the background. Never in my wildest dreams (and my family knows that I sometimes have wild dreams) would I have thought that I would be here. I am just so excited to see what will take place while we are here.

I keep asking myself "why are we here in Moscow, Russia and why at this time?" One of the other employees that just arrived here is a man named Robert Lochhead, serving as the Area Legal Counsel for the Church in the Europe East Area. He just arrived on Friday so I had not met him at work yet. His name just sounded so familiar ever since I heard he was coming. Bob has been an Attorney in Salt Lake City. We met officially today at Church at our Moscow Branch. Immediately he seemed so familiar to me and we started sharing things to get to know each other. When we started talking about our missions the familiarity was revealed. We served our missions in the same mission in Hamburg, Germany back in 1973. When I arrived in Berlin in June of 1973, Bob was the Zone Leader for the Berlin Zone. I was just a young missionary and he was one of the mission leaders. I still remember to this day the powerful impact he had on me as a new missisonary. Who would have believed that 37 years later each of us would be asked by the Church to serve in the same office in Moscow, Russia. I feel so strongly that the Lord's hand is in our lives constantly and we just have to watch and see what is in store.

The picture to the right is looking across a small lake in the park that is about an 8 minute walk from our apartment. There are so many beautiful sites here. We love to run and walk in the parks and the surrounding area and take in all that we can. Tomorrow, Matt's birthday ( Happy Birthday Matt! ) will be my second full week of work in the Area Office. Here are some statistics to give you an idea of the work that is going on with the Church in this great area at this time. We feel so blessed to be part of it.

The Europe East Area covers 16 countries; the Church materials are translated into 10 languages; there are 14 Missions with 940 missionaries, 87% of which require visas to be in the countries; there are 143 employees, 64 in Moscow and the rest in other countries and missions throughout the Area; there are 190 meetinghouses, 68 owned by the Church and 122 leased. Sounds exciting huh?

Well, have a great week and please send us updates on your lives. We love hearing about everyone at home.