Dear All, 9-19-10
What an eventful couple of weeks. You know our days are just filled with so much wonderful activities and happenings that it is hard to keep up with all of them and share them with you. I will try to get you a few things that will be of benefit to you and enlighten you and help you through some challenges.
All of you know that we finished all of our “Big” events (Institute Fall Kickoff and Kiev, Ukraine Cultural Event and Dedication). Those were just spectacular. When General Conference is shown in a few weeks, you will want to watch some of the info “between” sessions to view some of our events that we have been talking about (The Cultural Event and Dedication). We had some “interviewers” from Salt Lake City here in Moscow just prior to the events and interviewed some of our members who are somewhat unique. For example, the first member of the church in Russia is a member of our Rechnoy Branch. We also have a young man by the name of Timur Kodirov who is from Rostov, Russia and served his mission here in Moscow just finishing a few months ago. He has moved back into our area and is in our branch. This young man has a spectacular story of success, heartache, challenge, and happiness. His Father was killed by the mob as he was a successful businessman. The mob doesn’t permit that to happen often. His mother died shortly thereafter due to the trauma associated with her husband’s death. Timur, was in and out of jail as part of his own difficulties due to that same traumatic experience. He is the only member of the Church and had an extremely successful mission. Since his return from his mission, he is now the Elder’s Quorum President in our small branch now. He will be a great leader of the Church someday. His nationality is Uzbekistani which is a Muslim country. He is one of just a few handful of Saints from that country. His ultimate goal is to become a diplomat and work within his native country and help bring the Church officially into that country. He begins his schooling next month. Look for a short story on his young life and experiences.
Last week, Elder Russell M. Nelson was in town shortly after the Kiev, Temple Dedication. He stayed for a few days and spent some time with the Saints and fulfilling other assignments. He took the time to do some special training for our District of Priesthood Leaders. It was quite and intimate meeting with about 40 participants. I along with a few others were asked to sing a special musical number for the meeting. We had just a few days notice and we only got together just an hour before the meeting… talk about unprepared! We were all honored to sing and would do our best. Here is the story…. We practiced and practiced and when it came time to start the meeting Elder Nelson wasn’t here in with us yet… they started the meeting anyway… After the opening hymn and prayer, we got up to sing. We did our best to do the song Acapella….It was not that good, in fact, in some spots, it was very weak, but thank goodness, Elder Nelson wasn’t there yet. Within a few minutes after we finished, he came walking in… I for one was grateful. The interesting thing about the fact that he was late was that in reality he was not late at all. He had been visiting with the Woman Leaders of the Church here. They had a great visit with him along with his wife and other wives of the General Authorities from this Eastern European Area. One of the things Elder Nelson spoke about was his first visit to Moscow over 43 years ago. He spoke of that event as a very dark and scary event. He knew that he was the only member of the Church in this vast country. He had visited at that time being a world renowned heart surgeon and was teaching some techniques here in Russia. About 20 years later he came back officially as a General Authority for the Church and was trying to work with the Russian Government to officially “recognize” the church. It is too difficult to explain and would take too many pages on this already long letter, but suffice it to say, Russia made it all but impossible for the Church to be “recognized” officially in the country but within a period of time the Church had accomplished all of the complicated requirements to this status. A myriad of miracles were required to make that a reality.
Elder Nelson, now another 20+ years later has been here a number of times since and during this visit he was visually amazed at how the Church as progressed to this point and what the Lord has in store for this land in the coming years.
It was such a wonderful visit to hear him speak and share experience on how to raise families successfully in the gospel and in our busy lives. He truly is an inspired leader, even a prophet, seer, and revelator of the Lord at this time on earth. It was very very interesting that he spent less than 5 minutes on training from a Church Government structure standpoint. He just spoke about how to improve our families…. It reminds me of what President Ezra Taft Benson said that the world takes men out of the slums but that the Lord takes the slums out of men and then men take themselves out of the slums. He taught us well. If any of you would like more specifics on what he suggested to us as fathers and husbands, please just email me and I will send you more information.
We love you all and are so very grateful for your continued support and prayers. The work here is hard and challenging. We know that it is that way all over the world as well. We work and plead for His inspiration and guidance to help us fulfill the needs here in this portion of His vast vineyard.
Love,
Elder and Sister Packard
